US Mint Suspends Gold Coin Sales

What makes you think the Mint is holding excess metal? My bet is they get the planchets in in "small" batches and strike very close to an "as ordered" basis. That keeps them from having excess stock on hand, and if they run a little behind, they have no problems with telling their customers that it is on backorder.

They have an excess of 2001 Kennedy halves. Why not have an excess of other coins or metals?

The 2001 Kennedys are an unusual case. The Federal Reserve had pretty consistently been ordering about 40 million or so Kennedy half dollars from the mint for several years which they had split between the two mints. In early 2001, in anticipation of the standard order, the mint struck the 2001 half dollars. In due time the Fed requested some half dollars and were supplied with part of the 2001 D coinage. Then later in the year the Fed desided that they had plenty of half dollars on hand and said that they did not plan on requesting anymore half dollars for the foreseeable future, and they haven't. This left the mint with the problem of having over 30 million 2001 P&D half dollars on hand, the seniorage of which had already been transfered to the general fund. They could not be melted down without withdrawing that same money from the Treasury. So they sat for two years while collectors kept clammering for access to them because they didn't want to have to buy and cut up mint sets. Then after the sales of the 2002 Sac dollars went fairly well they began selling the 2001 Kennedy's. Unfortunately, the number of 2001 Kennedy's wanted is a much smaller number than the coins on hand. So after the initial rapid sales they have dropped to a slow trickle ever since.

If anything this probably taught the mint a lot about striking too many coins before they were sure they would have orders for them. The Cent through quarters they don't have to much worry over because they know they will be getting orders for those. The half dollar was always questionable and it finally caught up with them. I'm sure this is one reason why the number of President dollars minted has been consistently falling. Eventually I think they will give up and go to collector only and I don't think it can be too much longer.

And that is for coins where they make money on the seniorage as soon as they are minted. For the precious metal coins where they don't make any money until they are sold they definitely wouldn't want to have extra unsold coins on hand so I'm sure they would take special effort to prevent it. Strike to order is an obvious way to do this.

And how did you vote in my poll?