In looking around for an exact mintage for the 1999-P Susan B. Anthony proof dollar, all I ever see is an estimate of "about 750,000". I was wondering why the Mint has never released an exact mintage on this coin. I guess it brings to mind a more general question, i.e., my feeling that the Mint is a lot less faithful than they used to be about reporting mintages precisely (I'm a collector for 40+ years). Is this just my wrong-headed perception, or has something changed that keeps the Mint from being able to be exact?
There's no secret. They have not released the mintage because they simply didn't know - until very recently anyway. Up until a month or two ago you could still buy the 1999 SBA Proof directly from the mint's site. So there was no way to determine the mintage until the coin was sold out or sales were stopped and remaining coins were destroyed. I suspect that now that the coin has finally sold out the mint will be releasing the final mintage later this year. But being a collector for as long as you have been, you should also be aware that the mint has never, in their history, been very forthcoming about releasing information. They typically only release what they are required to release by law. There have even been formal request made under the Freedom of Information Act that have been denied.
The 99-S proof SBA became officially sold out about two years ago after almost four years of trying to sell 750,000 not two months. In the 80's the mint was much more forthcoming on mintages and published them every month. Then sometime in the late 90's they installed a bunch of new computer controled equipment to keep accurate up to the minute mintage counts. Immediately the monthly reports ceased and briefly became quarterly reports and after just a couple the reports ceased completely. Eventually Coin World had to file repeated FOIA requests to force the mint to release mintage figures. In the past few years they have been a little better about releasing mintage information but it still isn't easy to get and I think it is probably somewhat questionable. I suspect that their expensive "state of the art" computer controled inventory controls aren't working and they have no really good idea how many coins they are producing. Especially since they stopped counting the coins into small bags and began shipping them in tubs, and finally ballistic bags filled by weight instead of count. You would think though that they would have better figures for proofs and Commems though, but there are issues from the 1970's that are still listed as approximate.
You might be right conder, you usually are, but I seem to recall reading about it just a couple of months ago. I'll see if I can find it.
