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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 210155, member: 66&quot;]Nope, the law authorizes their production, it does NOT mandate it.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Why do they keep minting them?&nbsp; Because it is VERY profitable to sell them to collectors.&nbsp; As mentioned it costs about 17 cents each to make them.&nbsp; Vipergts2 shows figures that account for 4,020,500 coins plus there will be about another 2 million not included in those figures from the coins in the mint sets so that makes 6,020,500.&nbsp; That is almost 2 million dollars in profit just from the senoirage alone.&nbsp; Add in the profit from the premium over face that they sell them for and you are close to three million dollars.&nbsp; Now I admit out of a three trillion dollar budget it isn&#039;t much, but three million profit is three million profit.</p><p><br /></p><p>Why are the 2006 halves still on sale?&nbsp; Because the 2007&#039;s aren&#039;t on sale yet.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Why are the 2001&#039;s still on sale?&nbsp; Well in 2001 the mint believed the Fed would still be ordering half dollars for circulation just like they did every year, so they went ahead and produced some 40 million coins in anticipation of their orders.&nbsp; (A reasonable amount compared to the numbers ordered each year for the past decade.)&nbsp; But the Fed decided that they had plenty of half dollars in storage and they didn&#039;t need to order any.&nbsp; This left the mint holding the bag.&nbsp; They had already counted the 15 million dollars in seniorage profits into the government accounts.&nbsp; If they melted the coins down they would have to take the money back from the government coffers.&nbsp; So instead they just stored the coins against any future request from the Fed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then in 2000 or 2001 the mint decided to sell the sac dollars directly to collectors and it went well.&nbsp; After a year or two though collectors who were having problems fnding 2001 half dollars were keept asking if they could buy them from the mint.&nbsp; Finally in 2002 the mint decided to start selling half dollars directly to the collectors as well.&nbsp; That year they started selling both 2002 halves, which they made in small amounts just to cover the collector sales, and the 2001&#039;s which they took from the stockpile.&nbsp; Each year they stopped selling the previous years halves becuse they didn&#039;t have a stockpile of them and by law they couldn&#039;t strike more.&nbsp; But they could keep selling the 2001&#039;s because they still have a ton of them on hand.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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