Silver Eagles Struck at Multiple Mints

Collectors of the American Silver Eagle bullion coin series, coin graders and numismatists who are interested in the history of these iconic coins have long had a suspicion that the coins were struck at multiple branch mints of the United States Mint.

In the early 2000s when demand for these coins was surging, the Mint decided to expand its production of the coins at the West Point Mint by making additional coins at the San Francisco Mint. The green monster boxes for coins struck from 2011 to 2014 had straps on them that indicated they were produced in San Francisco, and many of those coins were sent to the grading services in sealed monster box with the straps. That allowed NGC and PCGS to label them as, for example, 2011 (S), which means there is no mint mark on the coins, but we know they were made there.

Then in early 2017 our whole understanding of which mints made the bullion issues changed when the Mint revealed that the coins had been struck at all three branch mints (West Point, San Francisco and Philadelphia) at different points in the history of this coin and far before we previously thought.

That to multiple Freedom of Information Act requests from a California dealer and Coin World’s Paul Gilkes, we now know where Silver Eagle bullion coins were struck for the entire period from 1986 to 2017. And thanks to FOIA requests filed by NGC and the expertise of their graders, who long suspected multiple mints were involved from small variations in the monster boxes and quality of the coins, they are able to identify the mint that made the coins from the serial numbers on sealed monster boxes and other factors.

A major revelation from this work that occurred in 2020 in response to those FOIA requests is that the coins from 1986 and 1987, which we previously though had been produced at West Point entirely, was actually produced instead at the San Francisco Mint. Then in 1988 about 85%, or 4,249,646 coins were made there plus another 755,000 at West Point. And that pattern continued through 1998 with production split between those two mints with the larger share having been produced at West Point.

Keep in mind that prior to 1998 West Point was considered a silver bullion depository rather than a branch mint, and San Francisco was still designated as an assay office. It was was only thanks to Public Law 100-274 from March 31, 1998 that both locations officially received full Mint status.

From 1999 through 2010 all bullion coins were produced at the West Point Mint exclusively according to the information provided by the U.S. Mint in response to those FOIA requests.

Then from 2011 to 2014 production was again split between West Point and San Francisco until 2015 when almost all the coins were made that year at West Point plus a small run of 79500 at the Philadelhia Mint. The information on production from 2014 to 2017 was received thanks to another FOIA request by Coin World and NGC.

We also learned that in 2016 31,900,000 coins were made in West Point, 4,650,000 in San Francisco and 1,151,500 in Philadelphia. Thne in 2017, by which time demand for the coins had decreased in response to rising silver prices, 13,065,500 were made in West Point, 3 million in San Francisco and 1 million in Philadelphia.

In addition, on the monster boxes for this period (2014-2017), coins made at West Point had either 6-digit serial numbers on them starting with 1,2 or 3 or 5-digit numbers that started with the prefix “WP”.

Coins struck at the San Francisco Mint in 2014 had red-colored straps on the monster boxes and coins from 2016 and 2017 had 6-digit serial numbers that started with 4 on their monster boxes.

Finally, for the Philadelphia Mint coins, those from 2015 used 5-digit numbers on their boxes that started with 1, and those from 2016 and 2017 had 6-digit numbers on them that started with a 5 on their monster boxes.

For the period since then we know that in 2020 an emergency run of 240,000 coins were made in San Francisco when the West Point Mint was closed due to COVID-19, and a million were made in San Francisco in April.

And we know that in 2021 when the Mint made coins of the original reverse type and the new one, production was again split between the three branches. A million of each type was made in San Francisco, and 495,500 were produced in Philadelphia.

And a special run of 200,000 each of the final coins struck of the old design was made at West Point plus 200,000 first struck coins of the new reverse design at the San Francisco Mint.

The grading services continues to indicate on labels for coins submitted in their monster boxes which branch mint struck the coin using a mint mark in parentheses.