Who decides how many coins are minted?

dan1ecu

Does anyone know how they decide how many coins of a given denomination to mint? Do they come up with a specific number in advance? If so, who makes the determination, and what is the decision based upon? Do the three mints communicate with each other in this regard, or are they on their own? Will it ever get to the point that there’s enough coins in circulation that they don’t need to mint more?

Also, have they stopped minting halves and dollars yet? It seems as though hardly anyone uses these coins any more.

Thanks,

Dan

1907Quarter

Don't tell anyone...I do!

Cam40

Good questions.
Who decides how many coins are minted? Secretary of Treasury?The accounting office?
George W?....Bush...not Washington.
One things for sure.Theres no shortage of US coins in the general population...like there was around the Civil War perod.
They probably should stop minting Quarters for a few years after the SQ series ends.We have too many now as it is.Imagine how many there will be out there in 2009..Sheez...

cladking

I believe this is all done by bean counters (actuaries?) at the mint. They look
at lots of very esoteric information provided by the fed and the fed branches.
They do have a computer which models coin demand. Since a significant per-
centage of the coins in circulation are destroyed each year they will always
have to make more unless the economy (or at least coinage demand) is con-
tracting.

tjkillian

Well I know in 1815 they wanted to mint cents, but ran out of copper stock so the person who did make the decision, said let's not make any. I would assume it varies by the year. I can easily see G. Washington saying how many half dismes to make.

Tom

richbeat

In a sense you could say that it's the economy and consumers that dictate it, via orders placed with the federal reserve by banks. The number of coins already struck that are placed back into circulation (i.e. Coinstar machines) also has an effect. This year production is down because of the downturn in the economy and the fact that Coinstar machines have been outpacing the mint in putting coins into circulation.

gemseeker

and the fact that Coinstar machines have been outpacing the mint in putting coins into circulation

This is the reason why dollar coins don't get circulated. People hoard their coins and carry bills only. Many just don't like carrying around a lot of heavy metal (not referring to the music).

robertpr

I believe it's a combination of what cladking and richbeat said. Bank orders have more weight in the equation and predictions based on fed data have less weight in the equation but certainly help determine the final count. The gov't actually has unordered SBA's in their vaults (they're debating what to do with them) as well as Sacs (of crap) and lots of Kennedy halves. Produced but not circulated. So they're not perfect.

robertpr

Bullion coins are minted on demand and are only produced when certain order levels are met. If there are no orders, they don't make any.