It has been many years since a coin struck for circulation has become scarce. The 1950-D nickel was not struck for collectors only. The 1955-S cent was not coined to sell on a Mint Web site. Mintage totals were based on what the economy was demanding.

With the mintages of the first two of the six District of Columbia and Territorial quarters now known, we have the tantalizing number of 53,000,000 Puerto Rico quarters struck in Philadelphia.

That is the lowest total since 1962. So there is some basis for me to feel like a kid again. The 1962 quarter was not impossible to find in change. There were enough, but I seemed to see many more 1962-D quarters than the mintage ratio would have indicated, but then I lived in the part of the country where the coins came from Denver.

The 1958 quarter from Philadelphia was hard to find. Its mintage, though, was  7,235,652. That, too, was not rare, but I looked long and hard for it in my change and I was jubilant when the elderly man on my paper route who attempted to teach me to count to 10 in Welsh paid his bill with coins that included the 1958.

Is such a low mintage possible today? If the banking system continues to back up with old coins, can the next four quarters in the 2009 sequence continue their mintage declines?

If the Philadelphia production declines at the same rate through the six-design quarter run, we would be close to the 7 million figure.

It would be interesting to see how collectors would react to it.

The calendar will turn the page to April on Wednesday. Spring is supposed to be here in Iola, but fresh snow frustrates those of us who believe the calendar.

Frustration of another kind perhaps is occurring on the American Numismatic Association Board of Governors.

One of the leftover items in my notebook from the March 6 meeting in Portland is a motion relating to the former executive director Christopher Cipoletti.

A twice-delayed arbitration is supposed to occur in April. The ANA board would like to get the matter of Cipoletti’s firing in 2007 behind it. Will it be delayed again? We’ll see.

One thing that wasn’t delayed was a request by former president Bill Horton to strip Cipoletti of a Presidential Award that Horton had given him in the final minutes of his presidency during the banquet at the Milwaukee summer convention in 2007.

When President Barry Stuppler brought the matter up at the tail end of the meeting, a motion was made by Vice President Patti Finner and Seconded by Gov. Walter Ostromecki to rescind the Presidential Award at Horton’s request.

Former ANA President Bob Campbell commented to the board, “I think it is a bad idea.” He also said it was hurtful.

Legal Counsel Ron Sirna said the motion was in order after remarking that Cipoletti had cost the organization $2 million to $3 million in litigation. “There is a substantial basis for Mr. Horton’s request.,” Sirna said.

The vote carried unanimously.

This is Green Bay Packer country. I am a Packer fan. Certainly, though, I am not the biggest Packer fan in this building. I am happy when they win the weekly football game, especially when they beat the Chicago Bears. I am disappointed when they lose, and make that double when it is the Bears that beat them.

During uptrends for gold, the longer they go on they come more and more to resemble a sporting event rather than a market or economic event. Prices rise, the gold crowd cheers. Prices fall, they are disappointed.

With each gain of the past seven and a half years, advocates cheer and predict even higher prices. After each Packer win there is a discussion about what it will take to get into the playoffs and ultimately the Super Bowl.

This is human nature.

But how high is up for gold, really?

I think it is safe to say that gold will have a higher dollar price in 100 years, in 50 years, or even in 20 years, than today, but the closer you get to tomorrow, the harder it is to predict gold’s price with any accuracy.

Gold’s price fluctuates.

If I ever state that the Packers will beat the Bears in the next game by 100 points, people will correctly conclude I am either nuts or don’t know the first thing about how a football game is actually played.

If I write the Packers will win by 7 in the next outing, I will be slapped on the back and someone will probably offer to buy the next round of beers because the group, Packer fans all, will have something to drink to.

With gold, what current forecasts are the 100-point Packer equivalent and what forecasts are the 7-point edge?

That’s the true test for gold buyers today. Everybody is a gold fan, but there are limits even to gold.

I had lunch with Russ Rulau yesterday. He was venturing out after having had a bad case of the flu that seems to be going around Iola this month.

He mentioned that he had lost nine pounds in the illness siege but was eating heartily at the Crystal Cafe to begin the process of regaining that weight.

We talked of many subjects, but one of note comes to mind. Even at the age of 82 he is working hard to maintain has database of token information.

He has authored books on Hard Times tokens, the tokens of Latin America and the magnum opus, Standard Catalog of United States Tokens, which incorporated the earlier Hard Times token work as well as those he wrote on merchant tokens and other subsets of the field.

Tokens have waxed and waned in popularity. They are truly historical American numismatic output. The Hard Times tokens are particularly apt today because they chronicled the sorry state of American business and finance in the 1830s and the political brinkmanship of the period between President Andrew Jackson and his opponents in Congress.

Jackson took an expansive view of the Presidency. He vetoed legislation he did not like or that he thought was contrary to the interests of ordinary citizens.

That may not sound particularly noteworthy except for the fact that previous Presidents vetoed bills only if they thought they were unconstitutional.

Jackson’s veto pen vastly expanded presidential power. The famous Jackson token declaring, “I Take the Responsibility,” showing him with sword in right hand and a money bag in the left over a strongbox makes a great deal of sense when seen in this light.

For now, gold bullion is overshadowing tokens, but Rulau is preparing for the day when tokens are back in the limelight and the inevitable explosion in values when they catch up to the recent gains registered by coins.

Sales of the Lincoln commemorative silver dollar by the U.S. Mint are rolling along. More and more it looks like a sellout in the making, perhaps as early as next week.

Anybody who wants the coin should get cracking.

There are 450,000 coins available to be sold individually and another 50,000 will be offered later this year in a special set.

As of the most recent Mint statistics in my possession the Mint needs to sell just 26,549 more coins to take care of the 450,000-coin group.

So far, proofs are the more popular with collectors. Some 296,488 have been sold. For the uncirculated version, the sales total so far is 126,963.

If the commemorative does indeed sell out, is this a signal of a renaissance in demand for the modern commemorative series as a whole, or is it simply a broken clock being right twice a day where after many years the Congress was bound to pick a theme that resonates with collectors?

We will know more starting March 26 when the Braille silver dollars go on sale.

Interestingly, the Mint offers a Braille dollar option with a special capsule that can be easily opened to allow buyers to touch the readable Braille on the reverse.

This is an interesting idea, but those buyers who do indeed open the holder will find that they are reducing the collectible value of the coin if they touch it.

Perhaps this is a series where a cheap bronze duplicate medal would have made sense for those buyers who might have the urge to finger their coins.

There is something of a paradox going on with William Henry Harrison Presidential dollars.

For the first time in the Presidential dollar series, the total mintage has dropped below 100 million coins when you add the Philadelphia and Denver mintages together.

This continues a downward trend that with one minor interruption with the Andrew Jackson coins has been relentless since the series began with over 340 million George Washington coins.

What’s the paradox you ask?

Well, I had an e-mail from the U.S. Mint to tell me that the “P” mint rolls of the coins, which contain 25 pieces, are already sold out.

How can this be with dollar coins backing up all over the place?

Is there some hidden source of demand that I am not thinking of? Have William Henry Harrison coin clubs sprouted across America secretly?

I wish I knew.

Last week’s Mint Statistics column reported some 29,000 rolls of “P” mint coins sold, but that number is 8,000 less than for the previous Martin Van Buren coin, which in turn was lower than previous issues.

One thing that does make sense is that the “P” mint rolls disappeared first. According to mintage figures, Philadelphia struck 43,260,000 dollar coins while Denver made 55,160,000.

Both mintages seem ample, especially when considered in the light of the huge declines in mintages for coins that actually do circulate, the cents through quarters.

So why the early sellout?

It is a mystery to me.

As the news gets better for the American Numismatic Association, interest in its politics declines and the main focus once again returns to activity on the bourse floor.

I returned to Iola yesterday from the National Money Show in Portland, Ore. I left the La Quinta at which I was staying at 6:15 in the morning, so I did not see anything of the Sunday bourse hours, but judging from the packed up tables on Saturday night, conditions on Sunday were probably slow.

Public attendance was very healthy. The bourse was packed by many people including large numbers of family groups. Treasure Trivia was a smash hit for the kids. The ANA ran out of prepared forms and were sending participants off with photocopies.

We at the Krause Publications table were stop 16 and we ran out of the encased Buffalo nickels that we were giving away at 1 p.m. Saturday.

It was fun to be a part of the convention. Less fun was sitting in the board meeting, the Town Hall meeting and the candidate forum. Good news can put you to sleep, but the actual work of the board had been done almost entirely behind closed doors previously.

The board adopted a budget that projected expenses of $4.4 million and has a small surplus excluding the unknowable legal fees. The adopted budget projects expenses that are almost $1.5 million lower than what was adopted for the prior budget. Dues will rise June 1 to $46 for a regular membership and there will be an admission charge for nonmembers to future ANA conventions.

Liquid assets in the endowment went up by $5 million to the $7 million to $7.5 million range as Ben E. Keith stock was sold back to the company. Because the terms of Kenneth Keith’s will directs stock to ANA after family heirs die, ANA had a good year in getting more stock. Larry Shepherd, ANA executive director, reported that even with the sale ANA had the same number of shares remaining.

The candidate forum had 12 participants and three candidates who could not make it. There were two moderators.

The audience was hardly larger at 19 persons. If you subtract those of us who were paid to be there, ANA employees, volunteers and the usual convention group, there was precisely one person in the audience whom I didn’t know.

So naturally I introduced myself to him to find out who he was. He was Michael Labosier, secretary of the Pacific Northwest Numismatic Association.

He deserves a medal for sitting through the entire event.

All candidates seemed earnest in their desire to help ANA and nobody staked out positions that were outside the general consensus.

I think that is enough for today.

Collectors in Colorado and California are having some luck in obtaining the new Lincoln cents. In the last couple of days I have had reports from a number of readers.

David Perkins tells me that he obtained the new cents at his bank in downtown Denver. He also points out that the mint is right there in the city.

J.L. Smith writes me that 2009-D cents are available in Bakersfield, Calif.

Michael Weber reports that the coins are obtainable in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

I am also still getting e-mails where it still is no dice. The most recent is from Jim Vitek. He tells me Omaha banks don’t expect to get any of the new cents.

Frustrations aside, it has been a long time since so many people have been focused on the Lincoln cent. That can’t help but be a good thing in the long run.

I expect to stop by the U.S. Mint booth here at the National Money Show in Portland, Ore., when it opens later to day to see what they have for sale. I looked at it yesterday during set-up and saw that the back display panels are promoting the Territorial quarters and the new Lincoln cents.

I continued to have lobby conversations and an interesting one yesterday was with Richard Nachbar. Alan Herbert and Myrna Lighterman were also part of the conversation.

It began when Nachbar made a comment to me that he thought my forecast for the price of gold was too low. He said it in ambiguous way, so my first words to him were, “You mean it should be even lower?”

He smiled a tight lipped smile that communicated that he wasn’t real pleased to have his leg pulled a bit.

His main point was that he thinks the government and the banks are illegally suppressing the price of the precious metal and he expected it to pop far higher in price at some point.

He was a bit vague about his plans to retire from the business. He indicated that what was going on with gold would eventually affect everybody on the bourse floor, but the comment when he made it had a negative implication that he did not explain.

But that is part of the show experience. I talk to many people in an attempt to get the big picture.

I made it to Portland yesterday. The worst part of the trip was the walk from my car to the Outagamie County Airport terminal outside Appleton at 5 a.m. The temperature was 10 degrees or so and the wind was gusting to around 40 miles per hour. I had to walk directly into it and by the time I arrived inside my face was red and stinging. My luggage tried to leave the ground, or at least skitter away from my control, each time the wind reached a crescendo.

At the gate in Chicago for the second leg to Portland, I ran into three others heading west. American Numismatic Association Gov. Joe Boling, his wife Louise, and ANA Gov. Wendell Wolka were on the same flight.

Wendell and I had the same idea about going to the hotels once we made it to the Portland airport. We wanted to try the light rail service where for $2.30 we were taken downtown. He got off the train at the Double Tree and I went two stops further along and made it to the La Quinta, which is about a block from the station.

Halfway up that block I ran into Florida's Pat Hynds. She was heading to the convention center, which was a block in opposite direction. She and her husband Gene are national volunteers helping out at the convention on exhibits.

She had then sad news that longtime hobby volunteer Larry Gentile had died.

These accidental meetings set the tone all day. At lunch I ran into New Jersey's Jim Majoros. We talked about his success with the Ocean County Coin Club and the value of steady efforts to recruit new members.

At the convention center I hardly left the lobby, just standing there as each new arrival appeared.

Miles Standish of the Professional Coin Grading Service said he thought "Mr. Gold" was still successfully keeping dealer cash flow high and he expected that to underpin the coin market at the convention.

Patti Finner, ANA vice president, arrived with the news that she was not participating in the candidate forum on Saturday morning. Her race against Cliff Mishler for the presidency is obviously topic one when when members discuss the election. However, the forum is in conflict with her Boy Scout program that she had committed to running three months ago.

The overall feel of the convention, which hasn't yet started, is a good one. Dealers set up this afternoon. I am glad I can be there. That will probably be me, just standing in the lobby.

I was joking around a bit on Friday with colleague Lisa Bellavin. We we talking about what we would be doing in the future, including getting a video player for our Web sites.

We did some video last year on our trip to Berlin and we even did a prototype talk show that was a lot of fun, but the ways of a corporation can move quickly or slowly depending on cost and how a function is perceived.

So, Lisa and I were talking about numismatic video in the context of the delivery the day before of an Ultra High Relief Saint-Gaudens double eagle gold coin to another colleague, Bob Van Ryzin.

The coin is gorgeous and well worth the wait, unless of course, you missed an appointment with a grading service to have it slabbed MS-70 and sell it on eBay.

So our oohs and aahs about the beautiful gold coin mingled with our discussion about video. I was saying that numismatics is not exactly a visually action-packed topic unless we take a sledge hammer to Bob’s new coin and shoot a video of it.

Lisa and I gave each other that look you get when something is about to hit you as uproariously funny. We burst out laughing.

See it now, numismtatists gone wild.

I am sure we would get a huge viewership as numismatic topics go, but I am equally sure that I would get a lot of hate mail about the vandalism.

I am not advocating numismatic vandalism, but extreme behavior posted online seems to be the signature feature of Internet video. Sure, more and more movies and TV programs are being downloaded, but behaving badly still seems to be thriving.

Bob’s coin is safe.

Lisa and I had our fun.

Numismatic video is coming, but keeping you from yawning will be the hard part.

Users of the U.S. Mint’s Web site have been writing me in recent days to report that the Track My Order function is not working.

They wonder what is going on.

When something doesn’t work, it is quite natural to wonder why.

According to the U.S. Mint yesterday, the system was retrieving old data from the prior contractor that was handling the delivery function last year.

The expectation is that March 6 will see restoration of the function for registered users who have a username and a password.

So tomorrow we will see.

This anxiety over order status is both a positive and a negative for the hobby. It is nice to see so many people drooling over the prospect of receiving new coins from the Mint.

The negative is if we ever find out that the only reason they are anxious is simply to game the system and turn around and sell the coins on eBay after having them slabbed in a very high grade.

While the profit motive has always been a part of the coin hobby, when it becomes the dominant part we tend to get into trouble.

I am reminded of my first proof set order. I sent for two 1969 proof sets by mail on opening day, Nov. 1, 1968, and got delivery six or seven months later. That was routine timing then.

I am glad there was no such thing as order tracking at the time because I wouldn’t have had time to be a kid.

What’s your problem? I might say that to some collectors who were acting like a bunch of old ladies, but that is an insult to old ladies. I apologize to every single one of them in advance.

However I ask the question because coin collectors seem to be morphing into Internet-fed gossip mongers who are up to no good.

The most recent target was the Mint’s policy of not requiring signatures when coins are delivered to collector homes.

These collectors complained so loudly that the Mint has now changed its delivery policy effective March 13 to require signatures for packages containing $300 or more in value or precious metal coinage.

Why?

The complaints sprang less from what actually happened in the way of losses suffered to the simple conjecture of what might happen.

What’s next? Demands that collector packages be blue, delivered only between the hours of 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. and that uniformed drivers wear the colors of the local powerhouse football team?

If a business like the Mint thinks the risk of theft is so low that it need not require signature, why should that matter to the collector recipients?

All they need do is accept the coins and enjoy them.

Apparently that isn’t good enough.

I feel like I’m watching an Old West movie scene where someone is waving a pistol at the bar.

“OK, Mint, start dancing.”

Sure enough, the Mint starts dancing.

Is this healthy in the long run?

Collectors often ask what they can do to attract future generations.

The first thing I can think of is to stop acting like creepy old men with too much time on our hands complaining that the world today is nothing like it used to be.

I also remember the complaint letters I used to receive from readers who missed deliveries when signatures were required and then had to drive somewhere to pick up a package that couldn’t be left behind.

Oh boy, I will start getting those complaints again.

The ninth in the 40 or so First Spouse half-ounce gold coins with a $10 face value will go on sale Thursday at noon at the U.S. Mint’s Web site.

This is the first coin of the third year in the series. Issued at a rate of four coins per year, counting this year, there are eight years or so to go.

Will the downtrend in sales continue? I would expect so. The question is simply by how many.

I was looking at the trend line this morning for the proofs. The first three, Washington, Adams and Jefferson, sold out 20,000 proofs. The Madison coin sold 18,355 followed by Monroe, 7,910; Adams, 5,720; Jackson, 6,112, and Van Buren, 5,011.

Except for the hopeful uptick that occurred in the Jackson total, it is obvious that sales are heading almost straight down.

Where is the bottom? Approximately how many people are so committed to buying these coins that the sales totals can fall no lower?

I don’t really know, but perhaps history is a guide. It is interesting just how similar these totals are to the mintages of the gold commemorative coins of the early 20th century.

The 1903 Louisiana Purchase $1 gold commems had mintages of 17,500 each for the Jefferson and McKinley designs.

The 1904 and 1905 Lewis and Clark dollars had mintages of 10,025 and 10,041, respectively.

The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition gold dollar and gold $2.50 had mintages of 15,000 and 6,749, respectively.

The 1916 and 1917 McKinley gold dollars had mintages of 15,000 and 5,000, respectively.

The Grant Memorial dollar of 1922 had mintages of 5,016 and 5,000 of the star and no star designs, respectively.

In 1926 there was a spike higher for the gold $2.50 for the 150th anniversary of American Independence. The mintage totaled 46,019.

Despite the fact that the population now is about three times what it was at the beginning of the 20th century, and the coin collecting population is many multiples greater than that, it is interesting that collectors are buying these coins at roughly the same rate as their great-grandfathers a century ago.

Perhaps that means the floor for the First Spouse coins is around 5,000 pieces, too, and there might be hope for a sales spike higher when we get to truly popular Presidents who are still remembered by this generation of hobbyists.

But it will be a very long wait until we get to the issues for the wives of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to test this hypothesis.

One thing I can always count on as a newspaper editor is that readers are the best proof readers. No matter how many times I read through material before it goes to press, the possibility is always there that I missed something.

If a typo slips through and is published, somebody always points it out to me. I appreciate the feedback.

This morning as I tried to clear my head for thinking, the thought occurred to me that what I wrote for a time line in my Thursday blog was a week off.

I mentioned heading for the American Numismatic Association convention in Portland, Ore., next week when I should have written in two weeks.

What was I thinking? Well, as with most things, I was in a hurry, my mind apparently was elsewhere and my glance at the calendar did not register the correct information in my brain.

But what is interesting is that nobody called me on it. I don’t know whether to thank everybody for being so polite so as not to mention the mistake, or to wonder if the topic was so bad that nobody bothered to read enough of it to bother with it.

In either case, I am sorry and I will try harder. A blog may be more casual than something for the print medium, but it still should be correct. When it isn’t, I will not hesitate to call myself on it.

Just to be clear, I head for Portland March 11. I am looking forward to it. I have enjoyed my prior visits there.