Silver Dollar Blog - How the GSA Inspected 3 million Morgans for Mail Order!

 When the treasury holdings were getting low; dwindling from 180 million Morgan Dollars down to 28 million in 1964 the treasury decided to do an audit. Out of this audit 3 million Morgan Carson City Dollars were set aside and distributed by mail order.

The GSA (General Services Administration) took on a huge task in just the packaging aspect of the operation. Packaging started in mid-fall 1972 and didn’t finish until mid-summer 1973. Dr. Goldman assistant Director for Technology of the U.S. Mint came up with this idea for the assembly line to ensure no scratches or missed Silver Dollars

• Store in vault
• Counted
• Obverse Inspected
• Placed in plastic Insert
• Dusted
• Reverse Inspected
• Placed in Clear Plastic Holder
• Inspected
• Placed in Presentation box with description
• Inserted in Mailing carton
• weight check
• date stamp
• packed
• weighed
• stored
• mailed
  

Two assembly lines were set up consisting of 22 women on each line plus several supervisors and helpers to make sure nobody ran out of boxes and such. Each line could pack up to 10,000 boxes during an 8 hour shift. Security was top priority as you can image. Each box of 1,000 coins had its own seal and was recorded. You needed two people to open the vault which was guarded 24 hours a day by a security guard.
The final step…. Mailing!

Photo Source - Library of Congress. The photo is of Mrs. Edness Wilkens secretary to Nellie Tayloe Ross who was the director of the mint. At the time she lived two doors down from the mint and gave part of her silverware for the first coins, April 11th, 1938. A true coin collector!