I am a few minutes late this morning in posting my blog because when I signed onto my computer, the usual fonts that I use had gone missing.

After opening three documents just in case one or two had been corrupted, I decided to reboot. Fortunately, this got me going again. My wait to get up and functioning was brief.

Computer problems are a fact of  life.  This one I am happy to say was easily remedied.

I have started receiving e-mails from readers who ordered the Ultra High Relief Saint-Gaudens gold $20.

When we reported last week that there could be delays of up to nine months for delivery, I had been contacted by those who had placed orders and had gotten e-mail confirmation of a Feb. 6 delivery. Naturally, they asked what was all this about delay.

Well, now I am getting another batch of e-mails from these same collectors who have told me that they have seen the delivery date pushed back to Feb. 20 and wanted me to be aware of this.

I appreciate this reader input. We will all see how the deliveries go.

Bob Van Ryzin, my Coins Magazine editor colleague, says he has been confirmed, pushed back and then confirmed again at an earlier date. I hope he gets his coin quickly because I am as anxious to see it as I know other readers are.

I have an idea of what it will be like, because I saw the display of the coins at the Mint booth last year at the American Numismatic Association convention. However, there is nothing like being able to hold something at my own desk so I can look at it in my own way.

That waiting and the joy of eventually acquiring a coin is a happy part of collecting. Waiting for a computer is an entirely different sort of experience.

With gold skittering along the $900-a-troy-ounce mark, the Mint has announced that the 2008 American Eagle tenth-ounce gold proof coins sold out yesterday.

Collectors are by now getting used to a new pattern as sales for collector versions of the Eagles close.

As they watch which mintages look low as the year closes, what they see are very large sales surges in percentage terms at the end of their availability.

The one-ounce proof was at 11,722 in the Nov. 9 report. It jumped to 16,327 by the Dec. 14 report.

The half ounce was 3,169 Dec. 14. It leaped to 14,792 by Jan. 11.

The quarter ounce was 4,639 Dec. 14.  The total in the Jan. 11 was 15,229.

The surge for the tenth has been smaller. It was sitting at 10,335 Dec. 14 and was 13,580 last week.

Even the four-coin set had a merry run. It went from 9,569 Dec. 14 to 13,072 Jan. 11.

Are all these being purchased by individual collector buyers, or are there large purchases being made by a very few buyers? If the latter is true, these large supplies (in percentage terms) will overhang the market for quite some time unless some sort of promotion can convince individual buyers to take a chance on them.

These relatively small sales numbers that then large leaps should be a caution flag for anyone looking to do anything other than buy them for the long term. Can you imagine the buzz in the hobby if this kind of sales leap occurred with proof sets or uncirculated coin sets?

By the way, also announced yesterday, the American Buffalo 2008 Celebration Coins sold out.

Is it time to abolish National Coin Week? You might think so if answers to a recent poll question are any guide.

The event that inspires national and local proclamations in support of organized numismatics has been a hobby staple for about twice as many years as I have been an active collector.

But does it do any good?

The weekly poll question that appears in Numismatic News and its companion e-mailed newsletter teaches me a lot. It helps to show what’s on the minds of readers and how strongly they feel about things. It is not a scientific poll, but I think it is useful nevertheless.

With some polls I receive a lot of yes or no responses. Those topics readers have an opinion on, but they are not passionate about them one way or the other.

The more written responses that I get that include lengthy explanations, the more I know that readers are passionate about a topic.

For the poll where I asked, “Will you be involved in any activities to observe National Coin Week?” I received precisely one written response.

My congratulations go to Robert R. Maisch of the Bridge City Coin and Stamp Club in Mobridge, S.D.

There is no prize, but to Mr. Maisch might go the responsibility of turning out the lights on a long-standing hobby tradition that might have outlived its usefulness.

Final mintage figures for 2008 show that the U.S. Mint struck 5,419,200,000 cents. That is down from 7,401,200,000 in 2007 and 8,234,000,000 in 2006.

The two-year decline in percentage terms is around 34 percent. Interestingly, the two-year decline for overall coin production is almost the same, at 35 percent, and much of this seeming difference is simply due to rounding conventions for expressing those figures.

Cents make up over half of U.S. Mint production at 53 percent. Total coin production in 2008 was 10,141,580,000 coins.

Economic conditions play the single largest role in the demand for the one-cent coin. Everybody can see that the economy is sinking badly. Cent demand sinks with it.

However, the economy is not the only factor. 2009 will prove or disprove this assertion. Will the four new designs honoring the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth spur production to the point that it will be a larger overall share of annual production? In other words, will the share of 53 percent in 2008 rise to some higher figure? That is something we will just have to wait and see.

Collectors can be counted on to save cents in large numbers, but for collectors, large numbers are millions rather than billions. It will take a huge public engagement with the new cent designs to push demand up high enough to register on overall 2009 Mint production figures when they are compiled.

Let’s watch and see what happens.

It is frigid in Iola, Wis. The temperature is below zero and the next couple of mornings will be worse.

We have no control over the weather. We who live in Wisconsin just have long experience of getting through it. We look forward to our beautiful spring and summer seasons and grit our teeth, shiver a bit and just get through it.

Reports coming out of the Florida United Numismatists Convention held this past weekend in Orlando, while not frigid, have a cold edge to them. The hot market we have been used to in the last few years has cooled.

Numismatics has a cyclicality to it. The cycles are not as regular as the seasons in Wisconsin, but they are distinct.

I began collecting just before the roll and bag boom crashed in early 1965 and began reading Coins Magazine and Numismatic News in 1967 and 1969, respectively.

The aftermath of the roll and bag boom was not pretty for those who got carried away in the wild speculations of the first half of the 1960s. However, for collectors who were focused on educating themselves and building their collections methodically, little changed. In fact, there were many opportunities that presented themselves to collect sets in areas that were out of the spotlight.

The lesson? Don’t get caught up in what is being mentioned online. Find a quiet area, learn about it, collect it and when the cycle turns, you will not only have gotten through the present period, but you will probably be surprised at how well you do on the set’s value.

I was joking with another staff member yesterday as I forwarded her a third e-mail relating to a possible story in the paper.

Because the topic could have been handled with one e-mail, I commented that this one might be a record for the number of e-mails it takes to get all the information.

This morning e-mail number four was in my inbox. Should I give up counting yet?

When I was learning how to write many years ago, the mantra was always, “Who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how.”

Make sure you cover all the facts. Learn how to write a lead sentence as a journalist and write in inverted pyramid style and you are set.

With e-mail it is sometimes too easy to hit the send key before you have really made sure you have covered all your bases.

I get e-mails saying, “I am a subscriber.” OK,. To what? There are five numismatic titles here and my e-mail is not exclusively Numismatic News.

“Please send me a free copy.” Never mind that I am not the circulation department, but often no addresses are included.

“I have a question.” Well, that isn’t helpful when the question isn’t included in the e-mail. Please state it even if you have sent the same inquiry to three or four other people in this building and you don’t know who should get it.

There are other things, but this is enough to give you an idea of my e-mail. E-mail is a wonderful thing, but it has not endowed me or any other recipients with the gift of mind reading. Make sure the ones you send are complete.

When the six-coin District of Columbia and Territories proof quarter set goes on sale, which according to the Mint schedule, is later today, collectors should celebrate.

Why?

It is a one-year set. Anybody buying it knows that he has the entire proof output for the six designs. Yes, of course, there will be silver versions, but you get the idea. Collectors of my generation put great stock in the idea of completeness.

This set is the pause between two lengthy programs. The 10-year 50-states quarter program ended last year.

Next year begins a quarter program that will stretch out 11 years and possibly 22 years to mark American National Parks.

A one-year program seems a lucky break for us. It is a numismatic equivalent of instant gratification.

Resuming another very long program in 2010 probably seemed like a no-brainer to the members of Congress. The states program worked. It ran for 10 years. It generated a lot of collector interest and revenue for the Treasury. Why not keep the good times rolling?

But will it be received in the same way by collectors as the state quarter program was? I don’t think so. The newness of it, the freshness of the state quarter program made it work. Honoring the 50 states is a concept everybody could understand and even agree with. Most collectors agreed it was time for some design changes to our national coinage and this was the best way to do it.

National Parks are less important. The program doesn’t have the novelty of the state quarter program. And even the state quarter program experienced a falling off of interest as the years went on. The idea that we need design changes to circulating coins does not seem to be as compelling as it was in 1999.

Then there is that completeness question. There is the possibility that the set could become a 22-year set. Who will start collecting a set that can double in size, cost and duration? Some collectors, perhaps many collectors, will not.

The secretary of the Treasury could give the program a lift even before it starts by finding that an extension of the program that hasn’t even been begun yet would not be in the public interest.

Will the secretary do this? Probably not until near the expiration of the first 11-years of the program. But it is in the first year of the program where collectors will make their critical decision to participate or not participate at the same level they did the state quarter program. It is that very long, possibly 22-year time line that will be the most daunting factor in their thoughts.