Coin World: $1 million in First Spouse gold coins wrongly sent for destruction
BackroadJunkie
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$1 million in First Spouse gold coins wrongly sent for destruction
Well, not that anyone would miss $1M in spouse coins (1,449 2007-W Dolley Madison's to be exact), but the article contained other interesting information:
The U.S. Mint has detailed protocol for “detrashing” unsold numismatic products kept in inventory. The protocol includes separating the coins from the packaging. The packaging is destined for incineration and the coins are to be melted for metal reclamation.
I need to dig up this protocol and see what it says... 
“PBGS conducted an internal review and determined that the missing pallet of gold coins had been inadvertently placed next to 23 pallets of ‘detrash’ packaging to be incinerated at a waste disposal and incineration facility,” according to the memo.
Oops. 
Comments
If one can't find some humor in that Coin World article, one isn't trying!
One also wonders if the mintage numbers in the Red Book will ever be adjusted for melted pieces (both in this incident and in instances where the melts of unsold pieces went according to official plans).
Navy Audit Uncovered $126M in Aircraft Parts 'We Didn't Even Know Existed'
They didn't even know the warehouse existed.
Inventory control is a government wide problem. They probably don't even know how many bean counters they employ.
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There has to be more to this story. What happened to the puddle of melted gold after the coins were incinerated?
Coating the inside of the incinerator, smokestack, and vaporized (depending on how hot the incinerator got)... is my guess.
“Pitney Bowes Government Solutions, mistakenly arranged for the incineration, without metal reclamation,”
You're assuming they got melted. (cough.)
If you do the math, 1449 gold spouse coins is almost exactly 50adv pounds. It may not have even been noticed. The real question is what does the waste company do with the ash/unburnable waste after a burn?
I would laugh if a million dollars in gold is in a landfill someplace, covered by 6 years of trash...
The gold still exists...in what form is the question....Cheers, RickO
Sadly, the Dolly Madison is one of the nicest designs of the otherwise ragged march of 1st spouse coins.
I recall decades ago the Treasury burned the bags that were used for years to transfer gold bars. There was enough gold rubbed into the cloth to make it worthwhile.
So, I am sure those Dolly Madisons left a worthwhile residue.
Now that I think if it, I wonder if it was am intentional accident...
The U.S. Treasury has no further financial interest in the matter - their insurance claim was paid-in-full. Mostly likely their interest was acquired by the insurer in the settlement process.
The PBGS corporation and the insurer likely have some interest in recovering material, but that is a private, not public, matter.
If the incinerator was hot enough, or if the landfill was busy enough, or if sufficient time had elapsed between noticing the loss and figuring out where to look, it might be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
One million dollars is relatively trivial to major corporations and to major insurers.
The loss of the Mint contract was probably more likely of an ouchie to Pitney Bowes.
The series should never have been struck in gold, if at all.
It's too expensive where hardly anyone will want it as a collectible, as there are much better coins to buy with the 10's of thousands it cost to complete it. Same result for the individual coins, The coins with the classic designs are somewhat interesting but the others not.
I never understood why they did a base metal president coin paired with a gold first spouse. Made no sense. Just a bronze medal would have sufficed.
If the Mint does odd-ball stuff in gold, it might give the savvy, knowledgeable private collector an extra chance to stumble into something good in the future. Best that can be said.
I’m pretty sure all failed coin programs adventually end up in melt. I always keep a few of those duds for long term prospects.
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
Near melt with little or no premium I can see it as a speculation. But that's been my assumption that this is the description for practically all of the buyers. I don't believe there is an actual collector base for it, at all.
Even if most eventually get melted, no one is going to know how many are left and practically all future buyers will use the original mintage or near it as their assumption of the supply. It will be the only rational thing to do.
It was a congressional mandate. The Mint had no choice. It was in the Prezzibuck law.
Want the politics behind it? Some congress-critters thought we should be more "European" and issue 24k coins, when the Mint was still issuing 22k.
Yes. of course you are correct. I guess I should have been more clear about who "they" are.
The poor mint gets saddled with all sorts of boondoggle programs and that will continue for the foreseeable future.
The neat part of this peculiar series was the subset of First-Spouseless coins (Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, Buchanan), with the wonderful obverse depictions of contemporary coinage.
Of course, that creativity was subverted as well, when Congress decided to put Alice Paul on Chester A. Arthur's issue instead.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
So who should have been on the fifth coin of the Liberty Subset?
(1881-1885)
The Morgan Liberty?
The V nickel Liberty?
The Indian cent Liberty?
Good question. It was probably discussed in threads back when the series started. Don't recall what people thought then.
If they would have done it that way, I would have preferred the V Nickel obverse with the Indian Cent as second choice.
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Just looked up who Alice Paul was. I assumed there was some connection to Chester A. Arthur, such as a second wife outside of the time frame of office. But she has no connection to Arthur at all that I can see. She just happened to be born the same year as his last year in office with really no connection to the First Spouse series at all.
"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
Right, I'm sure it was discussed back then. The Mint's rationale for breaking that pattern must have been revealed. And I bet they took a bit of heat for it too.
While the Liberty subset looks nice with just the four classics, a fifth would have been even better.
There was no discussion.
All of this was laid out in PUBLIC LAW 109–145, and was a congressional mandate from the start:
Alice Paul was from New Jersey. Rep/Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was sponsoring and then authored bills to create a Congressional Gold Medal for Alice Paul at the same time as the $1 Coin Act.
It appears that since the gold medal bills didn't go anywhere, that he got her included in the First Spouse portion of the $1 Coin Act passed that year. (of which he was a co-sponsor)
Oh, and thanks again for the answer and for providing the 'institutional memory' for these threads.