Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="Conder101, post: 111839, member: 66"]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.[/QUOTE]