News
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April 10, 2017
The Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and provided for the construction of a facility in Philadelphia, the new nation’s first federal building. The same law also established a decimal-based currency system in the United States, with the dollar as its cornerstone and “money of account.” The Mint building was constructed in 1792 and began production the following year.
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April 07, 2017
The Buying Power of the U.S. Dollar Over the Last Century
The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.
The value of money is not static. In the short term, it may ebb and flow against other currencies on the market. In the long-term, a currency tends to lose buying power over time through inflation, and as more currency units are created.
Inflation is a result of too much money chasing too few goods – and it is often influenced by government policies, central banks, and other factors. In this short timeline of monetary history in the 20th century, we look at major events, the change in money supply, and the buying power of the U.S. dollar in each decade.
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April 03, 2017
The Draped Bust dollar was the second silver dollar produced by the United States Mint. The design replaced the Flowing Hair dollar, which was only produced for a short time in 1794 and 1795. The Draped Bust design was part of a wholesale redesign of US coinage; all United States coins from 1795 to approximately 1807 bear a variation of this design motif. Only later would it become more common for different denominations to bear unrelated designs.
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March 27, 2017
During the depths of the Great Depression, the newly-ascendant administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. This was accomplished with Executive Order 6102 in April 1933, which criminalized the possession of gold by US citizens. The Gold Reserve Act passed the following year, and ratified the provisions of the Executive Order and also devalued the dollar. US gold coinage was to be melted into bars and stored at the new Fort Knox in Kentucky. The intent of the Executive Order and the subsequent legislation was to remove constraints on the Federal Reserve in its efforts to resolve the ongoing banking crisis.
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March 20, 2017
In the early 1970s, rising prices of copper forced the US Mint to consider alternative metals for the one cent coin. The Mint was spending more than one cent to produce each one cent, and as the coins were in high demand (over seven billion were produced in 1973), the Mint stood to lose a great deal should copper prices continue their ascent.
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March 13, 2017
In 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbott in 2015 signed into law an act establishing a state bullion depository at no cost to taxpayers. He intends to enter into a public-private partnership with a qualified company to provide a secure, physical depository and an agency of innovation.
A non-banking financial facility will provide Texans with secure resources for a wide range of gold-backed financial services privately sponsored and publicly supervised by the state of Texas.
Here is coverage from the Forth Worth Star-Telegram:
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March 13, 2017
Although gold has a bigger reputation today as a monetary metal, it was often deemed too valuable for everyday transactions throughout history.
For the most part, common people in places like Ancient Rome used silver to buy daily staples like grain or wine. As a result, silver has a strong reputation through monetary history as the “people’s money”.
Even today, silver is still much more widely accessible. With one ounce of gold being 70x more expensive than an ounce of silver, it’s difficult for someone who is just starting to accumulate wealth to own gold.
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March 13, 2017
The economic turmoil of the Civil War drove most small-denomination coinage out of circulation. Even one cent coins were hoarded, perhaps because they were the only remaining federal coin that had not been totally driven out of circulation. Various substitute forms of currency served in everyday commerce, including small-denomination paper currency notes and privately-issued bronze tokens. In 1864, in an effort to get the cent to circulate once more, Congress changed its composition from a copper-nickel alloy to bronze, which was easier to strike into coinage, and reduced its weight, making it less valuable.
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March 06, 2017
In the early 20th century, the US Mint frequently issued commemorative coins (usually half dollars) on behalf of various organizations to raise funds for a specific project. But the system was rife with abuses: many projects being funded were of questionable national importance; many coins sold poorly and were returned to the Mint for melting; coin dealers often used morally dubious strategies to profit. By the 1950s, the Mint soured on the concept of commemorative coins, and the “early commemorative” era ceased in 1954. After this time, the Treasury rejected all proposals for commemorative coins.
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February 28, 2017
2016 full-year gold demand gained 2% to reach a 3-year high of 4,308.7t. Annual inflows into ETFs reached 531.9t, the second highest on record. Declines in jewellery and central bank purchases offset this growth. Annual bar and coin demand were broadly stable at 1,029.2t, helped by a Q4 surge.