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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;fatima, post: 1357889, member: 22143&quot;]This is speculation on my part given what I know about manufacturing processes and observations of the US Mint, but I believe these silver proof and silver quarter proof sets are &quot;build to plan&quot; and not &quot;build to order&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Build to plan&quot; means they book a manufacturing plan with the idea they plan to sell X number of units.&nbsp; The manufacturing floor orders the raw material, they will run these in batches, and send them to the warehouse where they will wait to fill orders that have not come in yet.&nbsp;&nbsp; Because they will want to reduce costs, they will use what is called &quot;just in time&quot; manufacturing where the raw materials all show up at the right moment to used on the manufacturing line.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>So they will spend several weeks running these coins (or how long it takes) then tear down the machinery so something else can be produced.&nbsp; This is where the primary cost savings comes from. i.e. They can reuse floor space.&nbsp;&nbsp; The trick is that you have to be very good about predicting orders.&nbsp; The Mint may schedule several manufacturing cycles for a particular set through the year, but it&#039;s my guess, they can&#039;t simply crank up the machines in an arbitrary manner outside the scheduled times.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>All the coins get sent to the warehouse/fulfillment.&nbsp; (I believe one is in Kentucky)&nbsp;&nbsp; The law does not prevent, in general, the Mint from selling coins that were issued in the previous year in the current year.&nbsp; Some coins do have a specific restriction but not the proof sets as far as I can tell.&nbsp;&nbsp; Since the quantities the Mint has produced is a confidential matter, there really is no way to tell how many coins are out there until after the Mint has withdrawn the sets from market.&nbsp; There is no way to tell what the end date will be until the Mint announces it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Given that the mint is still selling these sets, there is no way to predict if there are new key dates or not.&nbsp;&nbsp; If silver rises back to $40-$50/ounce, the mint may not change the price on the 2011 sets so that the warehouse gets cleared out quickly.&nbsp; This happened several times with the 2009, 2010, &amp; 2011 quarter sets.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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