Yesterday I took the public tour of the Denver Mint. One of the interesting tidbits I picked up on this tour was the face value and weight of the coins held by the Kevlar bags used by the Mint to ship coins. Denomination / Face Value / Total Weight 1 Cent / $4,000 / 2606 lbs 5 Cent / $12,000 / 2627 lbs 10 Cent / $50,000 / 2502 lbs 25 Cent / $50,000 / 2508 lbs 50 Cent / $50,000 / 2473 lbs 1 Dollar / $140,000 / 2464 lbs Note: The Half Dollar is no longer made for circulation. I assume the figures given are for the Kevlar bags when the Half Dollar was struck and shipped out for circulation.
Dimes, quarters, halves and the old cupro-nickel clad Ike dollar were struck on the basis of $20 per pound. Thus $50,000 equals 2500 pounds net weight. So I don't understand how they could get that weight for halves, or even why dimes and quarters were so different.
The above weights given by the Mint are very close for the Dimes and Quarters ($50k in Dimes weighs 0.24% less than $50k in Quarters). The weight given for $50k in Half Dollars is 1.16% less than $50k in Quarters. I can't explain the discrepancy. If you check your Red Book you will that - as you would expect - a Half Dollar is twice the weight of a Quarter and 5X the weight of a Dime. So the same dollar amount of Dimes, Quarters and Halves should weigh about the same. The weights in the Red Book are given to the nearest 0.01 gram. Perhaps a rounding error would explain the slight discrepancy when you weigh over a ton of coins. I don't know.
Half Dollars still need to be shipped to the rollers and baggers for packaging to sell to us goofies!
