Interview with a SUNSHINE MINTING employee

[uthminsta]

I just had one of the most interesting conversations... I knew my cousin (actually my cousin's husband) worked at the Sunshine Mint, but didn't really have any idea what they made until I saw some of their stuff for sale here at RealCent. So I got on FaceBook and talked to him for an hour about what he does. I was absolutely astounded at some of what I learned tonight. I thought I would share some of the "interview" with you! Tell me what you all think!

ME: 11:39pm hey dude have a strange question for you
COUSIN: 11:40pm How's it going? What ya got?
ME: 11:40pm let me see if i can do this...
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2245
tell me if you can click that
COUSIN: 11:41pm yup
ME: 11:41pm and... is that... from where you WORK?
COUSIN: 11:42pm Looks like us. I've seen too many of those bars
ME: 11:42pm hilarious
COUSIN: 11:43pm Too bad i can't take them home
ME: 11:43pm this is the first time someone's put some up for sale on this site... if you read the thread, you will see someone says "i think my cousin works there." that's obviously me.
COUSIN: 11:44pm I probably melted about 400 of those today
ME: 11:44pm so you work with the actual refining process or what?
COUSIN: 11:45pm Yeah, we get solid bars of silver and melt them down to make coins or small bars like those.
ME: 11:46pm other metals too?
COUSIN: 11:46pm We have gold also and melt some copper with the silver to make it 90% or whatever we need it to be. Quarters and dimes are 90% silver.
ME: 11:47pm your requests aren't all for 999 fine stuff?
COUSIN: 11:48pm No. We do 9999 and a bunch of stuff for other govt's. as well. Royal Mint is our other big customer besides the US op course.
ME: 11:49pm really??!?
COUSIN: 11:49pm New Zealand,Britian,Canada, and we do a lot of bullion.
ME: 11:49pm sunshine mint makes canadian coins. no kidding. okay. this is officially the most interesting job in the world
COUSIN: 11:50pm Yeah, we also do a lot of commemorative stuff.
ME: 11:51pm i knew that places like the franklin mint made some coins for the bahamas, so i guess this is like that. huh...
COUSIN: 11:52pm I melted some coins for The Sovriegn Nation of The Sioux Indians the other day. Not sure i spelled that right but you get the idea.
ME: 11:52pm hahaha
COUSIN: 11:52pm Pretty much. It is an interesting job, it just doesn't paY MUCH UNFORTUNATELY.
ME: 11:54pm yeah.
COUSIN: 11:54pm I melt well over a million dollars of silver a day i would guess. They won't let me play with the gold though.
ME: 11:55pm do you get requests from customers for sunshine to melt US silver stuff? gee, at 1400 dollars an ounce, probably not a lot of guys get to play with it
COUSIN: 11:55pm Im not sure. No kidding. There's only 1 person who is allowed to melt the gold. He's been there 14 years i think. It's funny, we had like 4 coins slide off the annealer the other day and i thought they were gonna shut down thew whole warehouse.
ME: 11:57pm hahaha CRIMINALS!
COUSIN: 11:58pm The bad thing is going through security every day. No kidding.
ME: 11:58pm "okay COUSIN, where are you hiding the silver today?"
COUSIN: 11:58pm It's like going through the airport everyday except worse.
ME: 11:58pm nose... ear... under the tongue... or… (cough cough)
COUSIN: 11:59pm We have to take off our shoes(the only metal we can have on us), go through a detector and then get wanded any time we go outside. No phones either.
ME: 12:00am otherwise it would be very easy to get rich, one ounce at a time
COUSIN: 12:01am That's why we have to take off our shoes. It gets stuck in the tread some times. If it's too much we get wrote up or terminated depending on what mood they're in.
ME: 12:02am has that ever happened to you?
COUSIN: 12:02am Once, but i caught it before i sent my shoes through. I had spilled some molten silver and then stepped on it before it solidified. Big piece of silver once it did.
ME: 12:04am considering how expensive the material is that you deal with (especially in the last few months), i had imagined it would have been quite an efficient, clean, controlled process...
COUSIN: 12:06am It's pretty clean for most of the silver. We have a process though where we actually have to pour the silver by hand sometimes. That's when i spilled it. Usually we pour it with a hydraulic furnace.
ME: 12:07am hey, thanks for the impromptu "interview" haha
COUSIN: 12:07am No problem
ME: 12:07am i imagine anyone who hears what you do would be quite intrigued
COUSIN: 12:08am It's definitely different than anything i have ever done before.
ME: 12:08am one more question: do you actually own any precious metals?
COUSIN: 12:09am We ran some silver a while back for military medals. That was pretty cool too.
ME: 12:09am cool
COUSIN: 12:09am If i could afford them i would.
ME: 12:09am they should give out ounce bars to their employees for christmas bonuses
COUSIN: 12:10am Seems to be the only thing that remains stable. That would be nice.
ME: 12:10am silver... then gold after 20 years with the company!!!
COUSIN: 12:11am They'll let us buy them :)
ME: 12:11am i should get one.
COUSIN: 12:11am Yeah, it could be something i melted.
ME: 12:12am i have some silver, but never owned any gold... it's a little out of the range of us poor ministerial types. Haha… thanks again... you ready for Christmas?
COUSIN: 12:14am Actually, i'm supposed to work Christmas believe it or not.
ME: 12:14am gee...
COUSIN: 12:14am Greedy owner i guess.
(((((deleted a bit of personal conversation)))))
COUSIN: 12:25am Maybe we can just get everybody to move up here with us right.
ME: 12:26am are they hiring at the mint?
COUSIN: 12:27am Always.
ME: 12:27am i would work in the copper department! Haha… or aluminum
COUSIN: 12:28am We actually don't have much copper, and no aluminum. Pretty much just gold and silver.
ME: 12:28am haha i figured that. maybe i could apprentice under you for a bit.
COUSIN: 12:28am We only put like 15 ounzes or so of copper with 3 45lb. bars of silver. Come on up.
ME: 12:29am sheesh. a 45 pound bar of silver. don't get me started
COUSIN: 12:29am Yeah, they're pretty big.
ME: 12:30am i envisioned mostly 1 and 10 and 100 ounces but that's just finished products
COUSIN: 12:30am That's what they end up being. Yeah, we just melt them down. After they punch the coins or bars out of the strips they send the scrap back to us and we melt it back down with the bars. I may melt the same silver 10 times before it actually gets shipped out.
ME: 12:34am i know about 500 people who would find this very interesting... check out realcent.org sometime, to get some insight into why there is always so much demand for what you are doing.
COUSIN: 12:35am I will. I've never been there before but i'll definitely check it out.

[Ethon]

Very cool interview, learned a lot. Thanks for posting!

[beauanderos]

Aaron, thanks for sharing that!

[GTOJohn]

very interesting - thank you for sharing with us.

[Rodebaugh]

very cool ...thanks for the post

[97guns]

i hope none of that is confidential

[GA-Silver]

Do you know what the Sunshine Mint starts it new employees out at salary wise? I would love to move to the Idaho panhandle!

[Roadrunner]

Pretty soon we'll have a new member:
"Uthminsta'scousin"

[TXBullion]

Pretty soon we'll have a new member:
"Uthminsta'scousin"

good one

[uthminsta]

hope so. he understands the value of precious metals... and knows there's always a demand for it! maybe browsing around here a little he will get more of an idea as to why. and no, i don't think any of that stuff was confidential, just a lot of common sense policies that i would expect any mint to have. if i'm wrong, i'm sure he'll let me know.

[appjoe]

Thanks for posting It was interesting

[999Ni]

very cool, thanks!

my dream job

[Joogaler]

very cool, thanks!

my dream job

My dream job also! I'm so done with working a boring job for a corporation... I'm about ready to buy a tent and live out in the woods for the rest of my life!