Is The US Mint Ruining Coin Collecting For New Coins

Yes and no. Yes, they make too many. No, because if they didn't make legal tender, the coins would be worthless rounds.

My big beef with them is their 200% markup over spot, 100% markup over face, and 50% markup on plain circulated coins, and all of this is assuming face value already covers cost.

If say it costs them 24 cents to make a quarter, then they make hundreds of millions in profit if they sold them at face.

Whether you like all the new mint offerings in the past 25 years, or not. The answer is a solid no.

In most years before 1982 there was the basic 5 new coins to collect each year, cent through half dollar. It was boring to collect the current coins. The new offerings have made it much more interesting.

In 1982 the modern commemorative program was started.
In 1986 the American Eagle program started.
In 1999 the State Quarter program started.

These three programs have brought more collectors into the hobby than anything thing that was tried in the past.

The 1999 and up quarter program was, in my opinion, the most popular program ever. It brought millions into the hobby and this series will continued to be collected for many generations.

Because of all the different coins, it touches the interest of many different people and offers a nice challenge to get a complete set.

The Boy scouts will use this series for their members to get merit badges. Grand parents will use them to get their grand children interested in collecting. I see new collectors and collectors outside the United States showing interests in collecting these quarters.


As for the American Eagle program, Eagle coins have slowly become a large part of my collection, and I am sure many others in the hobby. What started as a program to offer a good medium to buy gold and silver, has developed into a series many collect by date and mint. When the mint offers a low mintage collectable Eagle set, they always sell out.


So in my opinion, all the new coins that the mint offer helps the hobby, more than it hurts it.

It should be said, it most cases, it is not the mint that decides what to make. It is suggestions by American citizens, those suggestions make their way to committee for a debate and selection process. The mint is more instructed on what coins to make.

I was glad to see the commemorative Washington half in 1982 and the Olympic coins of 1983. Sometime early in the 90s, they were too fixated on these and that's when, IMO, they became "too many to collect". They've become like college football bowl games.

Again, I was glad to see the Statehood Quarters series, but wish they'd gone back to the eagle backs when they ran their course. The ATBs are chintzy, and I don't feel the need to start buying boxes of quarters so that I can get all of those.

The silver eagles? I'm very glad they did that and am still glad.....same with the gold eagles.

The gold buffaloes seem a bit superfluous, and IMO this design should have been returned to the nickel.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Presidential dollar coins. Collecting this series is like collecting all of the McDonald's Monopoly game pieces. Here we clearly have "too many to collect".

Also mint and proof sets are just too large now. I think the prez dollars should be in their own set by themselves. All these extra coins are making these sets less affordable.

I too feel there are so many options and varieties that to be able to acquire just one of each offering is just too expensive for a typical Joe collector. I had a wild hair and wanted to collect the presidential spouse series I got the first four and was then priced out by the rise in bullion. I would be interested in the 5 oz pucks too but 25 ounces a year + premium is outside of my budget.

So now I have three yearly series I acquire from the mint; Silver proof sets, with the bonus of the bronze dollars, proof commemoratives, two a year, and the silver eagles. Now even the silver eagles are getting out of control, there use to be only two kinds (bullion and proof) but for the past three years we have had five different silver eagles. I now shell out around $500 each year to maintain these three sets and I'm to the point my classic sets are needing only high ticket items. where is my winning lottery ticket!

i am starting to now regret spending $149.95 for $100.00 worth of P/D 2013 halves..but who knows? maybe in 100 years someone will come across them all in BU condition and make a tidy profit.