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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 358238, member: 11668&quot;]It&#039;s a good bit more complex than that....</p><p><br /></p><p>In the earliest years of the Mint, they usually punched the current year into the dies when they were made, but a die might well be used as long as several years later, leading to backdated coins.&nbsp; Later on, the regular-production coins were dated with the year of minting, but as you noted, a lot of under-the-table production of backdated coins went on, so that the Mint workers could sell them to collectors at a profit.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sometime in the mid-1800&#039;s (I forget the date), Congress finally passed a law prohibiting the Mint from making any backdated coins.&nbsp; Since the law didn&#039;t say anything about dating coins *ahead*, it eventually became traditional for the Mint to switch to the new year&#039;s date in mid-late December, rather than waiting for January 1 (that way, if they overestimated how many dies they&#039;d need to finish off the old year&#039;s coinage, they&#039;d have a couple weeks to use up the extras before December 31, after which date they couldn&#039;t legally be used).&nbsp; It&#039;s not a matter of issue dates, though; often some of the old-year coins remain to be paid out in the new year, and on rarer occasions the first of the new-year coins are issued while it&#039;s still December.</p><p><br /></p><p>A few exceptions to the no-backdating rule have been made since then by direct order of Congress, though.&nbsp; The 1964-1967 mess was one of those, but several of the commemorative coins in the &#039;30s were also backdated, and so was at least one modern commem (the 1993 Jefferson dollar, minted 1994).&nbsp; In each case, Congress specifically mandated what date the Mint had to put on the coins; the Mint doesn&#039;t have authority to backdate any coins of its own volition.</p><p><br /></p><p>But in any case, &quot;dated the year they&#039;re minted&quot; is a good first approximation of the situation with coins--as opposed to currency, *most* of which ends up being backdated a year or two due to the series-dating method the BEP uses.&nbsp; I think that was the only point Snopes was trying to make....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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