Reading through the forum and i can't find any topics on Mint coin dies. So i have a couple questions: 1. Where do the die(s) go after a mintage hits it's limit? Are the archived, destroyed, recycled? any links... 2. What's stopping a Mint from keeping a die for a few years and then pumping out some more coins? (laws, or what governing body watches this) ie. Pandas, i've noticed ppl pay a lot more then its spot value for coins of recent yrs. Cheers
More of a numismatic question than a 'silver' one. from what I can gather old dies get shipped to China for responsible disposal. Some like the Mary Thaler get reused for evr, the rest get stored at the Mint from what I can gather, too expensive to throw away but good for historical study and research.
Depending on what the die depicts, it may be archived by the mint or destroyed. A used die is more likely to be archived because, storage costs aside, it is still useful as an educational resource for future designers and sculptors and the mint may decide in the future to re-use it, say for an "anniversary" release or to resume production on a regular basis. The 2007 British sovereign, for example, was pressed on dies that Benedetto Pistrucci (the guy who created the St. George and the dragon design) actually worked on that had been sitting in the Royal Mint Museum since the 1820s. The mint went over them and touched up the areas that had been damaged and lost their detail so the sovereigns from 2007 onwards are slightly different to the moderns ones made before that. If I remember correctly, they've continued the touch up work on subsequent releases as well.
