Regarding Numis quest contest Franklin half

[sc7000]

Since all 9 of us did not get the question correct , Was wondering the reason why the coin was made a year later?

 

Which Franklin Half Dollar issue was not released until the year after it was made?

Answer: 1955

 

[Crazy Mtn Coins]

Was this because the Mint changed the packaging mid-stream?

[Conder101]

Production was very low in 1955 (none struck in Denver or San Francisco, most likely the halves were struck in December and not released until 1956

[DWLange]

The demand for additional half dollars in 1955 was very low, and these coins were not released until the spring or summer of 1956. This information came from contemporary accounts published in either The Numismatist or The Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine, I don't recall which one or which issue.

 

The 1955 half dollar coinage was performed monthly in small quantities, typically about 25,000/month, and it seems to have been a make-work project. There was a surge in production in December, when 72,682 pieces were struck, yet still these were not made available until later. Perhaps the Mint anticipated a demand for additional halves during the holiday shopping season, but existing stocks must have proved sufficient.

 

Collectors were not able to obtain 1955-dated halves until the following year, when the Treasury began accepting orders for its uncirculated sets. These were not put up for sale until the end of the calendar year for which the coins were dated, because the sale price was determined by how many different coins were issued by each mint. Orders were taken until March 31, 1956, and the sets began shipping around that time. Coins outside of the sets did not appear at banks until the late spring, as noted above.

 

No 1956 halves were coined until February, when just over half of that year's production was minted.

[physics-fan3.14]

Very interesting, Dave. I had never heard that before, in all of the Franklin books I've read.

[e1cnr]

dang, I was going to put that down as a guess but never did...

 

 

 

probably I am still upset because the 1936 Norfolk half dollar was not included as a US coin with a plow contest as a possible eligible (and I got a prize late last year).

[DWLange]

Very interesting, Dave. I had never heard that before, in all of the Franklin books I've read.

 

That's because so many writers of coin series books don't bother to read through those old magazines. There's a wealth of information waiting to be mined, and I included many such bits of trivia in my own books on various coin series. They are usually more of entertainment value than anything else, but sometimes this information can be very useful. The time frame for use of the Large S mintmark punch in 1928 was confirmed by me by comparing the months in which each denomination was coined with the roster of denominations known to have this odd mintmark size.

 

Until recent decades the U. S. Mint was very forthcoming about its monthly coin production, and this information was duly reported in all of the numismatic periodicals through much of the 20th Century. It has only been since the 1980s, when the Mint seemingly was overcome by its own proliferation of non-circulating coinage, that these valuable bits of data were no longer shared. In fact, it's doubtful that the Mint knows how many of each denomination it coins from month to month.

[sc7000]

Thanks for the reply and detailed answer. Interesting

[RWB]

Note: David Lange's research and publications are of the highest quality. This in stark contrast to many coin books that merely repeat ancient rumors or invent incidents (as in Breen's Encyclopedia) to create an authoritative veneer.

 

Details, such as those presented above, are the glue that connects the arcane operations of minting with the tangible world of numismatics. Without them, we lose context necessary to fully understand events and their consequences.

 

[Conder101]

Until recent decades the U. S. Mint was very forthcoming about its monthly coin production, and this information was duly reported in all of the numismatic periodicals through much of the 20th Century. It has only been since the 1980s, when the Mint seemingly was overcome by its own proliferation of non-circulating coinage, that these valuable bits of data were no longer shared. In fact, it's doubtful that the Mint knows how many of each denomination it coins from month to month.

Oddly enough they went silent on those monthly figures right after they spent a ton of money installing new counting equipment that they claimed would give them even more precise accounting of the number of coins made. Instead they went from monthly reports to quarterly,and they only started providing those after Coin World filed a FOI case against them mint to get the mintage figures.