Common citizen questions found in US Mint archives
RogerB
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Here are the most commonly asked questions from historical US mint archives. These are based on reading innumerable letters from citizens and members of Congress written to the Secretary of the Treasury or Director of the U.S. Mint. The arrangement is from most commonly seen downward. The sample is completely unscientific – as is my memory. 
Here is a sample of valuable ore from [name a place]. How much gold/silver does it contain? Also, would the government like to buy part of my discovery? (Reply: most are pyrite, sand, gravel, loam, lead ore – galena, rust, “common dirt.”)
Is this coin genuine?
How many 1815 pennies were made? I have one. Do you want to buy it?
I have a genuine 1804 silver dollar. What is it worth?
How much is my old coin [of any metal or type] worth?
I/My family/neighbor has a coin collection. Will the Mint buy it?
I want to buy copper cents from the Mint. Please send me some, C.O.D.
I am applying for a Mint job as [Adjuster, Workman, Watchman, Assayer….]
The local newspapers say all [name a newly issued coin] are being recalled. How much is the Mint paying for them?
Comments
In essence, the undercurrent of the majority of the questions then are very similar 200+ years later.
$ $
Or stupidity.
Actually some of those questions are very similar to common one's often posed here on the forum...
Cheers, RickO
I find the correspondence from normal everyday citizens as interesting as the official mint documents available to us today. A few more unscientific frequent topics coming in from the public off the top of my head.
As for @ricko 's observation of the same types of questions of today - I read 1 if not 2 letters with in-depth descriptions of their "error" coin - and in the scribbled notes by Mint employees, they had written "likely ran over by carriage" - see... even parking lot error coin discoveries can be traced back 150+ years lol.
"You Suck Award" - February, 2015
Discoverer of 1919 Mercury Dime DDO - FS-101
Those are all fun subjects, too!
Dominant questions vary with the time period and frequency of sensationalist stories in newspapers. Nothing has really changed.
Did they have Youtube back then? Sounds like the get rich with pocket change was hot even then.
Does your memory include a histogram of number of letters in each year, even if approximate?
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Here are the years with the most file boxes. These years have the greatest number of extant letters received at Mint HQ. The number after the date is the quantity of full file boxes at NARA in College Park, Md in RG104 Entry 229. Each box holds from 500 to 600 documents on average. Data were taken from my personal index of entries, boxes and volumes examined.
1895 - 16
1896 - 22
1897 - 22
1898 - 22
1899 - 28
1900 - 31
1901 - 25
1902 - 21
1903 - 23
1904 - 17
1905 - 18
1906 - 9
1907 - 10
1908 - 9
1909 - 14
1910 - 12
Part way through 1910 files switched to accession numbers, then from 1915 to 1925 nearly all official documents were removed. The remaining public letters filed alphabetically by sender or sometimes recipient.
Here's a brief sample from Entry 229 showing what my index looks like. This continues through 400+ boxes.
Letters sent, RG104 Entry 235, has approximately 4 500-page fair copy journals per year. Each page averages 3 letters per page except for identical letters to all mints or assay offices where there might be 10 letters per page, plus the duplicates. There are 600+ volumes.
Yeah, I hate those misleading "pocket change treasures" videos
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Number 1 seems most specific to an era. People were actually out poking around hoping to "strike it rich" in the literal sense.
Regarding quantities of letters: Something seems to have happened in either the way letters were preserved or how they were handled in later years beginning in 1895. Previously, there are only 5 boxes covering 1883-Jan 1895, but for the next decade the box total jumps as shown in a prior post. Obviously, there was no sudden increase in correspondence, and letters sent (E-235) don't show a similar large increase.
On possibility is that mint HQ began keeping "almost everything." in a single file system. That is - filing systems were dispersed after 1872 and consolidated about 1895. From 1910 forward it seems that most official documents were pulled from the correspondence stream and filed under specific headings such as: "Cashier's Daily Report" and so forth.
All of this makes for considerable inconsistency and unevenness in interpreting remaining materials.
Was any of this helpful, Messydesk?
(PS: GREAT Work on the VAMWorld 2.0 site !)