Proof ASEs

I vote for the too much free time. Does it really matter where they are made or just that they are made. With all the West Point minted products, that place must be running 24/7. They've had to produce so much more than normal. It only makes sense that an other mint take some of the burden but that don't make it so. Just make those $35.00 coins real pretty.

To look into the future you must look into the past. In 2001, the Treasury Department changed the designation of nearly 1700 tonnes of inventoried gold at the US Mint's facility in West Point, New York (approximately 21% of the total US Gold Reserve) from "Gold Bullion Reserve" to "Custodial Gold". The Denver Mint gold has not been reclassified and remains "Gold Bullion Reserve".

excerpt: "given this reality about the nature of gold, the Treasury had to turn elsewhere to find the gold necessary (1) to keep these banks from defaulting on their bullion obligations arising from their mismatched gold books in an environment where metal had become increasingly difficult to come by and/or (2) to keep the gold price low so that the likelihood of default by the banks would be lessened, even though metal would remain tight because fabrication year after year was exceeding newly mined supply. Rather than accept the bitter pill that certain banks were about to default on their bullion obligations, the Treasury looked for alternatives and found one - they put their hand into the till, until recently known as the Gold Bullion Reserve at West Point. They swapped this gold with the Bundesbank."

Here's the interesting article link: http://www.fgmr.com/clsddoor.htm