Of course, if I am asking such a question, there must be a nitpick in there somewhere.

Since 1965 the U.S. Mint has made dimes and quarters of a copper-nickel clad composition. The half dollar turned to copper-nickel clad in 1971 after being a silver clad alloy 1965-1970.

After nearly 50 years, collectors simply say clad and we know what we mean.

However, copper-nickel clad is not the only current clad composition for U.S. coins.

The Native American and Presidential dollars also have a clad alloy, though it is much better hidden  than the copper-nickel clad.

The dollar coins have a copper core. On the surface is an alloy of 77 percent copper, 12 percent zinc and 7 percent.

It has a nice golden color. It is also perfectly correct to call it a clad coin. But to do so would cause no end of confusion. That’s why the “golden dollar” reference is the easiest way to refer to it.

Clad might be a correct name for the dollar composition, but to use it for the dollar is simply to invite blank stares.

The set is comprised of a proof Infantry silver dollar that is housed in a custom folder with a replica dog tag on a miniature chain. The Mint established a 100 set household order limit for the set. With a maximum available of 50,000, there are 33,778 left. Orders for the individual proof and uncirculated coins totaled 26,262 and 12,191, respectively. These numbers are in the box below.

Three Countries, One Price Guide!

Overall, only 350,000 of the silver dollars will be produced in whatever combination of proof, uncirculateds and sets the public orders.

One-ounce silver bullion American Eagles passed the 7-million mark for 2012, but the February monthly portion of that total has not been growing very fast. Fewer than 1 million coins were sold in the first three weeks of the month.

If you want 2011 Kennedy half dollars, only the two-roll set remains for you to purchase. The bag is now marked with an asterisk to indicate it is sold out.

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A good screw press in the early 19th century had the ability to generate 15 to 20 tons of pressure per strike and could produce about 30 coins per minute. Not bad for a machine that had to be operated by hand.

The public can see a smaller version of such a screw press in action monthly at the American Numismatic Association’s Edward C. Rochette Money Museum. Museum staffers will be on hand from noon to 4 p.m. on the third Saturday of each month to demonstrate the minting process and produce commemorative coins for museum visitors to take home. The third Saturday of every month is Free Saturday at the museum, where all exhibits are open to the public free of charge.

“The Mini-Mint is a wonderful educational opportunity to see exactly how coins were minted before the steam-powered press came along,” said Doug Mudd, curator at the Money Museum. “Through this demonstration, we can teach patrons all about the basics of coin minting and offer some great insight into the way coins are still minted today.”

This compilation of intriguing tales is based some on fact and some on fiction, but either way the stories make for interesting reading.

During these demonstrations, visitors will learn about the different parts of the screw press, including:

• The rolling mill, which is used to thin the metal used for the Money Museum’s commemorative coins down to the correct thickness.

• The blanking press, which is used to create blanks, or round pieces of metal that will eventually become the coin.
• The Castaing machine, also called an edging mill, which is used to turn the blanks into planchets. This is done by first “upsetting” the blank, or squeezing it so that the metal rises around the rim. The second function is to impress the edge design on the outer rim of the coin.
• The striking press, which is the machine used to strike the design of the coin onto the planchet and complete the minting process.

A video demonstration of the Mini-Mint is available on the ANA’s channel at YouTube.com.

High-resolution photos of the commemorative coins that museum staffers will be minting for museum patrons are available via email. Contact Jake Sherlock at (719) 482-9872 or PR@money.org.

The Money Museum and Mini-Mint are also available for tour groups. To book a tour, contact Donna Nunez at (719) 482-9834 or nunez@money.org.

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As much as I dislike jumping on the bandwagon of debate on the issue of what to do about the production of U.S. one cent coins I just couldn’t resist at least throwing in my two cents worth! Or perhaps I should have said my 2.41 cents worth?

During the period from year 2000 through the year 2010 the U.S. mint produced approximately 80.396 billion U.S. cents for a population that currently has reached approximately .3087 billion people (both figures are rounded off to make the numbers manageable for comparison). This to me indicates that everyone living in the U.S. over the last 10 years has had approximately 261 cents for their use. This of course does not include all of the U.S. cents produced in all previous years.

During a typical week I tend to have or use very few of my cents. In fact many of those who know me well might say that I typically have no cents (or perhaps they mean “no sense”?). The reason I rarely have any is because in the time honored tradition of most adult males I put them on the dresser each night when I empty my pockets. I typically only put one or two back in my pocket in the morning because I usually purchase two cups of coffee during the day and each of those costs me $1.56, so the two cents come in handy and also help to eliminate me receiving four cents in change each time (that would again end up on my dresser at night). I hope you can see where this is going.

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At the end of each week I have a small pile of cents and other change that then is put into an old brass champagne bucket. Then about every six months or so I will sort through and separate the coins into sandwich bags and perhaps into rolls that I take to the bank. But usually not the cents, just because there are so many of them and they are frankly not worth the effort and time it takes to roll them. So the cents are then transferred to one of many old canvas coinage bags and then they sit in my storage room.

At approximately 5,000+ cents per bag I would estimate that I have at least 25,000 cents in the basement, apparently doing nothing except perhaps to keep the basement floor from floating upwards. I would imagine that there are hoards of cents like this all over the country.

At one point, a friend of mine who had been keeping his cents and rolling them, and putting them on a ledge in his basement (all around his basement) decided to count them. After doing so he called me to help him haul all of them out of his basement to take them to his credit union to pay off his mortgage on his home. He had over $6,000 worth of U.S. cents, or 600,000 of them (which of course was more than his share of 261 cents mentioned in the second paragraph of this tale.

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So, what might we do with all of these cents that we all have tucked away in boxes, bottles, bags, drawers and socks? One answer seems quite simple to me. If the government is spending 2.41 cents to make each of them then it seems that they are each worth at least 2.41 cents. If we look at them as simply a commodity that could be bought, sold or traded then we could make a market in cents. If we could do that then the government could actually repurchase the cents that are already in existence, if they paid us more than face value for them. And the government could actually save or make money on the deal.

Here is how it might work:

The government, through the banking system and the Federal Reserve System could advertise that for each dollar’s worth of cents turned in to the bank a person would receive a non-taxable payment or credit to the depositor’s account in the amount of $1.50. So, for 100 cents you would receive $1.50. For $10 you would receive $15. And of course for $100 in cents you would receive $150.

A 50 percent return on your money is huge and actually worth the effort of counting and rolling them. My buddy with $6,000 worth of U.S, cents would have received $9,000 dollars!

The U.S. Mint would save 91 cents over production costs ($2.41 production cost minus $1.50 redemption paid equals $.91) for every 100 cents turned in. It would also save on distribution because the cents would be coming in relatively evenly to the banks based on the local population distribution. This means that the locations who needed more U.S. cents would receive more because the population base would be more.

To put this into real perspective let us look at an average of 261 cents per person (just for the last 10 years of production) for each of 308,745,538 people in the United States. If they all turned in only 200 cents (or $2 each), that equates to approximately $617,491,076.00 (representing approximately 61.7 billion cents turned in or redeemed). Even if the system paid out a 50 percent premium over face value, to get back all of those cents, the government would still save $ .91 cents over production costs for each dollars worth of cents turned in. That in turn means that instead of the government producing another $617,491,076.00 face value of new U.S. cents at a cost of approximately $1,488,153,300 (at 2.41 cents for each cent), it would only cost them approximately $926,236,000 (paying only 1.5 cents each for them). That would represent an approximate savings to the government (and the taxpayers I might add) of a grand total of $561,916,000.00 (at $ .91 cents per dollar). Oh, and by the way, I would guess that those costs will be going up more and more as time goes by!

And that my friends is a method by which we as a country can do several positive things all at the same time.

We could:

1. Reduce the costs of government by over a half a billion dollars.
2. Reward the taxpayers with a 50 percent profit when they turn back their cents.
3. Stimulate the economy to the tune of over $926 million dollars (people don’t spend cents but they would certainly spend the dollars they received).
4. Save the basements of the country from sinking under the weight of all those cents while at the same time giving a lot of good exercise to those who, like my buddy, have a lot of rolls in the basement. (Call this suggestion a little comedic relief….)
5. Recirculate all of those “saved” cents which would no doubt also put a lot of old wheat cents and even Indians and Flying Eagles back into circulation. And you all know what that means for those of us who are collectors. We could even have a field day just picking out the 90 percent copper cents that are worth more in copper than they cost to make.
6. And finally it would put an end to all of this squabbling about if we should cease production of the U.S. cent.
We don’t really need to make a lot more if we only use what has already been produced; at least for quite awhile (maybe 20 years down the road). And by then we may not be using coins anyway.

And guess what? The little mathematical exercise above is only using 200 of the 261 cents mentioned in the first paragraph, and those 261 cents are only those produced per person in about the last ten years. Think of the numbers we could reach if we included all small cents ever produced and stored and hoarded and tossed in parking lots.

Would there be abuse? Of course, isn’t that the American Way? The devil is always in the details. If it was not constructed and implemented properly then you could effectively turn in your cents, get more from the bank at face value and then turn them in again. That could be dealt with some simple controls put in place on the redemption procedures and time frame.

If I made an error of some type in my math it is because my calculator doesn’t have enough numbers across the readout, so I had to ballpark approximate numbers here and there. Sorry.

Now, with this issue solved, perhaps we can move on to the next topic?

This Viewpoint was written by C. Douglas Thom, a hobbyist who is from Salt Lake City, Utah. Viewpoint is a forum for the expression of opinion on a variety of numismatic subjects. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Numismatic News. To have your opinion considered for Viewpoint, write to David C. Harper, Editor, Numismatic News, 700 E. State St., Iola, WI 54990. Send email to david.harper@fwmedia.com.

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What got me going was an email from longtime reader Bill Mills in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

He reported that he received his first 2012 Lincoln cent Feb. 20.

After I read the email, I reflexively looked at the calendar on the wall and counted weeks. This find occurred in the eighth week of the year.

Boy, we are running late.

What’s going on?

I have for many years maintained that when new coins find their way into reader hands is an indication of just how weak or strong the economy is.

This easy-to-search pricing and identification download is solely focused on U.S cents.

Early appearance of new annual coinage means the economy is really humming along and banks are absorbing the supply as fast as the U.S. Mint can ship it to the Federal Reserve System. Later appearances of new dates in change mean the economy is not doing as well.

What am I to make of this report?

It really is kind of late. In boom years I would get reports of new cents within a few days of the start of the year. Business conditions in more typical years push the reports toward the end of January.

Does this first report of a find of a 2012 cent in the eighth week of the new year mean that economic conditions are not as good as recent government reports have indicated?

Could be. It’s a legitimate conclusion, but with from just one bit of information, it does not feel very solid.

I had to go shopping this past weekend. I even had made a mental note that I was jostled by more than the usual number of people. That can mean either prosperity, or a good winter weather day when Wisconsinites make a dash for the stores while they can.

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I hesitate to draw a conclusion from just one report. Are the 2012 cents truly late in entering circulation, or have we become more indifferent to what we hold in our hands? Could we collectors be mentally distancing ourselves from the cent and what seems like its inevitable decline and possible end?

That would be logical with all the talk about the cent’s high cost and the necessity of finding a new alloy or even abolishing it. Hobbyists might be shifting their attention elsewhere. I hope not. Recent circulation finds reports show at least some collectors are still focused on their change as they always have been.

So please help me out. Have you spotted any 2012 dated coins yet? The January production report in last week’s paper shows more than 468 million 2012 cents have been struck, so there is no reason from this standpoint why 2012 cents should not already be making its way into someone’s hands.

Email me a report of what you are seeing in your change at david.harper@fwmedia.com. If you haven’t seen any 2012 coins yet, report that as well. It will be good to hear from you.

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Regular readers of my blog know that I keep a fairly regular dental schedule. I have mentioned visits from time to time. Such a schedule helps me do something I otherwise wouldn’t be particularly inclined to do.

Collectors are like that, too. There are things that many of them don’t want to face and there is no schedule I know of that will force them.

Some won’t tell their wife or other heirs what it is they have been doing all these years.

Some won’t keep records of what they bought, what the price was and who they bought it from.

What’s up with that?

Make an appointment with your wife (or other heir) and tell her you will leave her well provided for if she will simply follow your instructions on how to sell the collection.

Get your records in order to help her out. Settling an estate is not a walk in the park under the best of circumstances.

Sure both of these things are like going to the dentist, but at root you know these things need to be done.

You don’t want her writing me a letter like one I got this week that reads, “I  have recently inherited a collection of rare coins and it would be deeply appreciated if you could send me any information regarding this field.”

What will I do?

I will send the writer a copy of Numismatic News.

Would that be enough guidance for your wife?

Now you know why I am writing this.

The 91 coins were a part of the personal items of Baseball Hall of Fame member Ted Williams. Each coin is encapsulated with the pedigree, “Ted Williams Collection.”

Consisting of 78 U.S. and 13 world coins, the collection includes an 1873-S “Open 3” $20 graded XF-45, a 1926 Indian Head $10 graded MS-63, a 1978 South Africa 1 Krugerrand graded MS-67 and a 1909 France gold 20 franc graded MS-66.

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The coins are a part of a large quantity of Ted Williams’ personal items that will be offered to the public by Hunt Auctions at a live event on April 28 at Fenway Park. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Jimmy Fund, a Boston charity affiliated with Ted Williams, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Boston Red Sox.

For more information about the coin collection or the auction, visit www.huntauctions.com.

Williams, regarded as the greatest batsman in Major League history, spent his 22-year career with the Boston Red Sox. His many records and accomplishments include six batting championships, a .344 career batting average and a .406 batting average in 1941.

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2001 – $4.58 no change
2002 – $4.80 + 4.8 percent
2003 – $5.95 +24 percent
2004 – $6.81 +14.3 percent
2005 – $8.82 +29.6 percent
2006 – $12.82 +45.3 percent
2007 – $14.80 +15.4 percent
2008 – $11.27 -26.8 percent
2009 – $16.82 +49.3 percent
2010 – $30.91 +83.7 percent
2011 – $27.88 -9.8 percent

As I write this on the second day of February silver is up about 20 percent over year end.

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Gold and silver American Eagles have done well over the last month. Strong bullion has had a major effect, but the premiums on proof issues have advanced slightly and there continues to be increased understanding and demand from the general public for silver Eagles. It seems that silver Eagles have become the item of preference for small silver investors even though the premiums are higher than alternative forms of silver.

Another factor stimulating the silver Eagle market is the current trading activity in the 25th anniversary sets. Many have complained over the Mint’s lack of accommodation in regard to the release and one-day sellout. But from a marketing standpoint it certainly increased awareness that has carried over to the other issues. We have noted an increase of dealer buy lists for specific dates in the series as well.

Set-up day for the Long Beach Coin, Stamp and Collectibles Expo saw some participants saying dealer attendance was light, but it seemed pretty normal to me. Business was being transacted with many scouting the floor for bargains and to fill customer want lists. In fact, I had more sales than normal for set-up day. Several respected dealers were discussing the market while standing at my booth and the consensus was another good year is under way for the numismatic arena. The common complaint was a lack of fresh new material.

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The premium on MS-64 gold Saint-Gaudens $20s fell to 15 percent in 2012 from 67 percent in 2009 on the first trading day of each of those years. Other gold coins show declines as well.

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My collector friend and I are arguing about the ban in the 1960s on melting U.S. silver coins. Did it also cover the silver war nickels?

From 1965 to 1967 it was illegal to melt any of the 90 percent silver coins but the lawmakers ignored the war nickels, apparently assuming that their 35 percent silver wasn’t worth bothering with. The smelters took advantage of this loophole and melted millions of them, right along with a lot of 90 percent silver that was claimed to be from Canadian coins. Because of conflicting laws, it was common practice to ship coins across the Canadian and Mexican borders to melt them wherever the opportunity arose.

How does the melting during the high-priced silver era (1980) compare with the available stock of silver coins?

One apt comparison noted that around 16 million ounces of silver was recovered from melted coins in the first three quarters of 1980. In 1965, the last year of silver usage in 90 percent silver coins, the Mint converted 320 million ounces into coins. The 1980 melt then was roughly 5 percent of a single year’s production. (The year 1965 is correct, as the Mint was still striking 1964-dated silver coins.)

This download allows you to focus your attention strictly on nickels!

Were there other important melts besides the big one when the Trade dollars were recalled?

Millions were melted in Asia for their silver content. Among the specific recorded melts, the Indian Mint at Calcutta melted 200,000 in 1874 and the Osaka Mint in Japan melted 530,000 in 1876. The U.S. Mint redeemed 7.7 million and melted them down to strike Morgan dollars and small change.

Is the mintage figure for the 1852-0 quarter accurate?

The figure of 96,000 does not reflect the reported melting of a quantity of this date that was slightly overweight. Tolerance for the silver quarter was 4.0 grains plus or minus, so the “heavy” ones would have to have weighed 107 grains or more.

Has it ever been illegal to melt or export U.S. cents?

From April 18, 1974, to June 9, 1978, it was illegal to export more than 100 cents or to melt any cents. Up to 500 could be exported for numismatic purposes. The reason was that copper prices were high. Technically it was a regulation, put into effect by Treasury Secretary George Schultz on May 1, 1974. It was rescinded on June 8, 1978. The current ban on melting or exporting cents and nickels went into effect in 2006.

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Is there some kind of story that some 1871 silver dollars were minted from metal recovered from a fire?

I can only find sketchy details, but reputedly the coins were struck from metal from “melted horns from the Diligent Fire Engine Co. #10 of Philadelphia.” The story traces to the Chapmans, who were old-time coin dealers.

Has the U.S. Mint ever employed women to any great extent?

The Mint is currently an Equal Opportunity Employer and has had many women working for it over the years. Back in 1850, Franklin Peale employed 50 women to weigh gold coin planchets and adjust them with files. The records show that there were more than 600 applications for what was then considered “easy” work since it was for “only” a 10-hour day. Other jobs required 12 hours of work per day.

Where does the Mint print our money?

The U.S. Mint makes only coins and medals. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints bank notes in Washington, D.C., and at the branch plant in Forth Worth, Texas. The Bureau is a separate division of Treasury with no connection to the Mint.

Email inquiries only. Send to AnswerMan2@aol.com. Because of space limitations, we are unable to publish all questions.

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This week gold is down about 1.5 percent with silver at 2 percent and platinum tagging the mat at 3 percent. With oil hanging above the $100 mark, it is a wonder that platinum does not show a little strength. Supplies are minimal.

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Gold type coins are lackluster with the only bright area being in the tiny $1 issues and quarter eagle issues. These are very often used in programs that are run in the mass media here and in Europe. Saint-Gaudens $20s are perhaps at the lowest premium to melt ever in MS-65 at just over $2,000.

Non-gold type coins have shown a few downward adjustments in selected issues such as the Rays Shield nickel in MS-65 and stars obverse Seated dimes in the same grade. Flying Eagle cents are flying a little higher. While there are no price changes early copper remains strong.

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The Long Beach show was well attended. Collectors looked for mid-to- high grade circulated type coins and they were buying. There was also a good deal of interest in Capped Bust half dollars, especially by the Overton variety hunters.

Email: harrymkrause@optonline.net

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