Does anyone know if there exists a modern (post 1933) counterpart to the "Mint Cabinet" of

SanctionII

It would be very interesting to know if the Mint (both the mother mint at Philly and the Denver, SF and West Point Branch mints) on the sly keeps examples of patterns, test pieces, and coins made under suspicious circumstances locked up in secret storage areas accessible only to a few of the top dogs at the Mint; and whether persons outside the mint have enough "gravitas" to obtain examples of these goodies from their highly placed mint contacts.

If so, it would be very interesting to see exactly what is in today's version of the Mint Cabinet.

Anyone have any information on this topic?

Coinosaurus

All we know for sure is that a number of people have been prosecuted for smuggling goodies out of the mint.

But, from that fact alone, you have to assume that a number of people *haven't* been caught.

If there is contraband coming out, I would guess that it is coming from lower employees, who have much less to lose than more highly placed Mint personnel.

firstmint

ol' "Slick Willy" DuBois died in 1881; and things haven't been the same ever since...

Pistareen

I once sat in a small conference room at the Denver Mint with a group of ANA Summer Seminar students, ca. 1996, for a meeting with Barbara McTurk, then the superintendant.

During that meeting, among other chestnuts thrown out, she mentioned that Denver no longer makes errors. We all smiled. She was serious.

Then she produced the Denver Mint's private reference collection of errors, housed in a sealed wooden tray with a plexiglass lid and little 2x2" dividers inside -- it looked like something someone made in shop class.

Inside that tray were some truly impressive errors, including an early 1970s Kennedy half die cap that resembled a shot glass -- but had a small hole drilled neatly through the middle. Perhaps they thought no one would steal it then!

I wish I'd taken an inventory, but, alas, I did not. I do remember the Mint policeman watching every single person who held and studied the tray though!

On either that trip or a previous trip to the Denver Mint, while on the floor, I recall a pressman walking up to Vicken Yegparian (now of Stack's) and I with something that looked like a chrome flower in his hand -- the most spread out pile of quarter planchets all struck together into one massive metal "flower." He gave it to us and indicated that we might get a kick out of it, then walked away. Those items were just tossed into a melt/waste bucket, and many presses had a couple things sitting nearby. I think Vic and I counted 24 planchets as we pulled the thing apart -- like doing surgery to an error that, if it ever made it out, would have been worth thousands.

Inside the Mint, where such things had no value and were almost viewed as something found in a shower drain, items like that were handled cavalierly before eventually just being thrown away.

RWB

I recently examined an archive file from the mid-1970s listing experimental hubs and dies destroyed. It included several multipage lists of “stuff” including errors, blank planchets, Liberty dollars, small diameter Ike dollars, ten- and twelve-sided dollars, a two cent coin, cents in dozens of compositions and thicknesses, and more than 100 Martha Washington/Mt. Vernon coins (10-cent through dollar) in a wide array of compositions. One memorandum nicely states that someone was writing an article on cent compositions and the mint wanted to cooperate and provide photos before the non-standard alloy pieces were melted.

The strong implication is that directors Adams and Hackel were bent on destroying anything of a pattern, experimental or trial nature. The file includes a set of complicated rules that had to be followed for all such coins.

Nothing, however, states what remains.