Caution if Touring the Denver Mint

[Recyclersteve]

I was able to put another checkmark on my bucket list earlier this week when I toured the Denver Mint in downtown Denver at 320 W. Colfax Ave. Previously I toured the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints as well as the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington DC.

I really enjoyed the tour, which typically lasts 45 minutes to an hour depending on how many questions are asked.

There are some big cautionary comments that I want to add for those on this site who may be interested. Also, I have already given feedback to the Denver Mint itself as well.

Tours begin a 8am, 9:30am, 11am, 12:30pm, 2pm and 3:30pm and are FREE (quite the bargain). You are expected to be in line a full 30 minutes before your tour begins, which is fine.

This is where it gets weird. Tickets are given out for all six tour times at 7am in the morning. Also, tickets often go really fast and the lines can be quite long. An employee told me that often times during the summer months people get in line as early as 4:30am-5am. So, in theory at least, you could get in line at 6am and not get a ticket to the tour you want to go on at 2pm that afternoon.

Also, the mint doesn't have any parking available to the public, so you must park elsewhere. Many places in the area will charge $10-15 for parking.

Another quirky item. You can bring certain things into the mint, but not others. My wife had to take her purse back to our car and hustle back to be there in time for our tour. I was able to take my iPhone, but it had to be turned off as no photos are allowed.

My wife told me that they do use facial recognition technology on everyone who goes into the mint. So, if you are totally against that, you might want to skip the tour.

I'm mentioning the part about getting in line no later than 7am as this affected me. I figured that if I showed up at around 11am (which I did) I could still get tickets for my wife and I for a tour later in the day. NOT TRUE. We went into the gift shop and there were at least 6-8 other people in there that also felt this rule was very poorly communicated to the public.

Some of the prices in the gift shop were ridiculous. Example: They had a "Rare Coin Bag" for $49.99. The contents of the bag:

24 wheat cents
1 (processed) 1943 steel cent
1 Buffalo nickel
1 War nickel
1 Mercury dime

All coins were average circulated. I figure the real value of this bag was about $3- $4. Couldn't they have at least thrown in an Indian Head cent? No, I didn't buy the bag!

They also had a bag of 30 wheat cents going for $12.99. I would LOVE to SELL bags like this for $3.00.

Again, the tour itself is well worth taking IMHO. One thing that they gave out to attendees was a 2019-D Uncirculated penny along with a penny blank planchet- both were housed in that cellophane plastic that proof sets used back in the day. They had a very old fashioned and super heavy duty balance beam type scale and three gold bars behind glass that are supposedly worth a total of $1.7 million. An interesting tidbit about the gold bars- I was told that after the 9/11 attacks the real bars were removed and stored elsewhere. In their place were fakes for a good time. There is a display of some of the foreign coins that are made at the Denver mint. Their display on silver shows three almonds (actually edible although they are likely so old they'd make you sick) used in a foreign country that are coated in silver! There is also a tornado shelter in the place.

This is a highly recommended tour- just plan ahead to avoid disappointment.

P.S. I am told that the Philadelphia mint tours are now self-directed (no tour guide). Our guides in Denver were both very helpful and it was nice to have a person to direct questions to.

[coindood]

Very informative Steve, thx.

I'm planning a trip to San Fran in April and the Mint was on my list, until I read this:

The San Francisco Mint does not accommodate visitors, as all space is needed for personnel and machinery.

Very bummed to say the least. When did you go?

[Recyclersteve]

I went on Tuesday the 17th (3 days ago).

[coindood]

I went on Tuesday the 17th (3 days ago).

I meant to the San Fran mint.

[Recyclersteve]

I toured the San Francisco mint circa 1981-83.

FYI- I purposely didn't want to post this information while traveling for safety reasons. I cringe when I see people on social media saying "I'm here in (name exotic destination) having a blast!" To me that is code for "If you are smart enough you might be able to figure out where I live and come rob me."

[MUTiger]

My family toured the Denver mint on the 3:30 PM tour at the end of July this year. I got to the Mint to line up at 5:30 AM and was about 12-15 deep in the line. At 6:30 AM two Mint employees came down the line asking what tour and how many tickets you wanted. Each individual in line was allowed to "reserve" 4 tickets for a given tour. The tours times that Steve mentioned above were limited to 50 persons per tour. The Mint employees gave you a small carnival ticket with the number of tickets you wanted and what tour time. They then crossed that number of available spaces off that tour time on their sheet of paper with numbers 1-50 for each tour time. At 7:00 the ticket window opened and processed the carnival tickets in the line order they were give out. By 7:00 the line was around the corner and I suspect some did not get tickets or for sure not the tickets for the tour of their preferred time. My wife and one daughter were at Broncos Training Camp until afternoon so I chose the last tour of the day.
Parking was available free on the street until 7:00 AM when they started patrolling the meters but Steve is correct, when we returned we parked at a public garage about 2 blocks away for $9.00.

It was a good informative tour but more restrictive than when I had previously visited in the late 1990's. I also took a tour of the Philadelphia Mint in the summer of 1977 but do not remember much of that except when my dad had the coin I pressed the button on the press to strike out of the bag getting his fingerprints all over it.

MUTiger