Silver and Gold Deposits (1830-1857)

Gold and Silver Deposits to the United States Mint (1838 – 1857)

Gold and Silver Coinage by the United States Mint (1830 – 1857)

The following table lists the value of gold and silver coins minted between 1830 and 1852, derived from the United States Mint Reports. These coins were minted with private deposits of silver and gold.

The following table lists the value of gold and silver coins minted between 1853 and 1857, derived from the United States Mint Reports. The silver coins were primarily minted from silver purchased by the United States Mint under the Coinage Act of 1853 ³, with two notable exceptions noted below.

Note 1. The weights in the deposit table are estimated based on the value of the deposits made and are provided in terms of “standard weight,” the alloy weight as legally defined for each metal under the statute in force at the time of striking — 90% fine silver from 1837 onward; 90% fine gold after 1834. Further, deposits were not separately identified in the United States Mint Reports before 1838, so these coinage tables are provided here as an approximation of deposits.

Note 2. The weights in the first coinage table are estimated based on the value of the coins minted and are provided in terms of “standard weight,” the alloy weight as legally defined for each metal under the statute in force at the time of striking — 89.24% fine for silver before 1837, 90% fine from 1837 onward; 91.67% fine for gold before August 1834, approximately 90% fine thereafter — rather than a single uniform fineness applied retroactively across the full period. The weight estimates for silver are an approximation for 1851 and 1852, as the composition of the trime was only 75% silver.

Note 3. This is corroborated by Statement A of the 1853 report: silver purchases made up 93.7% of that year’s silver deposits ($12,087,625 of $12,903,470). Even assuming the Mint’s entire $1,000,000 bullion fund (established by the Act of January 18, 1837, shared across both metals) was silver carried over from 1852, non-purchase sources could account for at most about 20% of 1853’s total silver coinage ($9,077,571) — meaning at least 80% came from purchased silver.

Note 4. As above, the weights in the second coinage table are estimated based on the value of the coins minted and are provided in terms of “standard weight” except that, for here, the standard weight for the new fractional coins is used — 384 grains per dollar, 90% fine. The weight estimates for silver are an approximation, as there are three situations where coins minted in or after 1853 were minted under the previous standard — 412.5 grains per dollar, 90% fine or a different standard:

References

The mintage figures above are drawn from the Annual Reports of the Director of the United States Mint to the Secretary of the Treasury, submitted each year from the Mint’s founding through the present. Reports from the early-to-mid nineteenth century have been digitized and are freely available through the Chicago Coin Club’s online library (chicagocoinclub.org/lib/us/cis/), organized by congressional session, and through the Internet Archive (archive.org), searchable by year and title. Later reports, including twentieth-century editions, can also be found through the Internet Archive, the United States Mint’s own historical documents page (usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents), and, for material intersecting with broader Treasury and Federal Reserve history, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRASER digital library (fraser.stlouisfed.org).