Today’s Mail Bag question comes from Art who asks why USCoinNews is no longer publishing the weekly Mint Sales Report articles. Almost every week in 2019 since the site’s founding in May 2019 through to mid-November 1, I published this report for readers. But since then there hasn’t been one. Why?
Art contact me via the contact form on the About page – and you can use it too. They write,
You use to write about the mints (sic) sales every week early on. Now you don’t post them at all. Why? I liked reading those
Art
Art, the answer to your question is simple. The United States Mint has not been updating this report. The last update to the report was January 12, 2020. At the time, I chose not to post on it, assuming that the report would be updated the following week. That, in turn, would allow me to write about sales increase week over week. That hasn’t happened yet.
The report source is open to the public and you can find it at https://www.usmint.gov/about/production-sales-figures/cumulative-sales . If you go there today, you’ll see that it hasn’t been updated since January 12th.
Believe me, I’m frustrated by this too. see my Tweet from a few weeks back:
As the editor of this site, I always found it an interesting analysis to do each week, understanding what Numismatic items that collectors were buying from the Mint. For example, last year is was amazing to watch the spike in sales of the Apollo 11 commemoratives as we approached the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. Without this sales report, that would have been lost.
The bottom line Art is I don’t know when the Mint will begin publishing the Mint Sales report again. What I do know is that once it is published on a consistent basis that I will be starting those articles back up here on the site.
And by-the-way, if anyone from the United States Mint happens to be reading this post (Michael White, Office of Public Affairs at the Mint, I’m looking at you), please start getting this report posted again. I, and readers like Art, want to see it.