U.S.MINT REPORTS AND COINAGE

It has long been true that American coin collectors have had an interest in the number of coins struck for a given date and denomination or even a special variety that is worth more than average.

This fascination with mintage figures is well illustrated by the important 1860 book on American coins published by Mint Director James Ross Snowden. He included the coinage data since 1793 but, oddly enough, fabricated some of the figures that he could not find.

For 1823, Snowden listed a mintage of 855,730 cent pieces, but the only problem is that none were actually struck during that year. Cents dated 1823 do of course exist but were coined in 1824; proof 1823 cents were struck in 1823 but no record was kept of the number of pieces made. Prior to 1836, Mint workers paid little attention to the dates on the dies and it is often a difficult task to determine even an approximate mintage for coins such as the 1823 cents.

Another problem for researchers is the confusion between calendar and fiscal years. Beginning in 1857, the published Mint statistics were for the fiscal year ending on June 30. Prior to 1857, most Mint accounts were kept on a calendar-year basis.

Although not possible to cover all of the mintage figure problems over the years, some of the more interesting ones can be