2011 Mint Schedule
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Indentured Servant on -
I cannot cite specific articles but I'm pretty sure that earlier production and sales of annual mint sets have been in the works for many months. In any event it was certainly before Mr. Moy announced his departure.
Reading posts here and on numerous blogs around the internet it is amazing to see how many things Mr. Moy gets blamed for that are entirely out of his control. I've heard blamed for everything from lame, politically correct designs, to hiring amateur designers, to poor pricing of Mint products. More often than not I believe he is simply ensuring that the decisions made by others (Congress etc.) are carried out.
The issues I lay at his feet are material acquisitions, quality control and terrible customer service. By customer service I'm talking about website and phone issues when it comes to ordering limited edition products, vague to useless FAQ's, and ignorance of many customer service reps. (PBGS contractors) Personally I have found nearly every employee I've spoken with to be very courteous and kind but nice only goes so far when you are looking for answers.
My experience with buying from the Mint only goes back to the previous contractor in Nashville. Many of you lifelong collectors probably have different experiences but if all of the things I see Mr. Moy being blamed for were laid at your feet I'd say that you'd be unfairly judged a failure as well.
Bill
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Permalink Reply by True Money on -
I am in complete agreement Bill. Blaming Moy for everything is absurd! I think he has actually set the stage for better things to come.
-True Money!
Indentured Servant said:I cannot cite specific articles but I'm pretty sure that earlier production and sales of annual mint sets have been in the works for many months. In any event it was certainly before Mr. Moy announced his departure.
Reading posts here and on numerous blogs around the internet it is amazing to see how many things Mr. Moy gets blamed for that are entirely out of his control. I've heard blamed for everything from lame, politically correct designs, to hiring amateur designers, to poor pricing of Mint products. More often than not I believe he is simply ensuring that the decisions made by others (Congress etc.) are carried out.
The issues I lay at his feet are material acquisitions, quality control and terrible customer service. By customer service I'm talking about website and phone issues when it comes to ordering limited edition products, vague to useless FAQ's, and ignorance of many customer service reps. (PBGS contractors) Personally I have found nearly every employee I've spoken with to be very courteous and kind but nice only goes so far when you are looking for answers.
My experience with buying from the Mint only goes back to the previous contractor in Nashville. Many of you lifelong collectors probably have different experiences but if all of the things I see Mr. Moy being blamed for were laid at your feet I'd say that you'd be unfairly judged a failure as well.
Bill
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Permalink Reply by Buffalo on -
I think the scheduling and release dates have to be credited to Moy since that obviously took time and planning.
I agree that Moy has been blamed for things that he can't control, but I do think he shares some of the responsibility for poor designs. I have read many comments by members of the CCAC lamenting the mundane designs that make it through the Mint design commitee to ever reach any chance of final approval. Many of these comments are to the point that better designs that convey a real message are weeded out too early in the process and never make it through this committee. At least the way I understand all of this, the committee is under the Mint Director's authority. That doesn't change the requirements for the coins that the Congress builds into the legislation, or the Treasury Secretary having the final approval, but it certainly does impact the coins we eventually see. The following is a comment I read by one of the CCAC members regarding one of the ATB designs. I think the frustration is evident, and clearly directed at the Mint's design committee.
"While copying an existing monument might be the "best thing" you or I could hope for, it is not the best a creative artist would hope for. We have artists and other creative types in society because they do not think and work on the same, mundane plane of perception as the rest of us clods.
Society looks to them to bring more than a copy of some old monument to the coin. They should bring new perceptions, unthought-of interpretations, or magnificent insights into meaning and people. Creativity is nurtured on freedom of ideas, of encouragement by those of us less talented in such things. The Mint design committee should not be saying “Awww, geee, a statue is OK,” it should be saying “Here’s the place, the event and where it will be expressed. Bring us your best.” The results are not always easy to understand, but they are nearly always better than the simplistic, the easy, the ordinary, the repetitive, the commercial.
We accept too little, and fail to demand the best. This, in essence was TR’s mantra, and it is no less true today than a century ago."
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Permalink Reply by Lee Grant on -
My experience with the Mint is not a long one. It started with the acting director who preceded Moy. Under Moy's tenure is when things went to hell. Surely Congress may have been the source of some problems but they have been around much longer than Moy and in more than two hundred years they have never gotten better. Other Directors apparently were able to function adequately under the political idiots in Congress. I will certainly admit to my prejudice of Moy's performance as Director but I believe with justification and reason. My two major concerns with the Mint were that the quality of Proofs were dismal and the methodology in making Proofs showed simple ignorance of coin production.
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Permalink Reply by Clair Alan Hardesty on -
My recorded order history with the US Mint website goes back to July 2000 and includes some 95 orders, including subscriptions. I can say that I never had reason to complain or question policies or procedures until January 2009 when PBGS was awarded the fulfillment contract and things all but fell apart. Even with the introduction of the immensely popular UHRDE, average daily orders to the mint were little changed over the ten years of records I keep. Since 01/01/2009 I have kept a spreadsheet of my orders, capturing order date, promised shipping date(s), in stock dates, actual ship dates, CC charge dates, and delivery dates. In addition to PBGS seemingly having no understanding at all that the mint had policies in place that it was supposed to follow, like requiring a signature for expedited orders and free upgrades to expedited shipping for precious metal orders and orders over $300, they also seemed to have no knowledge of existing mint contracts with UPS and DHL/FedEx. The DHL to FedEx changeover was not smooth and is still not providing the level of service that DHL used to. FedEx does not appear to have been ready to do this type of business (SmartPost) and must have lost or eliminated the DHL employees that had that knowledge. As director, Moy clearly failed to direct. There was no evident action on his part to do anything about poor performance of contractors. There was also a clear relaxing of quality standards, with product being allowed to leave the mint that would have been waffled in previous years. While continuing to espouse the goals in the annual reports that no profit should be made by the mint, Moy clearly had a hand in raising margins by raising prices and both lining the pockets of poorly performing contractors but also delivering millions to the general treasury. While that may seem like a good thing and even I think it is, it is in direct opposition to the goals that Moy continued to espouse in the reports, specifically to reduce margins to the point that as little profit as possible was made without ever going in the red and costing taxpayers any money for mint bullion and numismatic operations. I do blame Moy directly for these kinds of things, as well for the failure to bring the website and the entire fulfillment process into the 21st century. The mint continues to be proud of its stated goal to ship from stock in one to two weeks when the goal should be one or two days. I also blame Moy personally for the mint putting up a stone wall that customers seeking information were never able to penetrate. When we sought information on the UHRDE “issues” we were met with silence and when we finally broke through that we were fed either meaningless dribble or outright lies. Moy also could and should have been lobbying congress hard for a relaxation of the bullion laws to allow numismatic products to be minted starting all the way back in 2007 but he waited until it was way too late to do anything but tell us that he had to follow a law that did not say anything about a prohibition on minting the products we wanted. I cannot bring myself to believe that Moy really cares about following a vague law that may or may not say that AP bullion sales trump consumer numismatic sales when he has, for the past two years, totally ignored a very specific law requiring one NA dollar to be minted for every four presidential dollars produced. The numismatic Eagle problems also fall squarely in Moy’s lap as far as I can see. This year, after much public outcry, and without any change in the law, one month of lax bullion orders allowed the mint to divert enough planchet production to proof coins to post the fourth largest mintage of proof SAEs on record. There were at least three such months in 2009 that should have allowed both proof and uncirculated versions to be minted and it is Moy’s fault that they weren’t. The mint should have been buying every available ounce of silver without regard to order volume since they know that any excess can be turned into numismatic product that sells at fantastic margins. Moy couldn’t even get his pet project right. The UHRDE was sold to the public billed as a business strike coin when it is clearly no such thing. TR and Saint-Gaudens would have considered each and every one of those coins a glorious proof, an act that I think tainted its glory. Then, the much anticipated but late book that came “with” the coin turned out to be as much about Moy as anything else, a fancy hard bound resume. To Moy I say simply, good bye and good riddance.
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