CW: "Monday Morning Brief for Sept. 28, 2020: This will kill the program"
Don't see any way the Mint can justify this absurd price jump.
Monday Morning Brief for Sept. 28, 2020: This will kill the program
By William T. Gibbs , Coin World Published: Sep 28, 2020, 7 AM
There is a guaranteed way to kill a U.S. Mint program: raise prices by 400 percent.
Mint officials are preparing to do just that by increasing the price of the Mint’s 3-inch bronze medals from $39.95 to $160 each. Yes, you read that correctly — $160 for a medal with zero precious metals content and no published mintage limits.
Astonishingly, the $160 price is just $18.25 less than what the U.S. Mint currently charges for the America the Beautiful 3-inch 5-ounce .999 fine silver quarter dollars. They currently sell for $178.25. That price proximity is astonishing, making the Mint’s decision even more bewildering.
Mint officials tells us that they lose money in producing bronze medals. But is that justification to increase the price of the 3-inch medals so high? And how long has the Mint been losing money on the program?
Continued in link............
Comments
Wow.... that is a huge price increase....and I have considered that medal.... Not now. Cheers, RickO
Far better to ditch this program. Ridiculous price.
Perhaps it's some weird, counter-intuitive dance they're doing with perceived rarity and value. If they're cheap, they'll be able sell more, everyone will think everyone will buy one, and so nobody will want them. If they're too expensive, nobody will want them, but everyone will see that they're too expensive and that nobody will buy them, so they'll be rare and then everyone will want them, and they'll sell more. They should just announce a $3000 issue price, a limited run of 2000, and make more money than they ever have on medals.
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I doubt if the mint has made money on any medal issue since the John Wayne issue. They are sure money losers and this looks to me to be the mint's way of killing the medal program without actually saying what they are doing.
Large medals are quite expensive to produce. Considerable labor (which equals expense) is involved. It is not like turning out Lincoln cents by the billions.
the medals come fairly dinged up. at least in the minting part, they don't put the labor in.
perhaps the consumers of the gold medals can pay for those.
In FY2019 on the numismatic side of business…
The Mint Lost $17.8M on the Annual Core Sets
The Mint Lost $7.2M on the Quarter Products
The Mint Lost $12.9M on the Miscellaneous Products
The Mint Lost $5.8M on the American Innovation Products
That’s in Total the Mint Lost $43.7M on four line item products.
Agreed that this is intended to kill the medal program. Congress authorizes them and the Mint has to make them, but nobody says that they have to offer them at a reasonable price.
I'm not sure if I'm too sensitive here, but I'm not feeling the torpedo pun:
The torpedo attack on the Indianapolis resulted in a loss of 879 lives and is the greatest loss of life from a single ship in US naval history.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)
This is the same idiocy as the Post Office problems. Acting like you can micro-mandate all these things for political reasons and except a place to run like a for profit business. Doesn't always work.
Do you have any examples? Most 3” bronze medals produced by the US Mint in the last 20 years that I have seen have been pristine.
A bummer if you like to collect them.i would t consider it either at that price either
Agreed, poor choice of words IMO.
If the Mint can't do it cheaper, they should outsource to a private mint that can do it cheaper, just like how NASA uses Space-X.
When I first saw it, I thought the new price was a typo.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
So the Mint had an epiphany moment. Its a nice looking medal, and historically significant.
If the program is not low budget than the pricing should reflect the expenses. Maybe the thinking is demand may trail off a bit but with a shorter production run on a popular medal the values on the secondary market will hold up,
I personally feel that the Mint is trying to correct past mistakes. It is expensive to produce so they are raising the price like any private firm would do. What is the point to contract it out and be charged a lot by the private company only to sell the medal for less. Good work = higher price, and they are beautiful. I do agree a limited amount should be produced to cap the mintage, not doing that shows no understanding of numismatics and collectors needs.
Medals are a small, specialized market. Many coin collectors would rather fill their collection with slabbed and stickered 1881-S Morgan Dollars.
first, I should have excluded the special mint sets and silver medals. those are handled better.
to show examples, I would have to order a bunch of modern mint bronze medals, photo, then return them. with their new policy on returns, I can't do that.
For the few modern mint bronze medals I have bought, and it has been 3 or so, I had to order several and return all but one to get something in the 66 area.
here are some ... (and I am complaining about the lack of 70's. it shows how those that are submitted are distributed)
If they could go back to the 19th century mahogany finish, I could see a price like this IF the design was really outstanding. As it is, they are selling “yellow bronze” medals with the sandblasted finish. As the late Rodney Dangerfield would put it, “Those medals don’t get no respect.”
These medals can’t support the current $39.95 price in the secondary market. Dealers get runs of the presidential, “peace medal” pieces that were issued in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s and can’t get $30 for them.
Yep, this price increase will kill the market for these medals for purchase from the mint. It’s a shame, but I guess they figure it costs them that much to make them. The mint has been issuing medals in some form since the 1790s.
here is a spate of really bad ones
and a special set
the mint once (or do they still?) called their product keepsakes. I'd sure like to see medal keepsakes have the same 69/70 distribution as other mint products to keep them out of the copper melt value area.
Ever since they had to lay off more of the cost of penny manufacturing into other categories.
https://govtrackinsider.com/it-costs-2-to-make-a-penny-and-7-to-make-a-nickel-but-cents-act-could-bring-those-costs-down-aa6aabfc9a8b
https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/legislation-would-allow-u.s.-mint-to-change-coinage-alloys
the cent is not up for composition change. the mint has already said they can't change the composition of the cent to save money.
Inflation is real whether the government wants to hide it or not. At this point in time they should probably drop the 1c and 5c and add a $2, $5, $10, and $20 coin while dropping the $1-$20 notes. At least if they want to “make money” since it costs more to print currency over the long run.
Of course I might as well ask for $200 gold tomorrow as well.
TurtleCat Gold Dollars
My numbers were on the numismatic side of the Mint's business. The link is for the circulating side of the Mint's business. The Mint has three sides of business: circulating, numismatic and bullion...
I was hoping for photos.
None of the medals that you have listed are relevant. Only one actually appears to be a 3” bronze medal (the subject of this discussion), and it has a pop of 1, which appears to be graded MS69. Regardless I would say that medals that end up in MS64 or 65 holders, are acceptable from a manufacturing quality standpoint, assuming that the grades posted actually reflect the quality of the medals graded.
Well, it really ought to get the Mint some new orders before Jan 1st, 2021 while they are really still relatively cheap. These will go down in value due to mintages, but then next year everything will go up in price.
This is one way to help the Fed get their 2% inflation that seems to be so hard for them to find to find,... not.
National Commemorative Medals of the U.S. Mint:
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/u-s-coins/medals-tokens/national-commemorative-medals-united-states-mint-1940-present/alltimeset/195526
Proof that the government can lose more money than they make.
All we need to do for that is look at the national debt and deficit.
It just doesn't make any sense, no matter how you line it up. I'd rather scoop up a vintage medal any day. Peace Roy
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Medals are simply a lost art form. It is not about money as much as it is about appearance. I suppose the same thing can be written about coinage in general. There is a cartoonish look that just lacks depth and workmanship. Maybe it is just more of a reflection as to the furtherance of mass production.
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Not lost, but perhaps not appreciated by some. For example, Paris Mint makes beautiful reproductions of the Libertas Americana medal.
I’m a big defender of modern coin design but this medal just looks terrible. So flat.
I've only bought a few of the medals but only the 1-1/2 inch size
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