SF mint closed up operations for 13 years from 1955 till 1968. What did they do in that period? What were the reasons of closing it for that period? I read somewhere that this information is classified till 2200. Is it true? Any ideas what was happening at this place during those 13 years? Thank you
It was a federal assay office. They eventually made the original building a museum until it was closed due to low attendance.
They didn't cease operations for quite that long. The San Francisco mint began striking coins again on Sept. 1, 1965. The first coins struck were cents, but they were struck without a mint mark. Prior to that San Francisco had also been supplying planchets to the Denver mint for a while. This was because of the coin shortage during that period. This continued until '68 when they began minting coins with mint marks again. A lot of folks aren't really aware of it but there were times when even the West Point mint would produce cents without a mint mark. They closed it because there were enough coins being produced by Philly & Denver at the time. If you look back at years before that it was not all that unusual for one of the mints to produce much fewer coins, and in some years no coins at all of given denominations. This happened rather often at SF. Once the Denver mint was up and running SF was basically considered a supplemental mint, one that just took up the slack. That's why their mintage numbers were always so low. First I ever heard of it, sounds like a myth to me.
