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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I got to admit, I'm having some nostalgia today, Nia. You want to know why?
N. Rodgers: Tell me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because one of my fondest memories as a child was doing chores for my great grandfather, and he would pay me with coins. The nostalgia is as I would walk from my great grandfather's house to my mom's house, which was no more than three or four blocks, my pockets would be full of coins. I would hear the coins hit against one another and they would make that metallic sound.
N. Rodgers: There's a certain sound that your pocket makes when it has coins in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: As a kid, and listeners, I'm not going to go ahead and prolong this walk down memory lane. But as a child, I grew up poor, so having that sound and that feeling of pockets full of.
N. Rodgers: Of having money, of my own money.
J. Aughenbaugh: My own money. Pockets full of coins.
N. Rodgers: You don't get that anymore. Nobody has a pocket full of coins.
J. Aughenbaugh: Full of coins.
N. Rodgers: My grandma had a one of those jars that you build ships in, these big glass jars with the tight neck and instead, it had pennies in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They put pennies in there because already at that point, pennies were not valuable to them by the time I was born. They were when they were much younger. But by the time I was born, and my grandparents were old, they had this jar of pennies, and they would clearly come home and separate out the coins, then they would keep the "real coins" in their pockets or in their purse or whatever, and then they would put the pennies in this big jar. When we came over, we got to pull the jar over and play with the pennies, almost like legos. They could build things and you could play with them and there was just a lot of fun running them through your fingers. Man, nobody does that anymore because everybody pays with a card.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, everybody pays with a card.
N. Rodgers: Everybody pays everything with a card.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, if you're wondering why Nia and I.
N. Rodgers: What the heck this episode is about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Today's topic is the Bureau of the Mint.
N. Rodgers: Yes, remember, we are in our very tiny money series, which we didn't even know we were doing until the first one, and then we're like, I guess we're talking about money. Not only that, but now we're talking about coins. Last time we were talking about people who control banking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This time we're talking about actual physical money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Money. Then our next episode will be about.
N. Rodgers: Which we hadn't planned for at all, but now Aughie cleverly found out that there's a whole different group of people who make paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Paper money. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Paper money and coin money are made by two different groups of people in the federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Today we're talking about the Bureau of the Mint. Nia, the Bureau of the Mint is housed within the Department of the Treasury. That seems to be appropriate.
N. Rodgers: Makes sense. The last episode, our Comptroller of the Currency is also in Treasury.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're responsible for producing the coinage. I love those words. Again, listeners, please forgive us. Nia and I, we are lovers of words. We like interesting names.
N. Rodgers: Words that feel good in your mouth.
J. Aughenbaugh: The in coinage. There was a period of time decade or so ago where people would just tack on AGE or ISH, noon-ish.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: But coinage, actually goes back centuries in terms of usage. But they produce the coins for the United States so that, again, the United States can conduct trade and commerce, as well as control the movement of gold bullion. That's another good word.
N. Rodgers: Bullion. Yes. It's good in cooking and it's good in gold. It's good in both things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we like those multi context words. But as Nia pointed out, listeners, the US Mint, and that's how it's usually referred to the Mint. Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's referred to as the Mint, even though there are the mints because it's really is plural. But it comes as that whole, like everybody just says the Mint like it's the one thing in the one place doing the one thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like referring to Beyonce as just a singer. Listeners, Beyonce is a conglomerate.
N. Rodgers: Yes, she is an empire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, she's an empire.
N. Rodgers: She is an empire.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Mint.
N. Rodgers: It's an empire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's an empire. It's one of two agencies that manufacture physical money. Nia, you made reference to this just a few moments ago about how increasingly today there are multiple generations now of younger Americans who may not have that memory like you and I do about having coins or for that matter, paper money. Because most of us just whip out the card.
N. Rodgers: If you're smart a debit card, so you're not overspending. But if you're me and you're silly with your money sometimes, you pull out a credit card. But cards have taken the place of a lot of cash transactions in the world. In fact, in some places, they punish you for a cash transaction and make you pay more.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But then again, they also make you pay card fees. Anyways, this just do all kinds of interesting things with my money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Somebody's making money on how we spend money. I'm just like, wait a minute. I'm already spending money and you want to make even more money? Well, God bless you. Anyways, the other one is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which is what we're going to cover in our next episode.
N. Rodgers: But right now, we're talking about the Bureau of the Mint, in Aughie's notes, he makes this note, which I just think is an interesting connection. It was created in Philadelphia in 1792 soon after the US Postal Service.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You can see where Aughie's priorities are. Aughie's priorities are mailing stuff to people and paying for stuff. It's interesting that the founders, that was their early priority. Because don't you get Hamilton just after the Revolutionary War saying, we need a bank. We have some money. We owe some people, and we got to figure out a way to take money from all the states and then pay off our foreign debts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, your point here is one that numerous political scientists and historians have made. It's one that I make all the time, particularly when I teach introduction to US government, which is, remember, folks, for the framers, one of the reasons why they fought the Revolutionary War was for economic reasons.
N. Rodgers: We want our own money. We want our own control of our money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Our own monies. In many ways, it's so much like many of us when we move out of our parents houses, so many of our decisions that we make are about money.
N. Rodgers: Unlike many of us, when we move out of our house, the founders got into debt almost immediately.
J. Aughenbaugh: Immediately.
N. Rodgers: Because wars are expensive. Moving into your first apartment is expensive. You have first and last month's rent. You have to get the utilities turned on. You just think to yourself, well, all I have to have is the rent to move into a place, and somebody says, oh, no. That's not how it works. When you say to yourself, I'm just going to run a little war and get free of England, the rest of the countries go, well, it's going to cost you a little bit.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the case of the colonies, they moved across the notion. Somebody had to give them money to do that. It was the British Crown. Even if we didn't fight a war against them, we were still owing them money because they let us move out. The Articles Confederation wasn't working out all that well in regards to the economy. We create a new Constitution. The United States Congress, which has a bunch of authority in Article 1, Section 8, says, hey, we need to make sure that we can get goods and communication from Charleston, South Carolina, to Philadelphia or New York.
N. Rodgers: We've discussed in previous iterations of this podcast the difficulty of not having a consistent coin, that a coin that's worth a certain amount of money in Georgia may not be worth that amount of money in Philadelphia. What are you going to do about that? I am aware that I just compared a state to a city. Georgia to Pennsylvania. You need a consistent set of money that everybody recognizes for trade.
J. Aughenbaugh: This goes back to one of the framers deeply held beliefs, listeners, which was, and this is probably one of the rare times we're going to say this on this podcast, but that commerce is intercourse.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a way to go ahead and communicate with other people, and at that time, what they were really concerned about is, how do you bind different parts of the country so that it does flourish, that it doesn't go running back to mama, in this case, the crown, and say, we can't make it on our own, or we don't make a bad deal with France, who was licking its chops at, hey?
N. Rodgers: Now that's it's no longer a colony of England, maybe it could be a colony of France.
J. Aughenbaugh: France. How do you bind the nation together? Well, you do it through comrades and trade.
N. Rodgers: Through trade. How do you destroy a country? You can do that through trade. If you disrupt trade, what's one of the things we do during war? When you're at war with a country, you try to break its trade because that breaks it internally in a way that killing people doesn't do. It's a much more in some ways effective. In some ways, trade wars are more effective than blood wars because trade is so important to people.
J. Aughenbaugh: But back to the mint, so Nia, as you pointed out, there's actually more than just one mint, physical locations?
N. Rodgers: But wait, you have something else in your notes I have to mention. Sorry. Which is in August notes, he says, the current United States Mint was created by Congress with the Coinage Act of 1792. Part of me loves that sentence in part because the current mint was created in 1792. That tells you in some ways how unchanging the federal government can be. The current mint was created in 1792. For anybody, doing the math is quite a long time ago. We're plus 200 years at this point. I don't know. I just find that delightful. I find that delightful that people think that the government isn't consistent. I'm like, but in some things, the government is so consistent. It's so old school.
J. Aughenbaugh: To your point there, anytime I hear folks say that they want to reform the government, I'm just like-
N. Rodgers: How long do you have? Because you know it's been around a while.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's been around a while. Again, we're all guilty of this. Our political memories are so short-term.
N. Rodgers: We think that what's happening now is what's always been happening, and you're like, oh, but no.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or we think that what's going on today is brand new, and I'm just like, whoa.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. It's both ends of that spectrum.
J. Aughenbaugh: Spectrum. I'm just like you do know that the Postal Service.
N. Rodgers: Has been around forever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Forever.
N. Rodgers: Ben Franklin was the first Postmaster General. Hello. He was out flying kites with keys attached to them. This is before electricity.
J. Aughenbaugh: The mint.
N. Rodgers: Good luck just getting rid of it tomorrow. Sorry. I just found that sentence particularly charming. Where was it originally? It wasn't in treasury because treasury didn't exist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, before even that, to your point, the colonies thought coinage was so important that one of their first resolutions after the Revolutionary War in the Congress of the Confederation in February of 1782, so a decade before, was a resolution to establish a mint.
N. Rodgers: We ought to have some money.
J. Aughenbaugh: We need to have money.
N. Rodgers: We need to have American money. We need to have our money that's not British money and doesn't have the stupid British crowned head on it. Look, it has somebody else on.
J. Aughenbaugh: But, Nia, to your question, when the mint was initially created, it was placed in the State Department. We've talked about this when we did, Nia, the episode about the State Department. Many Americans don't understand that a Department of State, as initially conceived, was not outward-focused, interaction with other nation-states. A State Department, historically, was the department that organized things within your nation state. In many states today in the United States, they have a secretary of state whose job is to basically organize state government. Back then, a state department was not concerned necessarily with international relations. It was concerned about how do we organize this brand new country? Well, we're going to need coins. How do we go ahead and make sure that people who buy stuff in New York, from farmers in Virginia? Well, we'll just put the Bureau of the Mint in the State Department because we're organizing things within this brand-new country.
N. Rodgers: We're organizing money to keep us tied to each other. We get the Fugio cent, which is based on Ben Franklin's Continental dollar, and it is ugly as all get out because it's got about 85,000 symbols on it. I know. We're going to hear from somebody who says, "I live and die by the Fugio cent. It is the most beautiful coin ever." For you, I am happy, but when I look at it, I don't think it's particularly attractive. But then again, I like things that are a lot less; I don't want a lot of stuff on the coin.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was busy.
N. Rodgers: It was busy. That's a good way to put it. It's visually busy.
J. Aughenbaugh: My grandmother would go ahead and say, that looks busy. When I was a kid, and she said that I was like, "How can something look busy? Either you are physically busy or you're not." She's like, "There's just too much going on there." We're going to get into this because there are various mints around the United States, but the headquarters initially was in Philadelphia. Now, the headquarters is like most federal bureaus, departments, and agencies. It's headquartered in Washington, DC.
N. Rodgers: Well, but Philly was the capital, wasn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it was.
N. Rodgers: It makes sense that it's in the capital.
J. Aughenbaugh: The capital.
N. Rodgers: That things moved to the capital.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, we have how many mints, Nia?
N. Rodgers: Currently?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They're four: Philly, Denver, West Point.
J. Aughenbaugh: San Francisco.
N. Rodgers: San Francisco. Thank you. Sorry. They're basically spread out across the country.
J. Aughenbaugh: The one that surprised me was West Point, New York. Because if you think about it, it's Philly, Denver, and San Francisco, they're all major cities. West Point, New York, most Americans would not know existed, if not for the fact that that is where the army is.
N. Rodgers: The war college. I mean, if you're talking about West Point where people graduate to learn to kill each other. Sorry. I didn't mean that the way that came out. I didn't cause West Point graduates fine minds. People who totally think strategically and both sides in the Civil War graduate from West Point?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: West Point is not like you don't see minted coins out of West Point though. The way you do out of Denver or Philly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Philly or San Francisco.
N. Rodgers: Or San Francisco? The way you can tell, folks, is if you do come across a coin, there's a front side and an obverse of all coins. If you turn it over to the obverse, you will see a tiny little letter on the right hand side, and that tiny little letter tells you which mint something came from. I know this because when the commemorative quarters were coming out. Remember the quarters?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The whole big each state was going to have a state quarter, and it was going to be beautiful and wonder ruled the fabulous. My mother collected both the Denver Mint and the Philadelphia Mint of those coins. For some reason, she wanted them from both mints. I don't know why they were exactly the same.
J. Aughenbaugh: I remember in 1976, Nia, each of the mints handled certain states. Production of the commemorative bicentennial.
N. Rodgers: It was a big deal to get one from another like you travel to pick up coins from state. The other thing that we have we being the people of the United States, we have a stash of boleon.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, this is where many Americans think the mint is located. But really, we have a gold depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
N. Rodgers: That's where you get the phrase, it's harder to get into than Fort Knox. The security at Fort Knox is pretty tight.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's pretty tight. There have been numerous movies made where criminals.
N. Rodgers: People trying to break in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Break in. Then when they get in, you can't get out.
N. Rodgers: You and George Clooney should just go straight to the Bellagio and skip right over Fort Knox because it's not going to work out in your favor.
J. Aughenbaugh: In addition to the depository, we also have branches of the mints, that were once located in other cities in the United States or in other territories. Throughout our country's history, we've had mints in Carson City, Nevada, Nia, you'll like the next one, Charlotte, North Carolina.
N. Rodgers: Prove?
J. Aughenbaugh: I can't say it.
N. Rodgers: The Long Nega?
J. Aughenbaugh: The Nega part always screws me up in Georgia. New Orleans?
N. Rodgers: It's probably Dahlonega. It's probably how it's pronounced. Dahlonega.
J. Aughenbaugh: In Georgia. We had New Orleans. But the one that fascinated me was Manila, Philippines.
N. Rodgers: The Philippines were a territory of the United States for quite a while, weren't they?
J. Aughenbaugh: Quite a while after the Spanish American War. The thought process of the government was since we've acquired all those territories, see previous podcast episode about territories. Many of which were located in.
N. Rodgers: The Pacific.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the Pacific, we might need to have a mint located.
N. Rodgers: In the Pacific. That's true, 'cause we only have a couple of territories on the Atlantic side. Anything else is on the Pacific side.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the Pacific side.
N. Rodgers: I'd love to get ahold of a coin from a manila. That no longer exists. None of these exist anymore. There's not one in Carson City. I know there's not one in Charlotte.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, initially, the mint was in the State Department. Then it became an independent agency in 1799. But then in 1873, the Congress put the mint in the Department of the Treasury.
N. Rodgers: For good 80 years there, it was on its own.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was on its own.
N. Rodgers: 70 years. It was on its own. Then it was like, wait, you can't be independent. You need to be under somebody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We'll put you in the treasury.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first director of the mint was actually a scientist. I love his name David Rittenhouse.
N. Rodgers: Rittenhouse.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Didn't he work on submarines? No. Do I have that right. No. I'm going to have to look that up. Nia is going to have to look that up.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first superintendent of the mint is credited with coming up with some of the coin designs. His name was Henry Voigt. Another important position in the mint is the chief engraver. Almost all of the chief engraver positions we're talking about apparently some prominent names within the coin industry Nia. Frank Gaspero, William Barber, Charles Barber, James Longacre, Christian Gobrecht. Again, the engraver is the one who takes the design and then engraves it right onto the coin.
N. Rodgers: Well, they make a thing that squishes the metal.
J. Aughenbaugh: A cast.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. A cast. By the way, the written I was thinking of a Denver Rittenhouse. This is the Rittenhouse that figured out the transit of Venus. He's an astronomer in addition to a bunch of other sciencey stuff. Wrong Rittenhouse. Sorry. But what I think is fascinating when you go on a mint tour is that you find out that those casts have to be discarded after a certain number of stamps because they become dull.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: They can no longer squish the metal in the proper way to make it have the correct because there has to be a certain depth to the coin in order for it to pass through people's hands and not rub out the identifying marks on it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Watch. That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's a whole thing. If you get a chance, by the way, listeners to go to a mint and watch that process, it really is absolutely fascinating. It's fascinating to watch the actual casting and process involved, because now when they make coins, they have to be careful and well, they've always needed to be careful about this. The cast can't be too complicated. Or it can't be clearly squished into the metal. There's also standards about how it has to be. You can't just put any piece of art the way you can. You can more easily do that on stamps. But when you get to coins, there actually has to be some negative space so that the coin actually works as a coin.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. It's funny you mentioned the process for if you will, making the coin because once the United States started creating multiple mints is where you get the identifying, if you will, mark or feature on the coin that denotes the facility of the origin.
N. Rodgers: Charlotte had a C, Dahlonega had a D. Philadelphia had a P.
J. Aughenbaugh: New Orleans.
N. Rodgers: Carson City had two Cs. CC?
J. Aughenbaugh: Two Cs.
N. Rodgers: New Orleans was a NO? I think New Orleans was an NO.
J. Aughenbaugh: NO.
N. Rodgers: What's interesting to me is Dahlonega had a D, and then when it closed, Denver, I guess, became the only D.
J. Aughenbaugh: D, that's right. It's funny you mentioned about Dahlonega and Charlotte because they were created to convert local gold deposits into coinage. That makes sense. But what significant, if you will, event in US history led to closure.
N. Rodgers: Affected those two places. Civil War.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. New Orleans did have an O mint mark. But the Civil War closed. Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans was closed at the beginning of the Civil War, did not reopen until the end of reconstruction.
N. Rodgers: Then eventually closed again. Because we don't have a bent in New Orleans.
J. Aughenbaugh: New Orleans anymore. That's right. Carson City was created in 1870 because the West was being, if you will, settled and developed post Civil War. But it only operated for 23 years.
N. Rodgers: Wasn't there a silver rush in?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Isn't that also why you get the San Francisco Mints you're getting.
J. Aughenbaugh: The gold rush, yes.
N. Rodgers: Partly that followed where the money was in terms of metal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, I know Nia and I oftentimes repeat ourselves, but there are certain themes when you look at, for instance, government documents, government agencies, et cetera. With government agencies, you can really track the history and expansion of the United States as a country by looking at, just in the case of the Mint.
N. Rodgers: Growth and changes of the Mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: The opening and closing of various mints so tracks US history.
N. Rodgers: I think that people don't really consider, but the US government is in many ways, practical. Like you get an expansion of the Forest Service after Theodore Roosevelt says, you know what we should have, we should have national parks. Because then you need a whole bunch of people to take care of the national parks. These things that happen that become expansions of something or move from one place to another are doing that for pretty much practical reasons most of the time, which is why when something happens that's arbitrary, it feels weird because people say, but wait, why would we do that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, I'm going to use the Postal Service as an example. As the United States begins to move westward, the Postal Service relying upon carriages and horseback riders, just was no longer effective or efficient. Now you have the United States Postal Service, in many ways, greatly interested in the creation of railroads.
N. Rodgers: Because they want to move mail quicker across the country and then, of course, commerce wants that, as well.
J. Aughenbaugh: But if you think about, for instance you move West, and you're being told by the Postal Service, you might not get mail for half a year, that's wholly unacceptable.
N. Rodgers: Because you've been used to getting it much faster. That's the other thing people don't realize is the government often is trying to maintain service that it has established. Through like all those people who lived in the Eastern part of the United States were used to a certain level of service. Then when they went out West, they're like, we're Americans. We expect our mail in a reasonable amount of time. Because that's just how people are. It's fascinating. Then when you get flight, one of the first things that gets built for the Postal Service is a hub in Memphis. Between the East Coast and the Texas and Denver high populations to move mail. It's fascinating.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I hear Americans with the usual lament of the government's not responsive, I'm like, you look at the history of the United States, in many ways, the government has been extremely responsive on a very practical level. We now have millions of Americans West of the Mississippi and they expect mail. They expect coins.
N. Rodgers: They expect to have commerce. They expect to have all this. Then you expand into Alaska, and those people expect it. If you tell Manila they belong to us, they're like okay, well, then we want mail service. We want coins, and we want to. If we're going to be part of this thing, then.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then we should get service just like everybody else.
N. Rodgers: Ask the Romans how easy it is to manage an empire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hard. Then the government has, like most of us in our lives, we have an oh crap moment. We're like, oh crap.
N. Rodgers: We've overreached. We have to.
J. Aughenbaugh: What do we do now. We're now into the history of the Mint. We're in the late 1800s. Then again, for me, this is always fascinating. Because I study bureaucracy, I study public administration. The Mint Nia gets its first female acting director in 1911, Margaret Kelly, at the time, and I verified this with various sources, she was the highest paid woman on the government's payroll. I'm like, of course, she was.
N. Rodgers: Not because she was taking coins?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Not because she was embezzling.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, no, she wasn't.
N. Rodgers: But it tells you in a capitalist society who is truly valued.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: President Schmezdn. What I need is the person who's running the Mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: To be paid well.
N. Rodgers: That's awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a number of hearings in front of Congress, she insisted that women in the Bureau of the Mint be paid equally with men.
N. Rodgers: I should say clarifying what I just said. She was not higher paid than the president. She was the highest paid woman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Women.
N. Rodgers: Woman in the government, not the highest paid individual. But she did fight for women's equality within the organization. There's no reason she shouldn't. There's nothing about that work that is biological sex focused, like.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: You can physically run the Mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Because again, you hire other people to come up with the designs, to do the pressing of coins, et cetera. You're a bureaucrat. We already talked about Manila in the Philippines. Their Mint was created in 1920 and they did production for two years, and then they did it again from 1925-1941.
N. Rodgers: The war years.
J. Aughenbaugh: The war years. The Mint mark was an M for Manila.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, I know you were going to get to this, but I find it fascinating.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: We talked about the mint marks. That peef with Philadelphia, by the way, is a new thing, relatively speaking, 1980. Before that, Philadelphia didn't have a mint mark. Everybody else had a mint mark, but Philadelphia was like, no, I'm the Mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Mint.
N. Rodgers: I am the original. I don't need to tell you who I am. These other mints need to tell you who they are. I love that about Philadelphia. I love that even though it was a Co-Mint. Mint Denver and Philly in San Francisco, it wasn't really. There was one, and then there were the others that were forced to use marks because Philly was like, nah, been here since the beginning. I don't need a mark.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not only could Philadelphia say we were the Mint.
N. Rodgers: We're the OG.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're the original gangster. But until 1968, the Philadelphia Mint was responsible for nearly all official proof coinage. Philadelphia could always go ahead and say, you guys basically do our work.
N. Rodgers: Because we want it to look like this.
J. Aughenbaugh: This.
N. Rodgers: Everybody goes, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, times change. But Philadelphia was just like, we don't need a mint mark, because the rest of you all need to go ahead and have your little claim. D for Denver. Whatever.
N. Rodgers: S for San Francisco.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're the original.
N. Rodgers: We don't need no stinking marks. Then at some point, probably somebody said, just put a P on your, quit being obnoxious. But what I like about all the different mints is that they're all allowed to make specialty things for their parts of the country. For the Olympics or for I don't know, all kinds of cool events that happen. They get to say, this is a local minting of something.
J. Aughenbaugh: To me, this was fascinating. You mentioned these like local products. The local commemorative.
N. Rodgers: I know that there's a controversy you're going to talk about later about local products and services.
J. Aughenbaugh: Services. But to me, what was fascinating was the Denver Mint was the one that came up with the $10 gold 1984 Los Angeles Olympic commemorative.
N. Rodgers: Not the San Francisco.
J. Aughenbaugh: Francisco. It's like how did the politics play out on that one?
N. Rodgers: No kidding. We've decided we're going to do this. Wait, what?
J. Aughenbaugh: I can only imagine the folks that put on the LA Olympics were just like, it's the LA Olympics. We don't want those folks from San Francisco Mint. We'll go ahead and have the Denver folks do it for us. I could just see this playing out. I could be wrong, but the politics there had to be fascinating.
N. Rodgers: A little bit crabby.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, as you pointed out, the creation of the San Francisco branch or Mint opened in 1854 to serve the goldfields of the California Gold Rush. They have an S mint mark.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, the San Francisco Mint, and again, you can tell how much of an historical nerd I am. The San Francisco Mint was one of the few buildings in the city of San Francisco that survived the great earthquake and fire of 1906.
N. Rodgers: That's impressive because almost the entire city was leveled.
J. Aughenbaugh: Leveled, and the building served as the Mint until 1937 when they went ahead and replaced it with a brand new building.
N. Rodgers: Holy cow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I didn't merely just survive. It lasted for more decades.
N. Rodgers: It mostly does proof coinage these days. It's the San Francisco.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It took over that operation from Philly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Philly. With the exception of the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
N. Rodgers: Is that still done in Philly?
J. Aughenbaugh: It was done in Philly.
N. Rodgers: No. Susan B Anthony is printed in San Francisco.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Got you..
J. Aughenbaugh: Then West Point. West Point is the newest facility. It was created in 1988, but let's be accurate here. West Point had a gold bullion depository since the Great Depression in 1938. Right?
N. Rodgers: You don't put all your gold in one bucket, so it's not all in Fort Knox. Some of it's in West Point, and probably some of its other places that we don't know about, which would be the smart thing would be for us to not know what some of it, but I think West Point doesn't really do it. Doesn't West Point do mostly collector stuff? You commonly are not going to pull out a handful of coins and see something from West Point.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct. Because, again, Philadelphia basically handles nearly the bulk of the Northeast Mid-Atlantic area.
N. Rodgers: They do like funky platinum coins and Woo coins for collector. Those of us who use coins who can barely just grab a handful of coins and manage it, and then there are people who do collector coins that are made of either certain material, they're made of platinum, they're made of palladium, that stuff, and they're special dies that cut only a certain number of something, and so they come in little numbered cases. This is number 126 out of 500 strikes at this thing. The value of that has to do with how many there are and how collectible they are. If it's a truly ugly coin, it may not collect, but if it's a beautiful coin, may collect like art. It may collect thousands and thousands of dollars for that penny or that dollar or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: You just mentioned Fort Knox. To be very clear, as Nia just indicated, listeners, the United States government's gold reserves, most of it is kept in Fort Knox, but it's also kept, as you mentioned in West Point, but some of it's also kept in Denver. Again, that only makes sense.
N. Rodgers: Spread it. You'd hate for somebody to hit you with one theft and get all of it. Although anybody who's ever picked up a gold bar can tell you. In the movies, when they fling them around, no. They are much heavier than that. They're not a flinging around thing. They're very heavy.
J. Aughenbaugh: The United States has significant gold depositories. It is truly amazing how much. Again, because the value of not only the US currency, but other nation states currencies are tied to the value of gold, the United States government is always going to have significant gold reserves.
N. Rodgers: Even though we're not on the gold standard anymore.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is necessary to provide, if you will, any consistency and stability in the world's currency exchanges. Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Can we mention the things that they do besides?
J. Aughenbaugh: The functions.
N. Rodgers: What we've been talking about are the coins, because everybody, when they think of the Mint, they think of quarters or nickels or dimes. Side note, we are not going to get into the controversy right now about whether a penny is really worth a penny because it's not. It costs more than that to make a penny. We all know that, and Aughie and I don't really have an opinion, although I do support getting rid of the penny, but we're not into enough financial depth that we can tell you whether that's truly a good idea or not because there are people who are like, no, if you kill the penny, it will destroy the economy as we know it. But side note, we have had lots of coins in this country that we no longer have. We have had half penny. We have had things called trime which was a three-cent penny. We've had coins that have gone away, and it did not destroy our government. Even though we're not going to get into that in this episode, don't let that be a thing of fear for you. If they decide to get rid of the penny or the nickel, it will not destroy the American economy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Now, if they decide to get rid of money, that will destroy the American economy, but as long as we agree on some form of exchange, we'll be fine. Societies long before they had money, they had other stuff they exchanged for commerce. As long as there's an agreed upon exchange, everything will be okay. But they do other stuff besides coins. What else do they do, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: We've already talked about the various commemorative coins, and those can be tied to specific events or specific, if you will, historical figures. But they also design and produce congressional gold medals.
N. Rodgers: I love that. We're going to give out the Congressional Medal of Honor. Will somebody call the Mint?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: And tell them that we need one, because it's not like you'd have those laying around somewhere. They would have to be struck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Deliberately because you don't want them to be stolen. You don't want them to be broken. You don't want them to be lost. They'd have to be struck deliberately and then sent to you. I'd love that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Mint's also responsible for producing even foreign coins.
N. Rodgers: I was surprised by that that you had that in your notes that sometimes other governments are like, hey, if you're not doing anything, could you run us up a few of these?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, we have special agreements because at times other nations either don't have the facilities or the capacity. Say what you will about the United States government, but over time, we have developed certain expertises, if you will, that are recognized around the world. We've already talked about the designing producing special coinage. Safeguarding and controlling the movement of gold bullion is extremely important.
N. Rodgers: There's a reason that the Secret Service is part of the Treasury.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You want people who are elitely trained. If you're going to move even a small amount of gold bullion from one place to another, you're not going to just stick it in the back of Aughie's Jeep and drive from Denver to Philly. That's not going to happen.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're not going to hire the local moving crew in a panel van.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, don't look in these boxes. That's not going to happen. It's interesting to me that they have that security enforcement aspect to their work. How do goings get into the system? Because a guy who works for the Mint, probably two guys who work for the Mint, show up at a Federal Reserve Bank. Your bank gets its money from the Federal Reserve Bank. That's where money comes from. Your bank says to the Federal Reserve Bank, hey, I need $100,000 in nickels or whatever, to be distributed across all of my banks. They make an electronic transfer that says, here's what I'm worth. Here's my $100,000. Then the Federal Reserve Bank in their local area, we have one here in Richmond, says, here's your hundred thousand dollars in nickels, Wells Fargo, and then Wells Fargo distributes those to its various branches across. However far it's going to do that. The Federal Reserve has to get those coins from the Mint. The Mint delivers them to the Federal Reserve Bank, who then distributes them to your banks, who then distribute them to you. That's the system. There's also this delivery mechanism of, I'm going to need you to show up next week with $456,000 in pennies and whatever. I imagine that that is also quite secure. I'd hate to see a wreck on the highway with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Mint 2000 was responsible for the production of 28 billion coins. Now, the Mint has their own police department that is responsible for the protection of Mint facilities, employees, and reserves. They coordinate with, you mentioned the Secret Service, they coordinate with local police departments, all to go ahead and make sure that when what you just described, a bank reaches out to the Federal Reserve and says, we need to replenish our supply of quarters. The Federal Reserve says, how many do you need? The bank says. We need this many. The Federal Reserve says. Let's do the wire transfer of your money to our accounts, and then they contact the Mint. At that point, the Mint police is going to be interacting with the Federal Reserve.
N. Rodgers: Security, and then, depending on if it has to go across state lines, FBI might be involved.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you have to go ahead and contact the state police departments and then local police departments. Because again, if you had that stealing or embezzling going on, then it lowers confidence, and then you have unaccounted for coinage
N. Rodgers: Which is not good because now you don't know how much is in circulation and how much isn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Federal Reserve makes decisions on their what they think is an accurate reading of the amount of coins and currency floating around in the system, and other nations count on this.
N. Rodgers: Because if we have 10 million more dollars floating around in the system, then we tell people, 10 million is nothing, but 10 million more coins is a third of the coins in circulation. That's enormous. Can we talk about crabbiness about the Mints?
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, do remember, the Bureau of the Mint, just like the Comptroller of the Currency in next week's episode, are all part of our series on government agencies that you might not know or you might not know very well.
N. Rodgers: We're not trying to pick on them.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, but there are criticisms.
N. Rodgers: But there are some legitimate criticisms. One of them for me is some of the coins are downright ugly, U-G-L-Y, this should not be a coin of the American people. The design, I'm wondering, did a five-year-old design this? Nothing to slam five-year-olds. Five-year-olds are lovely, but they shouldn't be making coins for the federal government, just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some of them, particularly on commemorative coins, they lack historical accuracy.
N. Rodgers: Could you make Sacagawea look more white? Come on. You know what I mean? It needs to look like the person, or at least the closest facsimile to the person that you can get. I know there's limits with what you can do with die casting, but still, come on. Also, sometimes they're rubbed funny or they're not clean.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got poor quality. Again, on one hand, you could go ahead and mitigate that.
N. Rodgers: Well, they make 28 million a year. There's bound to be a few bad ones.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, it is the ultimate representation of currency.
N. Rodgers: It should be pretty clean and pretty tight. If you can't get this right, I'm not sure what else you're doing over there.
J. Aughenbaugh: We shouldn't have issues with uneven finishes, strikes that, was nobody paying attention that day?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Nobody pulled one off and looked at it and said, what coin is this supposed to be?
J. Aughenbaugh: In pretty much almost any other assembly line, there's usually somebody there whose job is quality control.
N. Rodgers: I have to wonder if did they call in sick? Also, they have some ridiculous stuff. The Mints make things. Do you remember in the back of your grandma's magazines, like the Reader's Digest or the Southern Living or whatever, there would be advertisements for things that you could get from the Mint?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The number of products had to be ridiculous.
J. Aughenbaugh: This all gets brought under this category of product proliferation.
N. Rodgers: I like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: We've had America the beautiful quarters, we have presidential dollars. I didn't even know this one existed. I had to look it up. First, spouse gold coins, then we have the five-ounce silver coin series. Nia, you know this. I'm up late many nights. I got the TV on.
N. Rodgers: You see the infomercials.
N. Rodgers: How much crap are you people making? Is there really a market for this?
J. Aughenbaugh: Then related to so many of these products, is that the Mint charges a premium for commemorative coins, and the criticism is, is the Mint supposed to be a money making operation?
N. Rodgers: Your American Eagle special print quarter from wherever is going to cost you $400. You're like, wait, it's a quarter. Its street value is 25 cents.
J. Aughenbaugh: Twenty five cents.
N. Rodgers: At what point am I being robbed, basically?
J. Aughenbaugh: You're robbed. Then you have many Americans, some of whom are gullible who don't understand that paying $100 for a coin that's only worth 25 cents.
N. Rodgers: On face value a dollar, and maybe five dollars to another collector.
J. Aughenbaugh: Collector?
N. Rodgers: Yes. They're preying on you buying it at three o'clock in the morning when you're upgrading papers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You see it on the TV.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is the thought process for many purchases made on Amazon, I'm sorry.
N. Rodgers: It's the vulnerable. There should be a lockdown you can put on your account that's like, don't let me buy anything between 1:00 AM and 6:00 AM. They also complain about their packaging.
J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness.
N. Rodgers: Your quarter that you bought. Aughie buys a specialty quarter, the Aughenbaugh quarter, which is its own special struck thing. I swear to you, it's going to come in a box the size of your house.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: With more peanuts and packaging and everything else, and then inside will be another tiny little box with your actual quarter in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: What are we doing here?
J. Aughenbaugh: Then inside that box, there won't just be coins just floating around. Then they put them in that fake plastic.
N. Rodgers: That hard plastic.
J. Aughenbaugh: Look how nice this will look on your mantle.
N. Rodgers: You're like, well, if I don't want to put it on my mantle, where else can I store it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Should there be instructions for me to open this up so I can go ahead?
N. Rodgers: That's the other thing. The instant you open that plastic thing, it loses all value. All value is gone. If you don't know what you're doing, if the first time you get one, you open it up because you're like, how cool is this thing? You've now destroyed any value to it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I love the Mint, but come on now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Unlike any government agency, there have been various customer service issues. Shipping, beyond the bulky packaging. There have been things that the Mint claims have been sent and nobody's received them. There have been delays, getting difficulties in refunds. By the way, the Mint is not known for giving you refunds. You bought it, it's yours.
N. Rodgers: It's yours. You get it and it's not what you thought it was, too bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sorry.
N. Rodgers: It says on their ads, these are non returnable. Once it's out of the Mint, we don't want it back. Period.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Part of that's security, but also part of that is they're just the kind of agency that sells you something, and it's a bias. What is it? It comes as it is. I can't remember what the name of that is in shopping. It's an as-is sale. It's like when you buy a used car and you drive it off the lot, and then immediately the muffler falls off. They're like, that's a you problem, not an us problem.
J. Aughenbaugh: Problem. That's right. Many government agencies, website crashes.
N. Rodgers: They're known for that. When there's a big release during the Olympics, that Olympic coin, nobody could get one for quite a while because every time you went on the site. Now in fairness, that was also back when the Internet was.
J. Aughenbaugh: Relatively new.
N. Rodgers: Native dinosaurs.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then there has also been workplace concerns. The Mint historically has had a terrible record in regards to racial discrimination.
N. Rodgers: Really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is that of employees?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Employees abusing each other?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Not coming from leadership, but the complaint about the leadership is that the leadership should have known that these events were going on and they weren't doing anything. Then outdated policies and practices. Again, this is not a huge shock if you study the bureaucracy because a bureaucracy is old as the Mint. It doesn't change its standard operating procedures all that quickly.
N. Rodgers: Well, and that's really unfortunate that there's a culture of discrimination.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is terrible.
N. Rodgers: That needs to be fixed. When I'm president, we'll fix that. Okay, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Because, no matter where you work, but particularly in the government, I would argue that all people should.
N. Rodgers: Government has a higher obligation to be non discriminatory.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: To root out the people who would do that and be rid of them. Because if they're doing that to their co-workers, they're also doing that to patrons. They're also doing that to the public at large. If they're a jerk to one person, they're a jerk to everybody, and they need to be gone.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's unacceptable in the government.
N. Rodgers: Especially in the government. Even more than most employers, I would think.
J. Aughenbaugh: But listeners, I hope you enjoyed our discussion of the Mint. Again, one of the joys of doing this series is I end up finding out stuff.
N. Rodgers: I want to bring back the trime. I want to bring back the three-cent coin. When I'm president, we're going to get rid of all the people who are jerks there, and we're going to bring back the trime. Those are our two goals. That's what we're going to run on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and for me, I like nice, clean designs on my coins.
N. Rodgers: That's true. I want them to be pretty.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, you want pretty. I just like non-busy. To use the language of my grandmother, I want non-busy designs
N. Rodgers: I want straightforward coins that just say five and 10. Don't give me all the other stuff. Just what is this thing worth?
J. Aughenbaugh: I got to admit when you went in and said they created the Aughenbaugh commemorative, I can just see it now. On the front is this grizzled person holding a coffee mug.
N. Rodgers: Now, I would just think of just a coffee mug, and on the back is the straightforward number of how much it's worth. On the front it's a coffee mug and on the back is $25. Now I know what this coin is worth.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are a whole bunch of my former students who are just like, my goodness, that's so triggering.
N. Rodgers: On that happy note, we will talk to listeners again next week about engraving and the other side of coinage in the Americas, which is paper coin or paper money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Looking forward to it. Thanks, Aughie.
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