Should the US Mint follow the USPS lead???

Yep, different mind set back then, not profit motivated. Same thing happened with the 1974-s cent. When a limited production caused speculation, the mint made a full run of the cent. The director of the mint, Mary Brooks, stated she was appalled at the speculation, so would kill it by making a full run.

 

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The intent of this program was not to create a rarity. BUT the end result of the 100,000 limit combined with the 5 per household ordering limit combined with the outdated web processing is what created that rarity. Limiting the sets to 100,000 was a bit short sighted of the Mint based upon the typical resale value of the 20th Anniversary Sets which had a 250,000 mintage limit but I do not believe that they did it intentionally.

As a result, subsequent programs were modified to minimize these impacts such as raising production limits to however many were ordered, raising household limits OR lower limits to 1 per household for 30 days.

The net result addressed this unintentional embarrassment for the US Mint in that resale values for subsequent sets have not reached anywhere near those of the 25th Anniversary Sets.

In short, they looked PR Disaster that the 25th Ann Sets produced and adjusted their methodology for acquiring subsequent sets.

 

They got a lot of hate mail over that one and, have since, mended their ways by establishing house hold limits with a larger ordering time window. Also, with the subsequent issues, they more or less minted the coins/sets to the demand of the public. What ever the public ordered over a specific time frame (month) was honored. After the time limit the coin/set was no longer available.

 

Yeah, I understand they have changed their ways since 2011. I'd still say they intended to create a rarity with only a 100,000 minted, knowing the sales of the 2006 set. I will agree, on top of a mintage too low, they handled it in their typical bumbling way.