2021 Kennedy Half Dollars Being Released Into Circulation Robbing Collector

I understand what you are saying. I have an enrollment of the P&D half dollar rolls. I really don't expect them to be valuable but I like large size coins. I've never taken them out of the rolls. But if the mint made a bunch and the collector's didn't buy them all, I don't see a problem with the mint putting them in circulation. It is similar to a business putting products that didn't sell out on clearance.

I don't fully understand why the mint feels the need to put more coins in circulation, because a person rarely sees one in their change. I guess they are hoarded by everyone and so there is a shortage.

Exactly the same thing happens in the UK - we often have no idea which coins are being issued for circulation in a given year, so people who buy BU commemorative 50p or £2 coins from The Royal Mint are sometimes very annoyed when the same coins are available for face value several months later.

What does the mint do to make collectors happy? Only the w quarters come to mind.

Sorry, but don't see anything to complain about here. Maybe what you are talking about hurts speculators, but it doesn't harm collectors in any way. For both the Kennedy half and the Innovation dollars, the website clearly states there is no mintage limit for these coins. They can produce a billion on 31 Dec and you have nothing to complain about. Did they send you a letter promising not to release any into circulation?

the innovation dollar coins will not be put to circulation by the mint or the fed because the legislation doesn't allow for that to happen, unlike the Kennedy half dollars. When supply of them at the fed gets low, they tell the mint to make more and restock. some years this doesn't happen, but any year it COULD happen. Because theuy were meant to circulate in the legislation that authorized them.

The innovation dollars weren't written that way and would have never passed had the Fed needed to take a few hundred million of them like they had with the Sac Dollars or Susan B Anthony dollars or the Presidential dollars.

Nope. IF the fed requested small dollar coins, it would be the NA dollar coin that they include in the Mint and proof sets each year, which may not be made every year for circulation release but the legislation intended them for circulation.

For American Innovation business strikes and proof sets there is one mechanism the mintages can be left to climb with any checks such as limited time of sale: the Mint Director doesn't end the sale of these until the term determined for issuance of AI Dollars for all states and territories. Go to the US Mint site and when you click the info about AI dollars there is alink to the original legislation which stipulates this. The only product limited in mintage are the Reverse Proof sets. So less leeway than the Kennedys regarding how much of these are produced, but there are mechanism to allow the mintages to climb by the Mint directot simply keeping products for sale on the site till the series is scheduled to end.

Per the legislation https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th...ll/770/text:

``(5) Treatment as numismatic items.--For purposes of
sections 5134 and 5136, all $1 coins minted under this
subsection shall be considered to be numismatic items.
``(6) Issuance of numismatic coins.--The Secretary may mint
and issue such number of $1 coins of each design selected under
this subsection in uncirculated and proof qualities as the
Secretary determines to be appropriate.
``(7) Termination of program.--The issuance of coins under
this subsection shall terminate when one innovation, an
individual innovator, or a group of innovators, from each State,
the District of Columbia, and each territory has been honored
and may not be resumed except by an Act of Congress.''.


THe Kennedys as has been commented, were not NIFC coins but were circulating coins determined by the government to not be put into circulation, but there was no legislation to my knowledge that prohibited the coin being reintroduced into circulation. The American Innovation Dollar is more specific - it si a numismatic product that, yet, is legal tender and certain strikes can be sold until the program terminates (2032). This is why when shopping for business strike and proof sets of AI dollars you can find years as far back as 2018. I don't think it is a good idea to leave the decision to the Mint director but so far mintages of the proofs have remained below 300,000 to date and all but the 2018 coins, the business strikes have stayed below 500,000 from each individual mint.

I wonder if the AI dollars are simply an experiment to limiot production of golden dollars while satisfying collectors' interest in golden dollars. In the legislation it specifies that this is not to supplant the Native American dollars and that these dollars should be continued to be produced.

As I suggested in an earlier post, it would have behooved the Mint for collectors' and taxpayers' sake to have had some legislation specify the new terms of Kennedy halves when it was pulled from circulation in 2002. It could have informed all that the government would not be beholden permanently to have Kennedys as solely NIFC coins.

They wont truly be nifc.