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Enough is Enough… The U.S. Mint Needs to Change (CoinWeek)
CoinMeister
Posts: 642 ✭✭✭✭
An open letter to the US Mint Director Ryder in response to his letter to the Numismatic community written by Charles Morgan of Coinweek.
https://coinweek.com/us-mint-news/enough-is-enough-the-u-s-mint-needs-to-change/
"What we are never changes, but who we are ... never stops changing."
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Needs to “change”— that’s good wordplay
“But where Ryder’s initiative falls short is with the Mint’s apparent and continued lack of insight into how the secondary market for numismatic material works and the easy profits that await those who suck up most of the Mint’s limited-edition products“
Wonder if he read these boards after the debacle?😁
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Rather a useless letter to my mind. While it takes the MInt to task for its shortcomings, it doesn't offer even a suggestion of a solution.
Sort of Did
“To better give collectors a chance to purchase its limited-edition products, the Mint should investigate the possibility of setting up an annual subscription program, where collectors can opt-in at the silver, gold, and platinum/palladium tiers and have a chance to commit to limited-edition products in advance of their release date, with maximum mintages based on presale demand plus whatever percentage of extra product the Mint can sell to the general public on its website.“
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Oh a subscription like a membership.
OK imagine if Costco told the members / subscribers they will have 1945 rolls of toilet paper this week.
Everybody gets two squares and not the good kind..the army kind that comes with a free prostate check
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Your fourth paragraph is dead on JM
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I guess. But it made two half-hearted attempts at completely changing the Mint's model, not so much fixing the problem in the current model.
An annual subscription service is really a non-starter. It would potentially cost $10k+ given the number of issues coming out these days.
Bringing wholesalers back into the fold is the 20th century Mint model which they have rejected. It also creates a new problem where collectors will resent the Mint for selling to preferential (evil) coin dealers.
The real core problem is simple to state but hard to solve: how do you Mint commemoratives that are common enough to be available to everyone who wants one but scarce enough to hold value?
A subscription service would help with this but at tremendous cost to low budget or finicky collectors who will be locked out of these issues.
I remember those too, were you lucky enough to get the C ration, or the MRE type?
POST NUBILA PHOEBUS / AFTER CLOUDS, SUN
Love for Music / Collector of Dreck
@jmlanzaf
So is there a common solution that satisfies the “finicky collector” vs dealers while still being scarce enough to make the item relatively exciting to actually own?
Also, a customer still has the option to return a purchase. (Just a thought)
"Scarce enough to make the item relatively exciting to actually own" = "Not everybody who wants one can get one" = "Complaints because it's not fair"
Never happen. Things are gonna get worse before they change anything. They're operating in a bureaucratic cocoon. Peace Roy
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Echo- MRE for me.
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Like I said: the problem is easy to describe but hard to solve.
If you allow customer returns. People will buy subscriptions and then just return what isn't flippable. The whole point of the subscription would be to get people to commit. Returns might actually favor big money flippers at the expense of small collectors. Not to mention a $10k subscription is going to turn off more people than it excites.
Yes, that is the problem. The Mint isn't wrong. Most of the year, almost no one pays attention to any of their dozens of releases. But look at the excitement created by the ERP ASE and the V75 coins.
Everybody wants to be the among the ones who get the limited edition item. It's a problem with no solution.
Agree.
Potential mitigation that requires no structural change?
How about limited notice release thus potentially cutting down on the crowd source sites as they have less time to recruit?
Now I know this one will not be popular but today’s 7:35 whack a mole...release only so many a day and change the time everyday?
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they may want it, but they can mint to demand. no limited editions.
perfect reason to make a bot to surf the page all day.
Have to depend on the IT guys for combatting that. I was trying to mitigate the buyer's clubs like several have mentioned in the past week
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The letter mentions the Mayflower and V75 Eagles as if they're comparable.
The experience w the Mayflower sales was nothing whatsoever like the V75.
They seem to have done a pretty good job w the Mayflower montages. The V75s were obviously a disaster.
Except that will not create the excitement and interest they are trying to create. It also probably kills sales. There's gotta be 2 dozen people on this board who proudly advertise that they buy issues 2 years later because they're cheaper.
That might work for people who are retired and have nothing better to do than refresh the mint's webpage, waiting for the announcement of when ordering will begin. For anybody else, it might be difficult. Of course, there will be complaints from those who missed out- again and again and again....
Yeah, imagine what happens when someone sits their for 2 hours, goes to the bathroom and gets back to find out they missed it. THEY won't be mad at all. LOL
success is in building a collector base, not in aftermarket resale value. if they are cheaper later, then good. there are collectors who are patient.
resale value may hurt a collector base but having 1,945 hurts it much much more.
I just do not see resale value as a yardstick for success. even rare coins have "did not sell" issues. can those be succesfully collected?
i get the idea behind the symbolism of having a specific mintage memorializing a specific date.
Kudos to the Mint for recognizing historically significant dates in history.
But it is not the purpose of the US Mint with the legacy that they have created to stoke a feeding frenzy.
They have some great ideas, the V75 ASE was a monster hit on a monster product.
Just make some better marketing/production decisions.
The Mint used to make things that everyone used in day-to-day commerce. The perceived value of what they produced fired the imaginations of people--particularly kids--for generations.
Coins now are largely regarded as a nuisance, though. Kids are scarcely aware of them. The collector base largely (with important and noted exceptions) harkens from those earlier days. Mint issues now are marketed for their notoriety and potential profit potential, as stand-alone items.
I think the Mint is now largely jumping the shark. Their continued commercial prominence (such as it is) is primarily a function of inertia.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
You guys realize that the authorization to strike these coins comes from congress, right? It's not like the mint is making this stuff up on their own.
SOLUTION: Mint every "limited" issue in 2 runs. Initial run to gauge demand, 2nd run to serve those who missed out and still want it.
Those who NEED it right away will pay, providing some profit opportunity and excitement. However, price action and flipping will be limited by the 2nd run - mintage tbd.
If I remember correctly, the Apollo puck was somewhat like this. They sold an initial quantity which sold out, but wasnt the full mintage. A few months later backorders were filled.
Killed flipping, everyone who wanted one got one, problem solved.
My Gold Type Set
That's not a "limited edition", as the term is typically understood.
make no limited editions, problem solved.
I put "limited" in quotes - maybe it was the wrong word. Many here decry "artifical rarities" - my idea is a version of minting to demand. 2 runs limits impact of returns, retains an unknown element - they could make a ton more or could cut it off after the first run. I think it solves a lot of problems with the various approaches discussed here. No need for lottery, subscription, etc.
Edited to add: e.g., Due to unprecedented demand, the 2nd run of the v75 age will be (up to) an additional 10,000 coins. Place a backorder to reserve yours today! I'll leave the rest of the thought experiment to the forum...
Edited again to also add: Would even bring some meaning to TPG "first strike" labels.
My Gold Type Set
the mint hates first trike.
a low first run would make for a first strike/fdoi feeding frenzy
First strike can feed dealers / flippers, with frenzy limited by the customer segment that prefer the same coin at a lower price from the second run.
My Gold Type Set
Some people want limited editions and some want coins minted to demand. There is no way to make everybody happy.
the government is for the people, not the few.
So if the mint is guided by Congress, why are they allowed to hold back the last few hot coins available each day to the hopeful at random times in the morning? Most retail places, (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) put an item for sale until sold out. The .gov gets to have different rules? (Obviously)
It's not that resale value is a measure of success for the Mint. It's that if there is no resale value, people stop buying altogether. Resale value is a measure of success for THE COLLECTOR.
No, the Mint sells them until they are gone. But if they have returns or cancellations, they put those back up for sale. The Mint is NOT holding back coins, they are GETTING back coins.
It also seems that people are unwilling to acknowledge that other people have different interests.
There's also a sense of self-importance: I'M collecting the right way. People who do it differently, don't DESERVE the coins.
Which is why they shouldn't make ANY collector coins. Collectors are the FEW not the MANY.
In the case of any one popular coin, the mint, at first glance, does appear to sell a product until sold out. They hit a certain amount and place the item on “This product is currently unavailable”.
This is not due to returns. And how many people canceled the 20XE? None! So the only other issue would be household limits, credit card verification, etc. You would think, in our modern age, this can be very quick. So why the delay in posting a “sold out” even weeks after the initial launch? The morning tease is infuriating to those trying an attempt at something that may not be there. The mint’s technology and fair distribution is where the average collector is ready to throw up their hands. This is what needs to change!
The AGE is probably mostly credit card problems and shipping issues. The point is that it is NOT hold-outs.
They also get returns due to bad addresses. Happened to someone on this forum who was trying to use a second account with a fake address.
For more general issues, the Mint also allows returns within 30 days which is why they do NOT go immediately to sold out.
The Mint does NOT sell returned coins. For issues with multiple returns, they sometimes have to Mint more which results in long delays. It is not uncommon for a sell-out to be officially announced weeks or months after the coins are no longer available as they decide whether they have time to squeeze in a short run of coins before the end of the year. [See the 2017 EU coin set where they had 40,000 returns and never sold the last 10,000 in the allowed mintage.]
The general mint practice for all issues is to sell the allotted amount and then go to "This product is currently unavailable" while they wait for cancellations, processing issues, shipping issue and outright returns. They NEVER go immediately to "sold out" status.
Do you remember anyone suggesting changes to the mint's ordering system that would make it harder for them to get a coin?
Me neither.
Actually, yes. The people who propose a lottery. They don't seem to have done the math on the number of coins relative to the number of registered Mint accounts. Turns out there were less than 400,000 people and/or bots logged in to get the AGE but there are over 500,000 registered Mint accounts.
LOL. I love people. People are funny.
Ok, I guess I should have said "Do you remember anyone suggesting changes to the mint's ordering system that they think would make it harder for them to get a coin?"
@jmlanzaf
“ For more general issues, the Mint also allows returns within 30 days which is why they do NOT go immediately to sold out.”
Valid point.
However, I’ll repeat. The mint’s technology and fair distribution is where the average collector is ready to throw up their hands. This is what needs to change!
I'm not saying that they don't need to fix a few things. But you can't get the right answer if you don't ask the right question.
If the system didn't say you were a robot and repeatedly ask you to identify bicycles, that would be a start.