The End Of The "S" Coins For Circulation

I believe you'll find that "the last S-minted coins for circulation" were the SBA dollars of 1980. I wouldn't count 1981, since pretty much the entire mintage that year went into mint sets.

The fact that SBA dollars didn't actually circulate does not alter the fact that the government of the day really, really did want them to circulate, thus they were "made for circulation".

As for the more general question of "why was the San Francisco circulation facility shut down", I would assume it all comes down to footprints. Specifically, the physical size of the mint building.


Cost-effective circulating coin production needs to maximize the economy of scale, in order to maximize profitability. And there simply wasn't and isn't the physical room to expand production capacity at San Fransisco, as there was in the other mint locations. They'd have to close down the old mint in downtown SF and build a new one out in the suburbs, or maybe move down to LA or Sacramento or somewhere else with cheap land. And on a cost-benefit analysis, it seems that importing coins to California from an expanded Denver mint has always been cheaper than buying, building, equipping and operating a whole new Mint building somewhere in California.

@sap

The picture posted is the old US mint, there is a new mint that is much larger in SF. The SF mint was never shut down, there was an old mint downtown that was replaced by a larger mint (on Mint Hill).


The SF mint makes precious metal coins and proofs. The production mints are Philadelphia and Denver with capacity at West Point if needed. There are 4 actual mints not just 3 currently.

Another factor in play as well.....the cost of doing business in San Francisco is a tad (a tad...) bit higher--transportation, labor (geographic pay differential for mint workers, and higher regional wages in general), utilities, earthquake retrofitting, compliance with local environmental regs, site insurance, etc. It's a bit less expensive to conduct industrial-scale operations in the Denver Metro area and in Philadelphia.

San Francisco and West Point struck cents and quarters for circulation into the 1980's without a mint mark.

Correct.

No San Francisco minted Eisenhower dollars were every released into circulation. They are all NCLT/NIFC.

My Red Book says that in 1974, SF minted 1,900,156 Ike silver-clad business strikes.

So these didn't go into circulation? Where did they go? And what does NCLT/NIFC mean?

Correct.

Sold by the Mint direct to customers in blue envelopes, hence the nickname Blue Ikes.

As stated above... Non-Circulating Legal Tender and Not Issued (or Intended) for Circulation. Although there are nuances, the terms have become interchangeable.

My pleasure.