I'm not talking about a political party or politician. Politics are not just parties or specific politicians. I'm simply stating what/who is glorified in our society today. If that's politically charged, so is talking about Liberty. Liberty is not an actual person as are those you mentioned. Edit: Ok, I will acknowledge it was a bit on the edge, but then so is the mention of Liberty, because a major political upheaval would be necessary to ever have Liberty again.
I'd agree except that the precious metal coins are produced at the West Point Mint and has no impact on the production of coins intended for circulation.
Well, when I looked at the Motto Lettering on the Commem: Then compared it to the real thing: The differences were obvious. Rounded "blisters" of metal instead of clean, crisp, well defined letters. Of course, none of this holds a candle to the "cartoonish caricature" they did of the Eagle: Compared to what it "should" have looked like: I expect that future efforts by our "World Class Mint" would be met with similar failures.
Well, .9999 Fine Gold is much easier to work with than even its .999 Fine Silver counterpart. Plus, there's a general push to get gold into the hands of the public at some fairly high markups.
Actually, re-strike would mean using the original dies, right? Obviously not a re-strike but a re-visitation. Still like 'em........
It would be sad if such as interesting thread was to be removed due to an insistence to push politics. But I have grown tired of having to continue editing. Hopefully this is understood.
And the US Mint is working on a new design that incorporate Miss Liberty this year and that Angelina Jolie $75 gold coin design looks horrible. I think that the US Mint has peaked in its artistic quality a long time ago. I don't think new designs (and a new liberty design) will bring new collectors to the hobby much the state quarter program did in 1999. I'd be surprised if the 2015 Angelina Jolie $75 gold coin will bring new collectors much like the state quarter program did in 1999. If you want to bring new collectors into the hobby like what the state quarter program did in 1999, you have to encourage people to hunt through pocket change and the best way to do that is to have the US Mint make limited edition coins for circulation. An example of what I mean would be a 2015-W nickel with a mintage limit of 100,000 that's all released into circulation and can only be found in circulation and that would be worth a premium to collectors. The fact that someone can find something valuable in change will get people searching through change and into coins.
And if the West Point mint wasn't churning out all of that bullion crap for collector/investors it could be used to take up some of the slack in pressing the billions of coins for circulation...giving each of the mints--yes, even SF, no need for proof sets made strictly for collectors--time to turn down the speed of the presses and properly strike up the coins used everyday.
Well, it seems to me that if the designs were beefed up then its likely that the proof designs would be beefed up as well which in turn would generate a big interest in the proof coins. I guess I just do not understand the comment "no need for proof sets made strictly for collectors"? Did anybody answer the question of "Where does all the circulating coinage go?" More and more folks are using debit/credit cards so I'm kinda wondering why the need for more and more coins to be minted? I mean, it's not like they wear out in a couple of years...........
And where would we get the money to replace the lost profit from all that "crap"? The stuff targeted at collectors pays its own way, and then some.
Would it generate collector interest in proof sets? Yes, probably (definitely?) so. I readily admit it. It's not the government's job to encourage a hobby for an extremely small portion of the population, though. It's the mints job to keep commerce supplied with what it needs to facilitate trade. As for where the circulating coins currently go they are laying in parking lots, sitting in junk drawers waiting to be cashed in. Most dollar coins are sitting around taking up space in bank vaults since the general populace refuses to have anything to do with them.