Does anyone know how many presses are running

pitboss

when they are stamping out cents?

I have been looking through rolls and seeing the same varieties over and over again.

It must be quite a large number.

Someone must know.

CaptHenway

Varies tremendously by the day and by the year, as does the technology used to take away the struck coins. What years are you looking through?
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For much of the time the production of one press fell into one hopper. That one press might have one, two or four pairs of dies. When I first went through the Denver Mint in 1976 the hoppers were dumped into bins at the start of conveyor belts, where the coins rolled past inspectors who pulled out obvious errors. At the end they fell into a new hopper, and went to the bagging room. The $50 bags of cents, $200 bags of nickels, etc. were shipped to Federal Reserve banks where they were roll-wrapped for distribution. Depending on the luck of the draw a bag might be predominantly the output of one press, or of several.
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The process evolved many times over the years. The inspections were phased out and the hoppers went straight to bagging. Nowadays conveyor belts carry away struck coins from many presses and dump them into huge bags that are weighed, not counted. They are shipped to private firms to be rolled and distributed. Anything can happen.

TD

UNCOnly

<< <i>when they are stamping out cents?

I have been looking through rolls and seeing the same varieties over and over again.

It must be quite a large number.

Someone must know. >>



The presses can strike 750 coins/minute. There's 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period. So 1 press can produce 1,080,000 cents in a 24 hour period.

According to a February 2006 article in COINage Magazine, the Denver Mint has 49 Schuler Presses for striking coins.

The Denver Mint Today

CaptHenway

BTW, and FWIW, when I got a floor tour of the Philadelphia Mint back in February of 2009, which I wrote about in COINage magazine, the Mint was virtually shut down while the Treasury and the Fed re-examined coinage stocks on hand and future production needs.

There were literally five coin presses running in the entire building, three making dimes, which we got to look at and study, and two making something else a few rows over that we did not look at.

TD

pitboss

Thanks for the responses. I am mainly interested in the P minted coins of 2009 cents when they were running the LP 1,2,3,and 4 series of

coins. When I am looking through rolls I am seeing the same variety of strike quite often and was just interested to see if anyone knew

how many presses were running, how many they were putting out per hour, and how long one die might last before they had to change it.

Also did they keep an eye open for when a die went bad?

CaptHenway

The day I was there none of the cent presses were running. Since they were committed to releasing some of the Lincoln Bicentennial cents they may have fired up a limited number of presses every now and then to make their quota, which would increase the chances that any given roll was from the same batch.

In normal times you could have the production from a dozen or more presses going into the same batch.

UNCOnly

<< <i>

Also did they keep an eye open for when a die went bad? >>



They inspect the dies after a certain number of strikes and/or time in use. However, with evidence of die cracks, chips, and breaks appearing on coins that make it into circulation(in small numbers), it doesn't seem to be often enough.