You're wrong!! As a retired IT guy, I say that an excellent IT manager can prevent these things from happening. Other web sites with extremely high traffic don't have this problem.
You just proved the point. “Other websites with extremely high traffic….”. The mints website does not have extremely high traffic ever except a couple of hours a year.
I signed in about 2:13P because my dog had to go to the Vet. But I was pleasantly surprised. I got in immediately and went directly to the Payment site and then the confirmation site. All within 5 minutes. I'm not sure what happened, but it was a nice way to buy at the Mint.
I got a set in my cart on the second try, then spent 45 minutes trying to get through check out. Finally got through checkout and spent 25 minutes awaiting confirmation. Got several messages indicating the server had crashed, but apparently that didn't eliminate what was in my cart. Perseverance finally paid off. Total time about 1:15.
Do I ever LIKE that, esp the reverse...best eagle rendering since the Walking Liberty reverse and maybe the 07-33 dbl eagles. Wish they'd do a silver version...50c or $1
And those sites have extremely high traffic all the time, so they have paid for the infrastructure to handle it. You don't pay for infrastructure like that if it is just going to sit idle 99% of the time. You would normally pay for the site to be able to handle several times your average load. Then when it get hit with say 1000 times the average load you get what is happening with the mint site. There are no hackers in the US??? And the Mint does sell outside the US. So they wouldn't block all non-US IP.
One thing to also mention is that if the mints site worked like Amazon or Walmart and could handle the traffic perfectly products like these would be sold out in SECONDS.
Man, that felt they come in sure does shed, doesn't it? They look great, congratulations! Can't wait to get mine... still processing.