For This Week Lincoln Dollar, ASE Proof And Park Quarters

Looks like the mint's prediction was right. They are still not able to handle massive internet traffic even when they know it is coming. The site has ground to a halt with people trying to order the SAEs. Makes me glad I had my five in as subscriptions. My Subscriptions went "in stock and reserved" last night and the single coin subscription has appeared on my CC this morning. I have another one for four more which is about 75000 order numbers behind the first (the first one is several years old and the four unit one is new this year) so it should be charged this afternoon. They should start shipping today or tomorrow. I have the four coin order on fast ship and I will post pics as soon as the coins arrive, which could be as early as Monday (but probably not, knowing PBGS).

Question; The mint has both an uncirculated and a circulating set of ten coins each for the NPQ's I am wondering the difference? Satin finish?

That is correct. The circulating set coins are what we used to get before 2005 in the uncirrculated sets, regular business strikes. What the mint has chosen to call uncirculated coins are actually quasi-proof, satin finish coins. The only thing that prevents the satin finish coins from being true proof coins is that they are only struck once. I wish the mint had gone ahead and called them satin proofs and struck them twice, handled them a little better and continued putting business strike coins in the uncirculated sets. They did nothing but confuse novice collectors when they reused the them uncirculated to mean a coin that is not intended for circulation. The satin finish coins are minted on special planchets using special presses and high forces. They are specially handled and only sold in special packaging. If they were struck twice, they would meet the numismatic definition of proof coinage. There is talk of dropping the satin finish next year, which will wreak havoc if they don't do something to distinguish the coins from business strikes.

Given what I do for a living, I know how easy it is for them to have fixed this problem. Its quite inexpensive (relatively) and simple to implement.

Maybe I should give them a call :D

I got right on the mint's website and had my order for 10 ASE proofs completed with 30 seconds! Can't wait to see them!

It appears that they solved the problem on their end. That is they restrict who they service and who they don't to keep their system from crashing. You either get served fast or almost not at all. Their problem was never that we couldn't get through, it was that they couldn't get any orders at all when the system overloaded. They fixed that "issue", they don't care about the fact their fix doesn't address our problem. The system was virtually unusable for me for the first two hours after noon EST but is back responding OK now.

The Mint will usually allow you to add to an order as long as they haven't started to process it. You have to call them.

I have a subscription for the ASE and it hasn't budged, I'm wondering if I would have been better off just ordering them.