Best Of

@WCC said:
Not IMO. It's my belief that there is almost no hobbyist collector demand for most of the $5 gold commemoratives,

You just described most Morgan dollars in the early 1960's. Who knows what will be favored by collectors in the future?

@NJCoin said:

@jmlanzaf said:

@hedgefundtradingdesk said:
My 24k max yielded the same results as @coiner and @jmlanzaf combined. Zilch. No bonus for being less wide of the mark.

As a modern rarity, these coins should hold their value for many years. But over decades, the premium will likely erode in the direction of the non-privy coins, as people recognize them as a gimmick/pattern type coin.

Fun to own, but there are many many better ways to incinerate cash.

I think it will take less than decades. There are numerous examples of these types of endeavors from world mints.

Really? Is there a single example of a world mint selling an extremely limited edition at public auction?

That would be difficult to imagine, since a typical non-circulating precious metal offering from a world mint has a mintage of 5-10K, or less, as compared to hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands for the US. So a world mint equivalent of a US Mint edition of 230 would be like 1 or 2. 😀

The fact that world mints issue coins in the hundreds that do nothing in the secondary market is not instructive, one way or the other, as to what will happen with these.

That said, I happen to agree with you. Not because of world mints, but simply because of the laws of gravity and marketing hype.

They likely hit their peak today, with all the hoopla created by the Mint and SB. Maybe dealers who obtained some for inventory at full retail will be able to turn around and sell to clients at a profit, maybe not.

Same with all the coins now being offered on eBay. But, long term, contrary to @coiner's contention that SB would never be able to attract sufficient capital at one time in one place to support pricing in excess of $10K per coin, this was the one place and one time that sufficient capital was attracted to support the pricing we all saw.

Going forward, as people try to sell, it won't be easy finding people to pay what sellers are going to want. Hype and excitement will fade.

New things will grab people's attention. People will realize they can live happy and fulfilling lives without owning one of these.

So it's hard to imagine what is going to motivate anyone in the future to pay even more than people paid today to own any of these. Not to say it can't happen, but it's unlikely.

The pattern of almost all Mint limited edition new issues is hype, boom and then bust. No reason to think these will be different. But not because the Canadian or Perth Mint produce items with mintages below 1,000 that don't do anything. JMHO.

There are world mint products with mintages of 25 or less.

There are also numerous US patterns with mintages of under 100 if you want a different comp.

@hedgefundtradingdesk said:
My 24k max yielded the same results as @coiner and @jmlanzaf combined. Zilch. No bonus for being less wide of the mark.

As a modern rarity, these coins should hold their value for many years. But over decades, the premium will likely erode in the direction of the non-privy coins, as people recognize them as a gimmick/pattern type coin.

Fun to own, but there are many many better ways to incinerate cash.

I think it will take less than decades. There are numerous examples of these types of endeavors from world mints.

@seatedlib3991 said:
@NJCoin . To be honest I tend to find that many of the people selling coins on TV are trying to "create a need and then supply the product". Watch for any length of time and you will be fed a lot of nonsense about the importance of slab labels, distorted mintage or population census material or vastly overstating the importance of a particular coin. Think the difference between going to church to attend mass and going to a good old fashioned barn revival. James

You mean like Tide does with detergent?

@NJCoin said:

@jmlanzaf said:

@NJCoin said:

@coiner said:
@NJCoin --I will be the first to admit.....I totally am flabbergasted by the bids on these coins. I would NEVER have expected this level of bidding. Whatever it was that drove the buyers - they were there in force. I suspect many dealers picked up most of the coins. It looks as if 70's were in the neighborhood of 35-40k; 69's in the 20's or so if I remember correctly.

I will say though - I would NEVER be a buyer at those levels. The dealers might get a quick turn for a few K more; but if youre a buyer in them I think youre buried in the coin.

If you like it - more power to you. If it was an investment - not a good one.

Thank you for the gracious admission. For the record, I 1,000,000% agree with you with respect to being a buyer at these levels. I just had a very strong feeling, based on the V75s at 8x the mintage, the silver privys, the signed silver privy COAs, etc., that the results would come in right around where they did.

As far as being buried goes, who knows? But I agree with you that there is no obvious flip at these prices.

We'll see how those being offered on eBay at $50K do. The sellers certainly have some room to move down and still make some money.

But, absent the SB hype, and with eBay fees, I think it's a lot of risk for a modest reward. And, they could very well end up losing money, since anyone really interested knew where to find 230 of them at the same price the sellers paid.

I honestly don't think eBay is the right venue for them, and the sellers might have better luck waiting a few weeks or months and trying to sell them one at a time via a platform like GC. Obviously, they disagreed with our assessment that these are not a flip at these prices, and they think they can move them at a profit to people who missed out.

I think, at these levels, that buyer's remorse is more likely to manifest than people who missed out today feeling the need to pay up on eBay tomorrow. That said, I wish the sellers all the luck in the world, and hope for their sake I am wrong, given how much some of them seem to have tied up in them.

I like it, and would have LOVED to have been a buyer at the prices you and @jmlanzaf were projecting. I just didn't see it.

Not for this design, with this mintage, with this level of marketing and hype. And now, after the fact, I wouldn't chase it up or down. I just accept that, if the Mint is going to go this route, that there will be certain things they make that I will never own.

Which is fine. When the Mint first published pictures of the silver medal with the privy, and we all thought they would all have the privy, most people HATED it, and thought it detracted from the originality of the design. Then, of course, when it became a limited edition lottery prize, everyone wanted one.

Same here. Who really needs it? The Mint also produced a beautiful version, without a distracting privy, also with a very low mintage, that is obtainable by most at a steep, but still attainable premium to spot.

People should just accept these for what they are -- niche products for a niche market. AKA artificial modern mint rarities. @jmlanzaf is right in saying that if the Mint decides to keep going to this well for easy money, at some point people will get bored and start tuning out.

Same as I said about them playing games with announcing maximum mintages and then under producing with no obvious reason why. If collectors cannot afford what the Mint produces, or cannot rely on announced mintages and/or product limits, over time they will move on and find other things to collect.

They have already "kept going". This isn't the first scarce privy coin (V75). It's not even the first privy coin this year. It's the first auction, only 2 years after three Royal Mint started doing annual pattern auctions.

https://www.royalmint.com/collect/auction/die-trials-and-pattern-piece/

Prediction: get ready for the off metal trial strikes.

It actually isn't even the first auction. That occurred two years ago! 😀

True. Although it's the first "pattern" auction. The Dusk to Dawn was even more gimmicky.

Happy to share my ideas any time with the U.S. Mint on how to turn their Commem $1 Program around.

Apparently, the Mint decided that privy coins are more lucrative, and this type of thinking isn't beneficial to the hobby.

@NJCoin said:

@coiner said:
@NJCoin --I will be the first to admit.....I totally am flabbergasted by the bids on these coins. I would NEVER have expected this level of bidding. Whatever it was that drove the buyers - they were there in force. I suspect many dealers picked up most of the coins. It looks as if 70's were in the neighborhood of 35-40k; 69's in the 20's or so if I remember correctly.

I will say though - I would NEVER be a buyer at those levels. The dealers might get a quick turn for a few K more; but if youre a buyer in them I think youre buried in the coin.

If you like it - more power to you. If it was an investment - not a good one.

Thank you for the gracious admission. For the record, I 1,000,000% agree with you with respect to being a buyer at these levels. I just had a very strong feeling, based on the V75s at 8x the mintage, the silver privys, the signed silver privy COAs, etc., that the results would come in right around where they did.

As far as being buried goes, who knows? But I agree with you that there is no obvious flip at these prices.

We'll see how those being offered on eBay at $50K do. The sellers certainly have some room to move down and still make some money.

But, absent the SB hype, and with eBay fees, I think it's a lot of risk for a modest reward. And, they could very well end up losing money, since anyone really interested knew where to find 230 of them at the same price the sellers paid.

I honestly don't think eBay is the right venue for them, and the sellers might have better luck waiting a few weeks or months and trying to sell them one at a time via a platform like GC. Obviously, they disagreed with our assessment that these are not a flip at these prices, and they think they can move them at a profit to people who missed out.

I think, at these levels, that buyer's remorse is more likely to manifest than people who missed out today feeling the need to pay up on eBay tomorrow. That said, I wish the sellers all the luck in the world, and hope for their sake I am wrong, given how much some of them seem to have tied up in them.

I like it, and would have LOVED to have been a buyer at the prices you and @jmlanzaf were projecting. I just didn't see it.

Not for this design, with this mintage, with this level of marketing and hype. And now, after the fact, I wouldn't chase it up or down. I just accept that, if the Mint is going to go this route, that there will be certain things they make that I will never own.

Which is fine. When the Mint first published pictures of the silver medal with the privy, and we all thought they would all have the privy, most people HATED it, and thought it detracted from the originality of the design. Then, of course, when it became a limited edition lottery prize, everyone wanted one.

Same here. Who really needs it? The Mint also produced a beautiful version, without a distracting privy, also with a very low mintage, that is obtainable by most at a steep, but still attainable premium to spot.

People should just accept these for what they are -- niche products for a niche market. AKA artificial modern mint rarities. @jmlanzaf is right in saying that if the Mint decides to keep going to this well for easy money, at some point people will get bored and start tuning out.

Same as I said about them playing games with announcing maximum mintages and then under producing with no obvious reason why. If collectors cannot afford what the Mint produces, or cannot rely on announced mintages and/or product limits, over time they will move on and find other things to collect.

They have already "kept going". This isn't the first scarce privy coin (V75). It's not even the first privy coin this year. It's the first auction, only 2 years after three Royal Mint started doing annual pattern auctions.

https://www.royalmint.com/collect/auction/die-trials-and-pattern-piece/

Prediction: get ready for the off metal trial strikes.

@NJCoin said:

@pointfivezero said:
First eBay gold privy sale?

Tim

Yeah. Maybe the coin actually sold for $50K. Maybe it was a shill. And maybe it sold for a best offer far below $50K.

This is one of the problems with eBay. We'll never know, and, if it's not a legit $50K sale, it could be nothing more than fiction designed to get others to buy one of the other coins the seller has listed, based on nothing more than FOMO.

Really hard to believe anyone gave the seller a $15K flip in less than a day at these levels, although anything is, of course, possible. Unlike SB, no actual transparency here, so call me skeptical.

Retail arbitrage. That is why dealers were bidding. If you missed the live auction and got outbid but still want a coin or you simply weren't aware of the auction. That's why I felt, and still do, that there was a resale opportunity. I just wasn't comfortable stocking at these prices.

@wondercoin said:
‘’Prices were really crazy, but at 230 minted, this was basically one of the lowest mintage US mint coins, legal to own, that you can buy for less than $100,000. “

I have US pattern Liberty Nickels (1881-83) in my #1 Registry Set with (R-8) mintages as low as 2-3 coins, legal to own, that are under $100,000. Repeat mintage 3! Not mintage 230.

What happens next year, hypothetically, when the Mint decides to produce another modern privy coin rarity (overnight) with a mintage of just 100 pieces. Are they worth $200,000/coin?

Wondercoin

For some reason, no one wants to admit that this has all been done before by the various Commonwealth mints including the "pattern coin" auctions. Your hypothetical is already a reality if you trace these privy patterns back to the V75 coins. We went from 1945 down to 230...100 is dead ahead. The recent UK "patterns" auctioned had mintages of under 10.

This offering is not "one of a kind", it's the second in a series.

I'm an old guy that likes trains & coins.
This picture is from last Friday.