I Found a Silver Dime

I was rolling coins today out of the jar that I keep in the office next to where I empty my pockets each night. When the jar gets full, I will roll the quarters, dimes and nickels eventually taking them to the bank to change them in for dollar bills or depositing them in the checking account. It would be nice to think that I was collecting change for some purpose, but I haven't really done that yet. Maybe someday I will, but it just hasn't happened.

As someone who knows a little about coins and history, I always check the sides of the dimes and quarters that I roll in case I happen to find one that is old enough to contain silver. In the United States, these coins prior to 1965 were made of 90% silver but in 1965 that was changed so that now quarters and dimes are 75% copper and 25% nickel.  It is easy to just glance at the side of the coin and see if there is a small rim of copper.

Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised when I looked at the sides of the dimes that I was rolling and noticed that one stood out a little. It didn't have the usual copper stripe so I pulled it out and noticed that the date was 1964! Awesome! I had found a dime that was made of 90% silver at a time when silver is trading over $30 per ounce. What a perfect illustration of Gresham's Law. Gresham's Law essentially states that "Bad money drives out good" so the less valuable metals of copper and nickel replaced silver in the coins in circulation since people will not spend the more valuable money.

I immediately went to the internet and found a neat site called coinflation.com.  It lists the melting value of coins based upon the current price of the metal content.  It stated that the dime I just found had a silver content value of $2.40.  I found that to be a nice surprise and showed the coin to my kids and explained how to tell the difference between the two coins (with and without silver) by looking at the side.

One should seriously consider investing in silver since it has a tendency to maintain purchasing power over long periods of time.  I remember when I had just graduated from college that gas cost about $1 per gallon and I was able to get an ounce of silver for about $5.  Now gas is over $3 per gallon but silver is up over 6 fold.  So in reality, my purchasing power has increased.  Of course, I think that silver has probably run up too much too quickly and has the potential to decline significantly sometime this year.  But I also feel that silver will always have some monetary value and will provide me with a good frame of reference when I compare its price to the price of gasoline.