 RobertSenior Member
Posts: 896
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: Oklahoma
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 Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 5:21 pm |
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Interesting notes in this article.
http://www.worksandwords.com/moneym/minting.htm
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| Currently Philadelphia and Denver are making 37 million cents each per day and they still have only about one day's worth on the floor. No one seems to know where they are going. Looking at the numbers, the mint believes every household probably has more that $50 in cents in their dresser drawers and bottles. That is a lot of buying power laying around that could at the very least drawing interest (more than $100 million interest per annum at 2.5%). A mint official during our tour said, "Keep saving those pennies, I like the overtime." |
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| Seventy per cent of the mint production is making cents. At the same time 70% of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) is making paper dollars. No wonder the workers unions of the mint and BEP have significant lobbies pushing for keeping the cent and paper dollar. Cutting production would cut jobs in the long run, though it would take a while to catch up with the replacement dollar coins and, probably, two dollar bills. |
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With cents QA looks at a sample batch of 800 blanks per 600,000. The cents are also tested for the thickness and quality of the copper plating. If the batch fails, another sample is taken from the whole; if that fails too, the whole batch is sent back to the supplier. This does not happen often any more. Joe Lopez, head of QA said, "Blisters from flaking copper coating are much less prevalent than earlier. The quality is usually where it should be." I cannot say that is what I see in the real world. I see a lot of tiny blisters.
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Chief Engineer and Acting Superintendent Duane Sjaarddema told us the mint is currently aiming to produce 42 million coins a day. They are running 24 hours a day and worked three Saturdays this July.
To meet this production, the mint uses 66 obverse and 38 reverse dies a day. All dies are shipped from Philadelphia.
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As of July, 1994, the cost to produce $10 of the various coins is about as follows:
Cent -- $8.75
Nickel -- $7.85
Dime -- $1.70
Quarter -- $1.63
Half dollar -- $1.46. |
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