I want to comment on the Proof Set boxes. The boxes were issued until some time in 1955, not stopped in 1952 as Harvey Stack stated.

I lived near Philadelphia at that time, and remember going to the mint to buy Proof Sets. The guard at the door of the mint would ask you, "what do you want"? If the answer was to buy Proof Sets, he would direct you to go up stairs, and to the right. There was a window where they sold the sets. If my memory is correct, the price per set was $2.10, and you could buy up to five sets at one time.

I always enjoy reading Harvey Stack's tales of his early numismatic days, the latest being his recollection of the proof set market in the early 1950s. There was, however, one factual error that I imagine a number of readers spotted: The transition from boxed proof sets to the pliofilm flat pack occurred midway through 1955, not in 1952 as Harvey stated.

That was the Mint's own terminology for the variety of polyethylene used. It appears in its literature of the time.

As someone who dropped out of coin collecting for some 40 years there are many numismatic surprises. I attended my first major coin show this year in Long Beach. I was startled by junk boxes with only proof coins in it.

All collectors have pawed around in dealers' junk boxes over the years, but at the Long Beach show I was surprised to see that ‘proof sets' of U.S. coins are no long so important in ‘sets.' Dealers have broken them up and put the individual coins in cardboard and mylar 2x2s and tossed them into all-proof junk boxes at their tables.