Mintage totals for Gold American Eagle series

[silverwood]

OK you coin guys, I would like to get your input on what would constitutes mintage totals for Gold American Eagle series. I've been wondering, if you want to know what the mintage figures are for scarcity considerations, would you take the amount of UNC/business strikes and add the number of proofs for a given year to get total amount of coins bearing that particular date? Let me use some camparisons to illustrate what I am driving at;

Let's use the 1991 $25 1/2 ounce GAE UNC because prices on ebay have gone to really high levels IMO. According to US mint figures there were 24,100 UNC coins sold/released. The total amount of proofs released was 53,125. Adding these two together gives us 77,225 $25 GAEs bearing the date of 1991 on them.

Now let me contrast them to the 2001 $25 1/2 GAE numbers. There were 48,047 UNC coins release that year and there was 23,240 proofs released for a total of 71,287 coins bearing the 2001 date.

Now either I'm onto something here because I just bought a 2001 $25 GAE UNC for just over melt and I am shopping for a 2001 proof which I believe can be had for about $390 inline with the other years. I've been told by my local coin dealer/expert that proof and UNC mintage figures should be considered differently.WHY?

[silverwood]

While I'm at it in my research for mintage data I have come across some conflicting info and maybe you know some other sources. Here's the problem; from the US mint web site for the 1995 1/2 ounce $25 Eagle proof if you add total sale for the single coin and 4 coin set you get 15,286 proofs for that year making that the lowest mintage total for all the $25 eagles. See page here http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/...oof#salesTable but now from this coin site I'm getting a different amount. They say 46,200 which is a big difference! see link http://lynncoins.com/proof_mintages.htm. Also form the PCGS http://www.pcgs.com/prices/frame.cht...gold_eagle_mod web site shows the 1997, 1998 and 2001 $25 as the only ones to have a premium confirming Lynn's number for the 1995. As Sir Alan would say quite a conumdrum, eh.