Do you think the San Francisco mint will ever produce circulation strikes again? I think that would be so cool. David
Not unless there is a problem with the Philly or Denver mint. With the desire to move into a cashless currency, we may only need 1 mint in the distant future.
Unlikely, IMO. For one thing, as ND said, society will be moving in a direction which de-emphasizes cash. (There will always be a need and a desire for cold hard cash, IMO, but overall, it will decline from today's levels.) Second of all, as the transportation infrastructure has become faster, cheaper and more efficient over the last 50 years, it's no longer cost-effective to keep additional mints open. It's cheaper to mint billions more coins in Denver, with an already-established mint, and ship them to the west coast than it is to reopen operations in San Francisco or any other location.
Maybe Philly and San Francisco could swap duties so Philly would once again make proofs...just a thought. I really don't know why "S" mint coins intrest me so much. I don't collect many proof coins except for the state quarters. David
I grew up in the San Francisco area during the period when the Mint was in the process of ceasing business strikes. For a while, we could find lots of S-mint cents and nickels (from 1968 onward) and, occasionally, S-mint nickels and wheaties before 1955. Even in that area, we saw mostly Denver coins because S-mint coins often had considerably lower mintages; I'd estimate that in the early 1970s when I was a wee lad we had maybe 75% Denver coinage and 25% San Francisco coinage. I never saw much but nickels and cents because the other S-mint coins were all 90% silver and had long since stopped circulating. They stopped making business strike nickels after 1971, but as far as I can remember (though I was only 6), few noticed for some reason. Cents were another matter. Every year, or so it seems, it was rumored that the Mint would stop making business strike cents. The last year of actual business strike coinage -- 1974 -- saw the biggest hype. Apparently, some people got wind that the mint there was going to stop making cents. This was probably around February or March of 1974, as I recall, so many thought that 1974-S cents would become the next (say) 1950-D nickel. People were hoarding 1974-S cents like nobody's business. As it turns out, the Mint made an ordinary amount of cents throughout 1974. And all that hoarding manifested itself into 1974-S cents being available in large quantities (relative to mintage) in MS-65 and above. In fact, in grades above 65, the '74-S is cheaper than many contemporary issues with 5-10 times the mintage -- largely because of this hoarding. And for many years after that -- even up to the time we moved away from the area last year -- I'd occasionally see '74-S cents in circulation, which were nothing special by that time, and I'd be carried back almost 30 years to remember the hype! Of course, as we now know, after '74 they did stop making business strikes. But then, we saw a lot of speculating on (proof-only) 1975-S cents the following year. For a few years they were way overpriced relative to other proofs (as I fear 1999-S silver proof sets may be), but have since come down to earth and you can get a nice one for under $5.
Philly still makes proofs on occasion. A few Silver Eagles, the various commem proofs are all minted in Philly.
