| Author |
 Replies: 21 / Views: 2,704 |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
On page 155 of the Mint Directors report for fy 17 there is a notation of the die life of the average number of pieces minted per die.
The average for Denver, for the dime, is 66, 862. This is for Calender year 1916.
If you multiply that by 4 you get 267,448. Not 264,000.
As this is an official average, can we assume that the mint officials knew how to divide the mintage by 4?
I can hear some say that the mintage must be the "net" mintage. However; that is not borne out by looking at the rest of the mintages. They almost always end in "000".
I have really questioned this while doing my research. I now wonder if the offical mintages are not rounded up or down, to the nearest 1000.
Other mintages and die life analysis seem to support this.
So was the mintage 264,000 or 267,448?
|
|
|
|
Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
Does it really make a difference . IMHO at least 3,000 were either lost, melted, at the bottom of the ocean, under the ground ,or is a undetectable cull today .  |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
1609 Posts |
Maybe that missing 3000 is buried in a safe in my back yard!  |
|
Pillar of the Community
 United States
1590 Posts |
T-bop, you can say that about every mintage. The Assay commission destroyed a certain amount of each denominiation from each mint ( gold and silver) each year. Another percentage were held back by quality control. It is estimated that about 10 percent of each years mintage finds it's way into the ground ( smaller coins) ect, ect.
To some all they need to know is "it's rare", or "it's worth a lot of money" and they could care less about the actual mintage
For those of us with an interest in the history of Numismatics; facts matter.
It is the same reason some people love trivia. For the person with that turn of mind then, yes, it does matter.
History is about facts. Not so much about estimates.
I mean, do you want the mechanic to put 4 tires on your car? Or are 3 close enough?
And finally there has always been a question in mind about the official figurers. Were they the actual numbers that "got out the door" ( Net), or were they the gross figure before deducting those removed for QC and the Assay commission?
It now seems more likely to be the later, rather than the former. For instance in year the Assay commission found an issue what was substandard and all the coins from that lot were destroyed, making a huge dent in the actual net mintage.
Oh, and there were the same number of obverse and reverse dies used. If the numbers had been off between them then it could have been possible that a fifth die had been used, albiet in small numbers. This is shown not to be the case. Just in case anyone was wondering.
|
|
Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
Quote:
T-bop, you can say that about every mintage. Yes this is true , but OP is talking about the 1916-D Mercury dime . His question was ; is the mintage 264,000 or 267,448 . And I gave my opinion that that's not a significant difference in mintage to sway the value of this coin one way or another .  I can't believe that a difference of 3,448 would have a huge significant in todays supply and demand with my OPINION of them being lost ,etc.  |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
The post wasn't about the value. I mean there are coins with a far lesser mintage that don't have anywhere near the value of the 16-D Merc. Look at the 1909-s Indian, There are less of them than 09-s vdb. Yet the 09-S vdb is hands down worth more money. It's not necessarly about mintage as popularity But the point was, this was not about the number affecting the value of the 16-D Mercury. It was about correcting and adding to the knowledge of the history of the Mercury dime and perhaps about Mint practices in general. |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
604 Posts |
Quote:
The average for Denver, for the dime, is 66, 862. In my opinion, I think the key word here is "average". This is saying the report is off by 872 coins per die set. It also doesn't say anything about the "average" number of dimes that never made it out of the mint for various reasons. Just out of curiosity, what does the 1915 report say? Was the report spot on with the 1914 Denver dime mintage? Edited by Nickel Guy
03/03/2017 5:40 pm
|
|
Bedrock of the Community
United States
94367 Posts |
Maybe only 264,000 coins were "officially" released, a figure that excluded damaged examples and those handed out to political figures and dignitaries as the "first year of issue" of the new design.
|
|
Moderator
 United States
188342 Posts |
Maybe they know they did not completely "use out" the fourth die set and the average was based on actual mintage from the first three sets.
|
|
Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
Who cares? It's still a common coin that just sells for high prices because of high demand nontheless.
PCGS Coinfacts estimates 10000 exist. I wonder how they came up with such a round number...
|
|
Bedrock of the Community
United States
11951 Posts |
Am I missing something?
Is there something that states that mintage is tied to die life?
I would think mintage would be more tied to how many are requested.
Or maybe availability of blank planchets.
It is hard for me to imagine a mint employee would be given some die's,
go make some coins.
It makes more since to me, something like this.
We have order/request for 264,000 dimes. Work on dimes today.
But than ... I am guessing the experts have more knowledge of how the
Mint operations work.
|
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
2910 Posts |
Logically, it would seem the extras were destroyed... they may have been defective, or whatever. It's only 1.3% of the total produced... I think it would only matter to the most dedicated Mercury dime historians. CRH Nickeloholic. 1,600,000 nickels searched in eight years! Have found FOUR complete Jefferson sets!
|
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
5829 Posts |
I think it was terminated prematurely to the actual figure, remember reading that at the time the Denver Mint was focusing on other denominations.
Publishing is a good example, there's always spoilage around 3% and depending on the quantities ordered, it can be more or less. Don't expect that the die life can produce exact quantities just because its the average, the plant manager may have received a order for the total number requested, and this will usually be point percentage over the actual mintage. The rest will get "Recycled".
|
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
Lets look at this from a purly mechanical point of view. You are the coiner and the Mint Director has asked you to give him the average die life from a quality control point of view. You take the number of coins minted and divide it by the number of dies. Simple. Done. Are you really going to go through some complicated process to come up with the number? Granted there is going to be "shrinkage". I think that is the point. I know that in some years the produced coins until they ran out of metal. It says that in the Mint Directors report. I believe what happens is that they produce coins until the supply of planchets runs out and they then take a round number when making their report knowing that there will be shrinkage. One interesting thing is the annual report of coins on hand" it is always a round number. From readings and research we know that people could buy them directly from the cashiers window at the mint, in amounts from ONE to as much as they could cart away. Mention is made that when the new cents came out ( LWC) some people were restricted to three, and then one coin each. Yet, the numbers on hand, with one exepcetion each year, are always even numbers ending in "OOO". I suspect that the amount of coins left over after bagging, ended up in the cashiers account. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that mintage figures are rounded down to, at least, the nearest 1000, as a "net" figure. |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
5829 Posts |
If you can prove that there's an extra 3K plus 1916D minted, history will stay with the 264K figure as stated.
That would be quite a challenge, and will have to change everything!
Edited by macmercury
03/05/2017 4:55 pm
|
|
Bedrock of the Community
United States
12057 Posts |
Does the overage in minting allow for misstruck coins, rejects, etc. that might have gone back to be melted and restruck?
Member ANA - EAC - TNA - SSDC - CCT #890 "Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." -- Louis D. Brandeis |
| |
Replies: 21 / Views: 2,704 |
Posted 03/03/2017 08:34 am
