The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 13, March 28, 2004, Article 12

SAN FRANCISCO MINT OPENED FOR DIGNITARIES

  A March 24, 2004 article in the San Francisco Chronicle
  reported on a recent visit by dignitaries to the "new" San
  Francisco Mint, which is closed to run-of-the-mill tourists
  like us.

  "An international group of money experts and a handful of news
  media folks got a rare look Tuesday inside the U.S. Mint,
  where the product is what dreams are made of -- money that
  sells for more than its face value.

  The San Francisco mint on Hermann Street produces proof
  sets -- coins so perfect nobody ever spends them, works of art,
  "like paintings, high quality treasures,'' said U.S. Mint Director
  Henrietta Holsman Fore.

  They are produced in a building that looks like a fort, where
  security is so tight that ordinary citizens have been admitted
  only twice in the last 32 years. The San Francisco mint is a
  $100 million-a-year business, and it makes money making
  money.

  The visitors Tuesday were delegates to the XXIII Mint
  Directors conference, which has been meeting in San
  Francisco. Delegates from 46 national mints and other bodies
  interested in coins and their manufacture elected Fore as their
  next president."

  "The mint building -- called the New Mint to distinguish it from
  the shuttered Old Mint at Fifth and Mission streets -- is located
  atop a bare, windswept hill just off Market Street near Duboce
  Avenue.

  The U.S. Mint is celebrating its 150th anniversary in San
  Francisco. It is the second-oldest manufacturing operation in
  the city; only the Boudin Bakery, which has been producing
  sourdough bread since 1849, is older."

  "Director Fore and San Francisco mint manager Larry
  Eckerman conducted a tour, past a whole series of mysterious
  devices that turn blanks into mint- condition coins. The blanks,
  the tour guides explained, were annealed, upset and burnished,
  then dried with a material that includes ground corn cobs.

  After that, they are pressed; there are 18 coin presses, and
  each proof coin is struck twice with 100 metric tons of force.
  The coins are then packaged by robots and put in cartons."

  To the layperson, which meant nearly all of the media people,
  the process seemed purposeful but baffling. The experts, mint
  directors and others, seemed impressed. "The quality is
  excellent,'' said Barry Richardson, sales manager for Group
  Rhodes, an English coin dealer."

  "One of the employees, Garfield Kinross, explained how the
  robots did the packaging. He was dressed in two-tone shoes,
  a bow tie, colored suspenders and a golf cap.  He looked like
  a million dollars.

  [To view Garfield's get-up and read the full story, see: Full Atory

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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