Normally I would post a blog on Thursday morning, but this week because of a server migration issue, my ability to post anything will be blocked. This is a situation that could possibly last all day. Rather than have people wondering what happened, I figure it is better to write something now.

The Friday posting should proceed normally.

In my younger and more impatient days, I used to think writing about the weather’s effects on numismatics as a waste of space. I didn’t care about the weather and I wasn’t interested in what others thought about the weather or how it affected them.

But now that I am middle-aged, I have personally experienced the cabin fever aspect of late winter and the urge to ditch the indoors for some activity outside. I am much more closely attuned to the seasonal pattern in coin collecting.

I find myself writing about it every year.

We are approaching summer. Collectors have lives beyond their sets and the summertime is when many of them throttle back and plan summer vacations.

If you are already thinking about your summer plans, join the club. You are a part of the seasonal hobby pattern.

Commercial activity slows down. Dealers decide they can safely leave their businesses untended for a week or two to go off and recharge their batteries.

In the years that the market is booming, the human tendency to want to get away is overruled by another very human tendency to take advantage of profitable opportunities that are easier to find in booms.

This year the market is not booming. It seems to me that the human need to get away for awhile will have ample time this summer to express itself.

After Memorial Day this trend will begin to kick in, but more likely, it will be after the June Baltimore show for coin collectors and the Memphis paper money show in late June that those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, to borrow Nat King Cole’s words, kick in.

When the Los Angeles American Numismatic Association convention gets going at the beginning of August, I will start looking for the seasonal upturn to begin.

So if you find yourself wondering what might be happening in July, perhaps it is time to plan your own getaway to refresh yourself and come back vigorous and ready to commence playing the great numismatic game.

April Mint production numbers have been released and those who have an interest have been focusing heavily on cents, nickels and dimes.

The cents make a natural focus because of the attention being paid to the four new designs this year, the second of which will reach the public beginning May 14. Almost 230 million more have been produced, all being of the second Lincoln design. This number leaves it on track to match the output for the first design, but of course, one month's production does not guarantee a pattern any further than to confirm a Mint preference to run at a fairly even pace.

Nickels and dimes are being scrutinized because there might not be any more struck this year. Through April, nickel production was just under 40 million at each of the two circulating coin production facilities in Philadelphia and Denver.

Dime production is higher than nickel production, reaching almost 100 million at Philadelphia and 50 million at Denver.

So what do I do? I decided to look at the Territorial quarter mintages.

What do they show? In the month of April Philadelphia struck 26.52 million coins. These are all very likely the Guam design. Denver struck 19.6 million.

Since there are six designs this year, that leaves two production months for each design, though striking the D.C. quarter began before the beginning of the calendar year.

If the quarter numbers are half of a two-month run, Guam totals would fall from the Puerto Rican mintage totals, but by less than you might think. Philadelphia would be on track to match its Puerto Rico ouput, and Denver would drop from 86 million to roughly 40 million, or 39.2 million if you precisely double the 19.6 million April production total.

May production could rise, knocking these numbers into a cocked hat, or the production rate could fall yet further, amplifying the sense of scarcity among collectors.

Mintages of 40 million or 50 million quarters is a novelty for collectors because it has been almost a half century since numbers like these were the norm.

Collectors being collectors will likely pay close attention to these numbers and perhaps squirrel away more of them than they should.

The low 1955 output caused that year to stand out for Washington quarter collectors, but because collectors of the time were guided by the mintage totals, quite a few have survived in high grades. The 1955-D has a mintage of just about 3.2 million, but right on up to about MS-63, the prices for the coin hardly differ from issues with 10 times that mintage.

Will that kind of pricing wll play out for Territorial quarters 50 years from now?