Reply #67: The "historic" ratio of 16:1 is a myth

[Art_from_Ark]

When the United States minted its first official coinage in the 1790s, the ratio was 15:1. However, it soon rose to 15.75:1 in Europe, and a lot of US gold flowed out of the country because it was considered undervalued in relation to silver. In the US, the 16:1 ratio was adopted in 1834, meaning that the fine silver in a silver dollar would weigh 16 times as much as the fine gold in a theoretical gold dollar coin. However, beginning in 1849 the California Gold Rush unleashed a higher proportion of gold to silver on the market, and for a few years silver actually gained a little in value vis-a-vis gold, and the US reduced the amount of silver in subsidiary coinage for a short time as a result. However, the huge silver discoveries starting in the late 1850s with the Comstock Lode effectively reduced the market price of silver to the point where in the 1870s, the silver in a silver dollar became worth only a fraction of the gold in the gold dollar of the time. While the ratio of silver-to-gold weight of coins in the US officially remained at 16:1 until 1933, in reality for most of the 20th century, 16 ounces of bullion silver was worth much less than 1 ounce of bullion gold.