Q: What determines the mintage numbers?

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by JayF, Jun 21, 2018.

  1. JayF

    JayF Active Member

    Specifically for cents, why does the mint need to make billions of coins every year? Where do they all go? Even zincoins lasts more than a year. Is there really a demand (and from who) for that much? ~26billion cents in the last 3 years, why?

    If there's an old thread for this, please link me. I'm asking because I want copper back in Lincoln cents and was thinking maybe the mint can make just 1/2 of their normal year mintage and use the money to make copper cents instead of zinc. I read somewhere money is the reason they switched to zinc, cheaper to make zincoins.
     
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  3. Collecting Nut

    Collecting Nut Borderline Hoarder

    The coin counter on the Mint machines. :)
     
  4. JayF

    JayF Active Member

    lol
     
  5. CoinCorgi

    CoinCorgi Tell your dog I said hi!

    One word - demand. I'll let more eloquent people expound on that.
     
    mikenoodle, philologus_1 and JayF like this.
  6. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    In fact, we don't need cents at all. Do away with them. (Also several other threads.)
     
    JayF likes this.
  7. longshot

    longshot Enthusiast Supporter

    At least partly - people take 'em home and there they stay.
     
    JayF likes this.
  8. JayF

    JayF Active Member

    I thought about hoarding but with zinc's reputation as it is, I figured maybe people don't collect them anymore but I guess they do. I'm losing interest CRHing lincolns as I get 70 shields. At least with memorials there's different decades and they look better when they're almost uncirculated than a brand new shield coin.

    Edit : I meant 70% shields.
     
  9. baseball21

    baseball21 Well-Known Member

    Yes the demand is there. They get given out all the time as change but rarely spent and end up hoarded until someone has enough for coin star or just sitting in car cup holders or thrown in mall fountains ect.
     
    Kentucky likes this.
  10. Pickin and Grinin

    Pickin and Grinin Well-Known Member

    Strait up horded . Unless you have a pocket full.
     
    JayF likes this.
  11. GDJMSP

    GDJMSP Numismatist Moderator

    Q: What determines the mintage numbers?

    The answer to your question is pretty simple really. Every year the mint determines how many coins of each denomination they will need to mint the following year based on orders from the Federal Reserve banks. And the banks estimate their orders based on how many coins they currently have in stock, and how many they gave out the previous year(s).

    The reason there is always such a huge need for cents is that very few people spend them. They merely take them home and throw them into a bowl, bag, drawer, etc etc. And people don't do this to hoard the coins, some do it for various reasons but mainly I believe because they are lazy. It's too much trouble to sort, count, roll, or just plain not worth the effort to turn them in so they can be reused. So all those billions of cents they just sit someplace in people's homes.

    It's pretty much always been this way, so much so that it's become a habit for a great many people, and habits are hard to break.
     
    JayF likes this.
  12. JayF

    JayF Active Member

    I've forgotten what I did to my cents prior to starting collecting them last December. You're right, I hated having coins in my pocket, they make too much noise when I walk around so I dump them somewhere in my room or in my daughter's piggy bank and forget about them. I just realized that after reading your comment and makes perfect sense. Thanks!
     
  13. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    I spend them, and all my change ASAP. It's money and it's a waste when it just sits around in a jar. When I use the coin acceptor, or just hand the cashier some quarters, I am getting 100%. Why anyone would put coins in a Coin Star and give 11% of their money for the luxury of having paper money doesn't make sense, when you can go to your bank, and if you have an account, there's no fee, it alsi takes as much time to pop them in the coin acceptor at the self serve as it does standing at the Coin Star going through the menu, fiddling around with it.
    Whatever. There should be a limit as to how much such a "service" can charge in fees. Even 5% is a gouge.
     
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  14. JayF

    JayF Active Member

    I totally agree about Coin Star, the first time I used it...I had counted my daughters coins (from her piggy bank) and knew what the total amount was and didn't know that Coinstar charges 11%. She was counting on the money to buy some art supplies. I had to put in the difference as she wouldn't understand why the machine took some of her money.

    I was thinking the Mint should actually offer FREE coin machines at banks like maybe twice a year. Set up coin counting machines to encourage people to return their hoarded coins. I think people are lazy to roll them and I get it, it's a chore to roll them specially if you have 5 or 10 lbs of it.

    This may actually help coin collection as it may also motivate people to search these coins prior to the bi-annual free dump of coins :)
     
    DEA likes this.
  15. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    Well you have some 0% options. Amazon gift card, and some other things.
    But 90% of the people using it want cash.
    Rolling it is no good, because they are always short, so the bank has to unroll them and dump them into a coin counter anyway, and then rip you off on what you know the amount is.
    "There was $140 there I counted it twice."
    "We are crediting your account $125."
    And there's nothing you can do.
    When I worked retail every CWR of pennies had about 48 in there with a couple Canadians. I would get the wheaties at face, but I would make up the difference in all of the short rolls.
    Oooh John Dillenger is here with his 48 cent penny rolls.
     
  16. desertgem

    desertgem Senior Errer Collecktor

    I don't think they can as their responsibility ends with delivery to Federal banking ( except for mint sets, etc.) which sells them to distributors like Guardia who sells them to banks who hand them out to customers, who puts them back into counting machines ( usually) fee based, picked up by distributors who culls out the unusable to return to gov. for replacement and rolls and resells the rest back to the bank again , follow the money, 5-10% of all coinage value per trip.
     
  17. BooksB4Coins

    BooksB4Coins Newbieus Sempiterna

    So they'd spend even more per cent to produce less. Sounds perfectly government-like to me, but simply isn't viable and is self-defeating to boot.
     
  18. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    If money is the reason they switched to zinc, they can just stop making them altogether. And save even more. There's close to a trillion cents in circulation.
    Yes the zincs have a shorter shelf life but there's plenty of coppers left and when we start running out everything can be rounded off to the nearest .05 or .10.
    By that time 99% of payments will be electronic anyway.
     
  19. baseball21

    baseball21 Well-Known Member

    Most banks have gotten rid of the self serve coin counters.

    Coin star has no fee if you use the gift card option. It’s not hard to find one you know you would use
     
  20. GDJMSP

    GDJMSP Numismatist Moderator

    Actually they can't just stop making them. The mint is required by law to mint the cents, each and every year. They, the mint, has no say in the matter whatsoever. Doing away with the 1 cent coin would require an act of Congress, they would literally have to pass a law that tells the mint not to mint them anymore.

    And the only reason that Congress cannot pass such a law, and I say cannot because they have tried to many, many times, is because the American people have a completely irrational and unfounded fear of rounding. Otherwise it would have been done decades ago.
     
  21. Burton Strauss III

    Burton Strauss III Brother can you spare a trime? Supporter


    It is not irrational, it is MATH (a four letter word).

    I believe fully 60% of the population would have to carry a rounding table.
     
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