Whats up with new pennies?

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If you read the 2011 Annuam Mint Report you will find in there that they say they were able to increase die life by something like 70%. Now you know how they did it. Even lower relief and less detail.

The San Francisco Mint isn't open to the public. From the Mint web site

The only time I know of that the San Francisco mint has been open to the public since it reopened in 1968 was when they had the first strike ceremony for the ASE there in 1986.

 

im not sure,is the old s.f. mint open for tours ???

 

Yes it is run by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. They are having a History Expo there on March 3rd and 4th, and they do have tours of the mint itself. Possibly that is what he went to.

 

Oh yes, sorry for not making that clear. The actual mint facility is hands off, never open to the public.

 

No body like the spaghetti hair so in 2009 they went back to the more classic design.

 

...and any trace of artistry. If you want to see what I believe the greatest rendition of old Abe, look at a 1960 cent in BU. That is so much more attractive than today its not funny. I find this shallow design to be one of the major contributors to horrible looking modern commemoratives. Even if they design something that looks nice, (say the 88 gold $5), they ruin it by striking low relief garbage.

I find it a case where accountants can ruin a company. Its OT but let me tell you a story. In the 50's coffee in the US tasted good. Then some accountants found some cheap robusta beans and started blending them in to improve profitability. Then they started adding in a few more and a few more every year. By the 70's our coffee tasted horrible and sales were in the dumps. Overall profits were down for everyone since the general public started to assume all coffee tasted bad. It wasn't until Starbucks and similar stores started selling good coffee again that coffee profits went back up.

To me, the US mint is now where coffee companies were in the 70's. Look at the sales of commemoratives. Either someone will wake up and realize they need to make beautiful coins like in the past, or they will simply destroy the desire for coins from collectors with their horrible, cheap offerings.

 

As the old saying goes, they don't make things like they used to. I have seen cents from the 80s that have an extreme amount of detail on the beard. Anyone think the reverse of the new cent looks weak and lazy?