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U.S. population is about 3 times what it was 100 years ago, which is something to consider when thinking about relative rarity of a modern issue.
It's more than that, it's also that the whole flow of coin circulation has changed.
Take the bus. Once upon a time, you put your coins in the fare box, it told the driver how much was dropped in and he made change from a metal dispenser on his hip, taking the change out of a tray and reloading the dispenser.
Coins circulated many times a day.
Dad had a tray on the dresser. He emptied his pocket each night and reloaded the pocket (change) in the morning.
Then the Bus driver making change was automated. You dropped your two quarters in the box and the machine dispensed your 15c in change. Safer as the driver wasn't trying to load the change dispenser on his hip on the drive.
Coins still circulated many times a day.
Eventually, the bus switched to "exact change only" and the money dropped into a vault opened at the depot each night. If you needed change, you bought something at the bodega on the corner, which made change from roll they broke open into the register.
The change from the Bus' vault was counted and sent to the bank, where it was recounted, wrapped, and sent out to bank customers (back to the bodega on the corner).
And instead of being used multiple times a day, the coin was used twice. As the size of the transaction increased (the bus fare always rises (a little-known novella by Ernest Hemingway)) people stopped carrying a pocket full of change and started saving it in a jar.
Fast forward, the bus line starts using tokens because they're more convenient than $1.50 in coins. You have to buy your tokens at a bank or the subway token booth, further concentrating the usage of coins. 10-for-a-paper-$20 not 10 individual $1.50 transactions.
The jar just sits there with fewer and fewer coin transactions generating additions to it. The coins exist, but they're not in commerce.
After a while, the CoinStar emerged as more convenient than counting yourself, wrapping, and taking to the bank. This returns some coins to their one-trip circulation (leading many of us to be surprised to find lots of older coins again in circulation!).
Over time, all of this combines to make a larger number of coins required because of less use and more time sitting in jars around the house.
The banks also stopped counting coins themselves, instead sending the coins upstream to the contracted coin terminals. (The banks don't have a centralized cash operation anymore, it's all contracted out to Guarda or Loomis or ). A single central reserve is more efficient. The share of coins in the jar (technically in circulation but not used) goes up.
Even later, the bus goes card only as does most other transactions, meaning almost no demand for coins.
Come the pandemic and everybody (not just starving college students paying the pizza guy) digs in the couch (sorry JD) and empties that plus the jars back into circulation.
Some of this becomes the new post-p norm and the total held out of circulation is lower. The individual coins still make just one trip. Just a lot fewer of them.
And the orders for new coins finally trend down.
-----Burton
50+ year / Life / Emeritus
ANA member (joined 12/1/1973)
Life member: Numismatics International, CONECA
Member: TNA, FtWCC, NETCC, EveryCountry (online) coin club
Owned by three cats and a wife of 40+ years (joined 1983)
Author: 3rd Edition of the Sample Slabs book,
https://www.sampleslabs.info/
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Posted 08/20/2024 10:57 pm
