Question about mintages of '79 to '90 seated Liberty halves
Barberian
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Does anyone know why all of these mintages are divisible by 200? Did they strike halves in 'blocks' of 200 coins a block. I noticed that this also seems to be true for coins going back to 1874. My guess is that 200 planchets can be cut from a strip of 90% silver.
Edited to add that the mintages of Philly quarters for those years are divisible by 400, i.e., seem to be struck in groups of 400 coins ($100) at a time.
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Interesting question and I like your idea of planchets per strip. Although I don't know this answer myself I did just go down a rabbit hole journey of sorts looking at various auction listing descriptions, anything regarding old Mint bags/boxes/keg barrels, and Newman Numismatic Portal documents, and wonder if the Mint ran these in 200 increments as a monster box equivalent for half dollars and dimes for ease of shipping/distribution? It's amazing just how little documentation is known regarding your question as well as shipping barrels/crates/canvas bags from the 19th century as well as surviving examples of such items.
I await the knowledgeable mystic greybeards of the forum to provide insight. Here is a meager offering to channel their wisdom.
1879 - Mintage 4,800
I wonder if it has to do something with the concept of minimum ordering in bulk, much like how certain wholesalers operate today.
Thinking some more, a $100 bag of halves would be 200 coins.
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Roger has provided an answer to your question on the NGC forum, I do not know the validity of his reply but here is a link to his comment.
https://boards.ngccoin.com/topic/431516-a-question-from-ats-by-barberian/
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RWB offers a succinct explanation that I can apply to figure out the rest. He states it makes shipping and accounting easier rather than the result of the planchet manufacturing and coining process. This still leaves some questions as to why mintages of halves are divisible by 200 and quarters by 400 in those years. In many other years, the coins appear to be minted in $1000 batches (final mintage for halves in 'even' thousands) rather than reaching a final round number for the year. They seemed to do these count intervals or batches throughout the mintage process. At least that's what I conclude from RWB's comments.
I'll reply over there as well.