How Do Coins Get Distributed?

Travelers.

Somebody in the distribution area for one mint travels to the distribution area for the other mint. Eventually enough people travel and bring their change with them enables you to get mintmarks from the other mint.

Either that or the possibility that a FED bank that is serviced by one mint cannot get their needs furfilled in the short term requests coins from the other FED. The Jacksonville or Boston FED being so far from the Denver mint that they may need to be supplied by other FEDS.

I personally believe that coins are miracle across the county by the power of positive thoughts. The less positive thoughts the less choices you have of coins. That's why the current ATB coins aren't circulating in my area. It either this or we don't get enough travelers to my area of the county.

It's a toss up.

In America, coins are authorized by Treasury and struck by the mint, but are distributed by the Federal Reserve system. So when a commercial bank in, say, Florida orders coin, it's the Federal Reserve that decides whether the coins that get shipped there are newly-minted coins from one of the Mints or old already-in-circulation coins from a stockpile elsewhere. As far as the banks are concerned, money is fungible; they don't care whether the coins they get are new coins or old coins. Needless to say, they seek the most economical means of distribution and each of the 12 Districts probably makes up its own mind on which Mint it can order coins from the cheapest. If it's cheaper to ship coins from Philadelphia to Florida, rather than from Denver, then it is Philly coins you will see there.

The whole point of having different branch mints scattered around the country is to reduce coin distribution costs. They'd rather shut down the Denver mint entirely than institute some grand and expensive scheme whereby newly minted Denver coins were just as likely to end up in Maine as in Colorado. It is only the crazy coin collectors who think that money isn't really fungible and some coins are more interesting than others, and only they that care about or would even notice such things as dates and mintmarks.

As discussed in the old thread and the more recent thread on the subject, adding mintmarks adds very little to the cost of coinage production; the combination of tradition plus the extra hoarding of profitable coins caused by coin collectors seeking them has meant mintmarks have stayed.

Of course, for loss-making coins like the 1 and 5 cent coins, the continued use of mintmarks does add to the overall cost of production. Tradition alone keeps the mintmarks on those.

Sap - "distributed by the Federal Reserve System" today has nothing to do with the 12 districts. It's all been outsourced.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/payme...in_about.htm




So the mint sends 1 ton Ballistic Bags of coins to, say Loomis, who rolls them and boxes the rolls and distributes them to banks as requested.

http://www.frbservices.org/operatio...cy/coin.html

Here in Arizona, if I get new coins in my change, they're all "D". Most of the coins I get are "D" and those "P" coins that I see are not frequently encountered. If I do see a "P", it's likely on a coin that took 30 years to find its way to my pocket from where it was minted.

When I've visited Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York;, they're mostly "P" coins.

I'd guess that the dividing line is the Mississippi River but that's only a guess.

Being in Washington state, I rarely see Philly coins. I always hoard them for future collections.