Perhaps this is the first sign of real physical shortages...

Regards - VHF

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News blackout

Louis Golino

February 23, 2012

The U.S. Mint normally publishes a schedule of upcoming products on its web site (www.usmint.gov) that lists the majority of the year’s numismatic coins many months in advance of their release. But right now there are just three products listed on the Mint’s schedule, and none of them has a date.

The first 2012 First Spouse gold coin for Alice Paul, a suffragist, is supposed to be issued in March, but no information has been made available.

The only release date I know of is that the Star-Spangled Banner coins are expected to be released starting on March 5. This was indicated in the February 9 Federal Register notice about pricing information for those coins and the Infantry silver dollars.

The Mint had planned to release the first 2012 presidential dollars, the Chester Arthur coins, on February 16, but for unexplained reasons, that did not happen, and no new date has been given yet.

Late last year Treasury department officials stated that presidential coins will now only be issued in limited quantities for collectors in an effort to save money.

But as I explained last year that action is actually likely to cost, not save money, because the cost to produce and store dollar coins is much less than the hundreds of millions of dollars the coins generate in seigniorage. Last year the Mint earned $527 million in seigniorage, according to its 2011 annual report.

The presidential coins will now only be sold by the Mint to collectors at a premium. In 2007 when the first issue, the George Washington coin, came out almost 341 million were made, but the Chester Arthur coin’s mintage is expected to be about 1% of that. That will eliminate much of the Mint’s income from seigniorage, which funds coin production and helps reduce the deficit.

The news blackout at the Mint is leading to rampant speculation about what is going on at the Mint. Some people think a personnel shake-up could be brewing. Others wonder if the Mint is in the process of making major changes to its product line-up such as ending the numismatic versions of the America the Beautiful five-ounce silver coins.