RIP...US Mint

Is anybody else a little sick of having our entire coinage system held hostage by one or two narrow industry lobbies? Just how much Black Kow does the rest of the country have to tolerate for the sake of a couple of niche manufacturers?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I'm not. The bigger the lowest denomination is the easier it will be for retailers to raise prices and people not complain. Credit cards give rewards anyway, if there isn't a cash discount it's cheaper to use a credit card and pay off the bill every month

 

I was going to say something about lobbies in general but I figure that'll start something. Just read my mind.

 

I like your mind, santinidollar!

 

And a whole lot cheaper to repair then a replacement reader for the bills. I have heard around $1,500.00 or so for a new reader? All it takes is a pen knife to render one useless with a bad scratch trying to get a stuck bill out.

 

Around here it's a gamble on whether or not any vending machines even work for change or dollars. Personally I'd like to see coins for $2, $5 and $10 be introduced.

 

$2.50, 5, 10, and 20. It worked before, it can work again.

 

There wasn't really any other choice back then.

 

It could work again though imo. Heck the mint could even use a silver alloy to make the $10 and $20 coins. I'm sure that would lead to some silver stacking doom scenarios prepper's heads exploding though it the mint went ahead and de-debased circulating coinage.

 

Not really to be honest. Credit cards give rewards, almost no where gives a cash discount and certainly not in cities where the bulk of transactions happen. Its not the denominations that largely eliminated cash, its the easy of other methods and their rewards.

 

Any new coins issued in anything but clad junk will be hoarded.

 

Assuming the face value greatly exceeded the intrinsic value, why? A $10/20 'silver' coin with a few token dollars in silver for intrinsic value would likely circulate at face value. There would be no incentive to hoarding them barring any massive increase in silver price. I mean if the mint decided to mint a coin with the exact dimensions of the current ASE but give it a $100 face value who would hoard them away for $100 a pop for the $17 in silver value.

 

Don't forget their artist outreach program or whatever they called it. So far all but one of the artists that have been selected over the years have had their primary training in either computer graphics, or other two dimensional art forms. Only one has been primarily a sculptor.

 

Taking the broadest view, I guess @baseball21 and I are in agreement that cash is on its way out. It's just so convenient to swipe or wave something you've always got with you, instead of worrying about getting cash, swapping change, and so on. In the end, in general, convenience trumps any other concerns.

I think going back to PMs in coins is a complete non-starter, but @Blissskr's point about a $100 coin with $17 "intrinsic" value is interesting -- because that's not far off from the current $14 "intrinsic" value of $100 worth of dimes, quarters, and half dollars. To put it another way, if general inflation devalues the dollar by more than seven-fold, all our circulating coins (except those beloved SBAs/Sacs/Presidential dollar coins) will be worth more than face value.

 

I generally buy the same products every year. I don't use the subscriptions as I like to group annual sets/commemoratives and only pay one shipping charge. I agree that the Mint has too many products out there. I don't think that affects the overall quality of the designs or coins. They would be same, mostly uninspired, designs either way. I just ignore the stuff I don't want.

 

This thread made me curious to look back at some of the history of commemoratives from the mint. I opened my Mega Red here to page 1148. And I quote: "No commemorative coins were made by the U.S. mint from 1955 through 1981. As the years went by, the numismatic community missed having new commemoratives to collect, and many endorsements for events and subjects worthy of the honor were made through letters to congressmen and other officials....."

Its funny how the pendulum swings!

My thoughts on it are two fold. One, the mint has seemingly turned into another runaway govt agency. At least it's one that can turn a profit, but they have turned it into a business and a place of employment that provides more than what the market demands. For the most part they've totally lost touch with collectors and throw things against the wall now to see what sticks.
I don't know how many people are involved at putting all this stuff out but nobody earning a paycheck is going to voluntarily speak up and say, "We don't really need to do this." In fact, it's more likely that they will try to expand and hire more people to do more that we don't need.

My second thought ties into the first. The commemorative program should be more reserved. If it was, it would be held in higher esteem. I can only speak for myself. We all have varied interests that they may grab our attention with. In my view, the US Mint, representing the government of the United State of America, does better using the commemorative program to commemorate things that have to do with the government, including itself. The further they stray from this, the less interested I become. I was a fan of the 2008 Bald Eagle series. They're a national symbol, and the proceeds went to them. Occasionally something like that works. March of Dimes 75th anniversary I liked. I liked the design, the rev. proof dime, and the fact that it was a simple affordable set. I like when they commemorate mint events and coinage since that's what they're in the business of doing.

The subject matter gets too diluted, too far reaching. In 1997 they introduced a Franklin D. Roosevelt $5 gold out of the blue, not commemorating any anniversary. It made no sense. In 1999 GW $5 Bi-centennial. Ok, now we make sense again. Then they decide to commemorate the US Marshalls Service on the 225th anniversary. .....Ok They're really nice coins but it just seems like a forced issue to come out with at that time. Why then? The Olympics doesn't make for a good, lasting, collectible subject matter. It's good for that year and that's about it. It becomes insignificant, old news, too quickly. I'd be ok if the commem program skipped a few years like the old days but it apparently can't work that way anymore. They're afraid of losing somebody if they don't put out so many offerings every month. "The customers might not come back. "
Just my .02 cents fwiw.

 

@Vess1 Well thought out and a nice post. Tom

 

For the commemoratives subject matter and more important design selections have been the biggest killers of the series in terms of long term value. There is a winner every now and then, but it's hard to keep people motivated to buy them right away when most of the time if you just wait you can pick them up cheaper later on. A fantastic design can save a sub-par subject matter or one that people aren't overly excited about, but very rarely does the subject matter save mediocre at best designs. Throw in some uninspiring subject matters with poor designs and it's easy to see how set collectors can end up switching to just getting the ones they want as a complete set doesn't seem as important anymore.

 

I believe that one of the possible avenues missing in commemoratives are the circulating variety. It would be nice if all of the authorized mintage of a particular commemorative coin is struck and any leftovers sold in rolls, regardless of the coin being minted in copper-nickel clad, silver or gold, although a gold coin roll would be mighty expensive.

Every once in awhile, one of our members has found a 1986 Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty half dollar in a roll of halves. Since we already have rolls of Mint-supplied Kennedy half dollars, (S-mintmarked halves would be nice, too) why can't we have the commemoratives in rolls, too?