Is the mint going to make a silver Presidential dollar or not. I think that it is about time they make up there mind.
I am not an expert....but since the quality of the regular coins are so bad, especially on the edges...why waste good silver. I don't think any of these coins can or will ever get an high ratings from any rating company...just too many dings on all the edges. IMO...this coin was NOT well done.
Ed - apparently you don't understand this ,but the mint has absolutely no say in the matter. The only way that a silver version of the Pres. dollars can be made is if, and only if Congress passes a law telling the mint to do so. The mint does not decide what coins to make and what coins not to make. Only the United States Congress can make those decisions.
From what I read the mint ran some polls to determine whether they should issue a silver presidential version. It may not depend on Congress at all.
The mint can run all the polls they want, but the legislation authorizing the "golden" Presidential dollars explicity detailed that the coins would have the same composition as the existing Sacagawea dollars. This means the same manganese-brass metal will be used for this coin. The only way the mint can produce the Presidential dollar coins in silver is if the US Congress passes legislation to amend the current program to allow the use of silver for the dollars.
It depends entirely on Congress. If the mint made these coins in silver right now - the employees could go to jail. It is illegal to do so. Congress has to pass a law to make it legal to mint the coins in silver - period ! Yes, the mint is running polls. But they are running polls because they hope to use the results of those polls to help convince Congress to pass a law saying that they can mint the coins in silver.
Perhaps, also interesting is that the Sacagawea dollars may have commemorative reverses. Congress could combine the two programs and also make silver Sacs? As a collector I'm looking forward to the varieties despite the quality. I think it is interesting for example that the edge lettering on the Pres $ has no preferred orientation.
I say that it will not happen, that edge lettering is not easy on this scale and yes congress will listen if there are legit production problems.
Congress in no way decides what coins are minted. These people work 2 to 3 days a week at the most, and that time is spent dining with lobbyists and hitting on interns. Do you think they actually sit around thinking about what coins should be minted? The US Mint comes up with a plan and Congress just signs off on it.
Ahhhh...no. The mint does what it is told to do. It is theoretically possible that they could propose something, and it has probably hapepned. But, 99% if not 100% of our coin programs are courtesy of Congress (or the lobbyists). I am sure that it was not the Mint's idea to make two commem programs a year AND a state quarter program AND a Presdiential dollar program AND a new bullion gold coin, all at the same time (not to mention the recent nicels). True, the Mint came up with the unc. W versions of the silver, gold. and platinum, but this was fairly painless as they were already producing these coins and they did not require new designs.
Uh, first the Mint comes up with it, then they have to convince a Congressman that it is a good idea so he can have a bill written up, then he has to round up and convince 120 more Congressmen to sign on as co-sponsors of the bill before it can even be introduced, and then it has get assigned to a committee for consideration. If it is approved in committee then it can come back to the floor for debate, and or amendment. At this point it may be called for a vote, or sent back to committee for further consideration. If it is voted on and approved then it is sent to the Senate where it starts the process over again in committee. When it is voted on and approved in The Senate, if it doesn't match the bill that was voted on in the House, then it has to go another committee which reconciles the two versions which are then sent back to the House and the Senate so they can both vote on the same version of the Bill. If they both pass it then it goes to the President for his signature, which he may or may not do. This is "signing off on it."
The fact remains that if there are production problems, that is a reality that congress will give a lot of weight to. Neither congress nor the mint will decide this, the reality of the situation will.
So that is what happened to my last coin order. Someone forgot to sign something. Ok I can live with that.
That requirement of "matching" even extends to the title. If the House and Senate both pass separate bills, one with an HR number and the other with an S number, then one or the other must drop its own bill and adopt that of the other house. I'm not certain, but I believe it was the DC/Territory quarters bill (the "1th year") that didn't go to the President for that very reason. It was either that bill, or another coin-related one, sometime in the past couple of years, that had identical bills passed by both houses, but session time ran out before either the House or the Senate adopted the other one's bill.
I want to ask a kind of a non political question and I am not trying to be a smarty. Think this will answer about 99 percent of my questions about the mint and then I think I can put it to rest. At work when we get behind on our work. Your fault , my fault, nobody's fault we have to work overtime to meet our obligations. I think the last time we were late on an order shipment was when hurricane Ivan knocked out power for 4 days . One of those days we worked with battery operated lanterns. Does or can the mint work overtime when they are behind or does it take some governmental bill to allow them to do that. This is intended to be an sincere question and I would hope it is taken that way .. Thanks.
