I have a few questions that have gone a long time unanswered; Why were no coins with mintmarks or proofs made from 1965-67? When did they start making proof coins? Why did they stop making mirror-finish proofs and replace them with matte proofs? Why did they stop making proofs in Philadelphia? Why did they change the sizes of all silver coins multiple times in the early 1800s? Why did they stop making gold circulation coins in 1933 (and silver in 1964/1970)? Why did they stop making large cents & half cents?
I will try on a few: Coins were not made with mintmarks or proofs made due to coinage shortage. This also is an answer to why they stopped putting silver in coins, it got too expensive. The silver kept going up in dollar terms, and evetually becomes worth more than the coin. The public started hoarding coins due to this change, but the politicians blamed coin collectors so stopped putting mint marks on coins believing it would help. THey stopped making proof sets to free up press time to make coins for the public. Proofs were made as special coins from about the first time the mint opened. They were sold sporadically for years, and made for special pieces for foreign nations. About 1858 they become commonly available to coin collectors, and have been made since. Mirror was not done intentionally until 1968. Before that other finishes were used. Coins in the 1800's were changed to mirror market prices of silver. Coins used to be thought of as convenient silver, and had to contain a certain dollar value of silver in them. If silver went up, they had to reduce the coin weight, if it went down, they had to enlarge them. The two major changes, 1853 and 1873, reflect both the CA gold rush and the Comstock load of silver. Lots of interesting history regarding these changes. Gold was pulled in 1933 due to FDR banning use and owning gold coins, and he impounded them and melted them down. This is where the gold in Ft Knox comes from. Again, a lot of interesting reading. Half cents weren't a convenient denomination, really only circulating in the East. The large cents were too big for convenience as well. Conveniently, a nickel mine owner convinced Congress a copper/nickel coin in a smaller size would be preferable, so they changed to that alloy in 1857. A few years later they dropped the nickel in the cent, so the same owner convinced Congress to make nickel 3 cent and later 5 cent pieces. He must have had some good friends, huh? Hope that helped a little. Chris
"Why did they stop making mirror-finish proofs and replace them with matte proofs? My only half sarcastic opinion is because when the mint speeds up the presses its too difficult to get a perfect strike necessary for a proof quality coin. Plus that takes multiple strikes and perfect dies that wear out quickly, very time consuming in a rush production environment. However a perfect strike is not necessary if you are going to sandblast the damn thing anyway. Plus its new and different looking and dumb collectors will pay more because its 'special'. For most questions just type it in the search box at the top of the forum page or in the search box at the top of your web browser. Im glad most folks dont make the effort and instead ask as you did. It makes for fun and interesting threads sometimes.
There was a major coin shortage in the country in the early 60's. The government blamed coin collectors and the idea was that if there were no mintmarks we would be less likely to hoard the coins. So legislation was passed to remove the mintmarks for a period of five years. (They restored the mintmarks after only three years though.) The proofs and mint sets were also a casualty of the coin shortage with both being discontinued and replaced with a the Special Mint Set whose coins were kind of "halfway" between business strikes and proofs. I'm going to keep this answer with US coins. With Non-US the answers are different. There is some debate about that. The first generally accepted proofs are some one cent pieces from 1817. There are some earlier coins which appear to have possibly been made as special presentation pieces. It is not unusual for these early coins to not have an appearance that we would associate with proof coins today. They were not always fully struck, sometimes they were not made with new dies. Although the dies were polished they may or may not have mirrored surfaces. Before 1858 if you wanted proof coins you kind of had to know someone in order to get them. Proof coins were not sold to the general public until 1858. I really don't know. My guess would be it was an influence from the outside artists that were designing so many of the coins in the 1907 to 1921 period. Many of these artists had received much of their training in Europe, and to a large part they were all closely tied together by working with each other and many of them worked under or had indirect ties to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. I would look at European proofs and medals of the late 19th century to see what their finishes were like because there is a good chance that was where the influence would have come from. San Francisco had been pressed back into service after being mothballed to help with the coin shortage of the 1960's. After the shortage was over the Philadelphia mint and Denver could once again probably handle the load. But it was more likely they could if they were not also having to restart the collectors coins program. So the Proof coinage was moved from Philadelphia where they needed to make coins, to San Francisco which was no longer needed for coins except cents but would otherwise once again be mothballed. This turned out to be a good thing because later it was once again pressed into service for striking coins (cents and quarters with no mintmark) Typically it was because of changes in the relative values between gold and silver. If gold was common silver was relatively worth more and the silver in the coins were was worth more than the face value and the coins would not circulate. So the weight and/or size would be reduced. In 1873 so much silver had been coming out of western mines that silver was falling in value and theweight of the coins was increased. OK this is my personal opinion on the gold. The country was in the Great Depression and the government was going to be spending a ton of money to try and stimulate the economy. But where would this money come from? Yes, they could do some borrowing, but this was still the era when it was believed that money needed to have some kind of backing. So they needed more gold. By calling in the gold they could get it for a simple exchange of paper. No net cost. Then once they had it they raised the official value. This would allow them to issue almost twice as much money for the same amount of gold. They also adopted a fractional reserve backing plan. Now instead of having to have a dollars worth of gold for each dollar in new money, they only needed 25 cents worth of gold. This resulted in an eightfold increase in the amount of money they could issue. As for the silver coins, the market value of silver had been rising and in 1963 it passed to point where the metal in the coins was worth more than the face value ($1.2929 per oz) Now they could have just reduced the weight of the coins but that would just be a stop gap and there did not appear to be any reason that the silver price was going to stop rising. That would mean continuing to reduce the weight again and again. Instead they threw in the towel and just removed the silver completely. Silver was left in the half dollar at a reduced amount as a sop to the silver producing states in order to get their votes in congress to approve the clad coinage. Same as with the silver in 1964. Copper had risen to the point where they were worth more as metal than as money. The government was losing money on every coin they made. Back then they saw that happening and they changed the size and alloy to restore a health seigniorage profit. Today we just continue making more of the coins and losing money on them year after year. So far for at least six years.
