Taking a guess on the number still in existence: 25,000,000 Current spot: $21.41 Cost: $182,825,074.88 (assuming you can buy at spot) That's a lot of silver floating around the general population.
Buying at spot?!, maybe back in 2008. Now you are looking at $1 per coin over spot in most cases so add an extra $25m. Plus I have one which I am not going to sell to you so you will never be able to buy them all.
My gut feeling is that millions where melted down when Mike Hunt and York Hunt took silver to $50 dollars back in 1980. A fair wage back then was $200 a week so I think at best that there are no more than 15 million out there.
No a better estimate is 10%. You have had a government recalling and melting them down through an efficient banking system. You have also had several price peaks that would have flushed a great deal out for the scrappers to melt. This coin has also historically not been given much stock as a numismatic item so many would have been melted instead of predecimal
I tried to get some pre-decimal coins refined, the refiners who bothered to reply wouldn't consider anything less than 100Kg of pre decimal. However they were all happy to accept any number of 80% silver 50s. No idea how many would be left, there is plenty of predecimal floating around so people are hoarding it and selling it to other hoarders, of course, predecimal had more than one year to build up its numbers.
Still one of my favourite coins. Never quite understood the negative attitude coin dealers have for them ..
Most dealers here in the states treat those coins as scrap world silver coins based on their relative silver weight
3.5 million remaining? So, around $26 million for them all at today's spot. That's actually feasible with a good Powerball win.
My grandfather was a big hoarder of round fifties. He left them to me before he passed. He had them stashed in his shed in multiple boxes. When he moved to the nursing home he gave instructions that I got first pick of anything from his shed, naturally I took the 50s. He also had copper pennies and 1 & 2 cent coins. I'm surprised he didn't cash the 50s in during the 1980 silver hike, he would have been about 50yo around that time. According to my calculations it would have been worth a small fortune back then, enough to buy a cheap house or nice block of land.
yeah, I could only wish never to reburied back those sacks of coins mostly copper old coins bags and bags of them and later sold that house above the land. 1 coin can be worth a few dollars nowadays. they were in very good condition when it was uncovered back in 1990s it was buried back in the 1930s
I would guess it to say there are only 8 million out there now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_round_fifty-cent_coin "A total of 36.45 million coins were minted with 14 million put into circulation" 14 million in circulation, then my guess ~3 million recalled in 1966-1967 ~2 million melted down between 1967-1980 ~1 million melted down between 1980-2016 leaving ~8 million today.... just my 2 cents
