This may be a dumb question, but the 5 oz Silver Coin is "Legal Tender" as a 25 cent piece. Why do they make a coin like that worth only "25 cent"; why don't they make it closer to what it is really worth, say like $ 250? If it was really worth that much it would be fun to take it to a store and say buy a loaf of bread and see the reaction on the cashiers face when you put down the "hockey puck" to pay for it. Now I am not going to use it as a 25 cent piece. In the Netherlands when the guilder was still around they had silver $ 50 guilder pieces (worth about $ 25 dollars at the time) that were about the size of a Morgan Dollar. I used to get them at the Bank for 50 guilders and actually went to the store and used them (although most people collected them).
Several years ago [when silver was about $7] I called Scotiabank's bullion desk and inquired about the $5 face value silver maple leafs and their legal tender status. They explained to me that countries put legal tender denominations on bullion coins to enable them to cross international borders without paying duties. So there is no real attempt to make the coins circulate. P.S. If anyone disagrees with this explanation, please call Scotiabank. I have no direct way to verify the information from another source.
In the United States putting a trivial legal tender amount on the coin, puts the coin in a nebulous legal state that prevents people from using these US issued gold and silver coins in any transactions. They want to keep you on the Federal Reserve (fiat) Dollar. For example we have this: If you take a $250 silver ATB coin to the IRS to pay your taxes, they will gladly take it and credit you with $0.25. If you take a $1500 gold Eagle to a Federal Reserve bank and deposit it, they will credit your account $50. However if you receive one of these coins as a payment, the IRS will consider that you got paid $250 for the purposes of taxation. (whatever the real value of the coin) They originally placed legal tender status on the American Silver and Gold Eagles back in 1986 for this reason. This little distinction makes these coins useless for any kind of real transactions.
No disagreement at all, this IS the reason you don't pay Tax or duties on bullion coins with denominations, it's simply changing money
This sounds like a double standard situation to me. ie: I pay the fed. gov. with a guaranteed $250 coin with a 25 cent legal tender value on it and they credit me for only $0.25. But if I receive it as payment even if is for a $25 bill they'll say it is worth $250. Gee that sounds pretty one sided to me. That's a win win situation for the IRS.
seriously you think the government and irs want to be "fair" it's all about control and clawing and ripping as much of it from you and over you as possible... basically governments exist to take freedoms away...
Yep. This is exactly by design. Once the coins are useless in the banking and official payments system, they can't be used for commerce. it's one of the pillars of maintaining an intrinsically worthless fiat currency.
Since .999 fine & the weight are stamped on the coin, it could be used in transactions with someone that's willing to take it at market value for payment. Of course this limits the number of possible transactions and its value changes by the second.
Yah, wouldn't that be a blast if more a more people did transactions using the intrinsic value of the PM COIN/s . How would the IRS handle that? Can't throw everyone in jail. I wouldn't mind paying for my groceries with two silver eagles.
