2024 P.L. of 300k Proof Morgan and Peace $1's is 100k less than 2023 P.L. ..are you interested?
Goldbully
Posts: 17,348 ✭✭✭✭✭
On sale September 12, 2024
$95 is your price.
1
Comments
Are there even 300K collectors of these?
As they say in Texas .......................El Paso.
Well, you only need to search for 299,999 more collectors to answer your question just say-in.
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Hard to get excited at that price and mintage, given what is happening with the uncirculateds. They over reached with the pricing, and really do need to either roll it back, or seriously reduce the mintage to make them attractive at the premium they are asking.
Unfortunately, they are tone deaf, so they are going to do neither, and these are going to fare exactly like the uncircs. If they didn't even sell 200K uncircs at $91, they are not going to sell 300K proofs at $95.
in the future, fixed costs will spread over fewer coins minted right? prices up, demand down, rinse repeat?
As they say in Hawaii,...pakanono.
fka renman95, Sep 2005, 7,000 posts
Hard to say, because the margins on these are already sky high, so it's not like they are running at break-even and need to factor in fixed costs when pricing items.
In fact, since their day job is making coins for commerce, I'd argue fixed costs should not be factored in at all, since they'd have them even if they stopped numismatic sales entirely.
The simple fact is that they over reached, based on looking at what world mints get for similar products, without taking account of the fact that those similar products are made in microscopic quantities as compared to US issues. The precious metal products were significantly under priced a few years ago, which led to website crashes and profitable flips.
The pendulum has now swung the other way. They'll either adjust pricing, or mintages, or both. Or, as you suggest, they'll send these programs into a death spiral. We'll see.
But it's not about them "needing" to capture fixed costs. The numismatic program, especially the bullion program, generates mucho bucks for the Treasury. They don't need pricing to be anywhere near where it is to either cover fixed costs or break even.
Might have been, before.
But now, I feel the mint has screwed the pooch too many times (pooch = collectors).
Mintage = too high
Price = too high
Bad taste from the mint on many of their moderns the last 5-10 years, so I have really cut back from them. Hardly purchase anything now whereas I used to get commems, mint/proof sets/SAEs/etc.
I've been told I tolerate fools poorly...that may explain things if I have a problem with you. Current ebay items - Nothing at the moment
No 👎
No mas.
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
Dealers/Collectors must free themselves of the tyranny of the Morgan/Peace proofs.
You don’t know that. Government reimbursable cost models all depend on what costs are included in them before they avg out the unit line rate. They have to pay or cover the bills that get put into the cost recapture bucket. A change of leadership or a congressional budget cut somewhere else often mandate the costs they have to cover get expanded. After that they are required by law to breakeven and can not use or roll over surpluses and shot-falls need PROC or O&M funding (tax dollars) from that fiscal period window applied and those are always fiercely scarce and sometimes prohibited by law or policy from being applied. When a Reimbursable program is successful you would be amazed at the powerful people who start throwing bills your way to make up their shortfalls. Next thing you know you’re getting an environmental impact assessment from NY for West Point or something crazy like that.
Don’t look at the money coming in when the variable is money going out. When none of us know what costs are correlated. Even salaries typically don’t come out of tax funds but revenue for those supporting employees.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
All that said I will happily buy one of every peace dollar variant they make for as long as they make them as they are some of them better modern products made in some time. I am hoping for an ultra HR variant at some point
Flops or lower mintages or ok by me. Gives them a chance to not be just bullion when my heirs sell but I could care less.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
It's nice that some people like them but it is becoming a Govt boondoggle.
I get that lots don't give a crap and that is why Gov is so wasteful.
We deserve what we get.
So you’re desiring a gov product while decrying the gov
do you honestly think that stripping profit motive out of the issuance of collectibles coins by making enough where everybody can buy one direct is a boondoggie? Or is it that prices have gone up when everything else in the world has too is the problem?
At the end of the day they eliminated the problem of little old guys getting squeezed out by flippers and having to pay premiums on the secondary market, that isn’t a boondoggle that is efficiency. That is them looking out for collectors. Collecting isn’t an Investment and then putting their finger on the production control to stimulate the resale market isn’t pro collector. Rising prices are a different matter but go buy heavy Machinery required precious metal anything in the commercial market, the prices are even crazier there.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
They have efficiently buried themselves in $8,000,000 (est.) of 2023 product plus what they will inevitably not sell of the 600,000 minted in 2024 Morgan/Peace proof coins. If they were looking out for collectors they would keep the production limited to build in value.
They are behaving like they do not care about modern numismatics and I will not let them off the hook.
Buried? You don’t think they have a pivot plan in place to liquidate or simply turn them into eagles. They aren’t sitting on 8mil of bad debt within the program. Caring about modern numismatics? they are modern numismatics and are actin like they are collector orientated not people making money off them orientated which is the way it should be.
You don’t have to let them off the hook although I think your rod may be in the wrong pond. Speak with your dollars, if you don’t like them don’t buy them.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
If you say so. "Government reimbursable cost models" might or might not have any relationship to reality. I vote they don't.
Whatever overhead they might want to roll into a .859 ounce silver uncirculated or proof coin that they expect to sell 275-300K units, they need to price them to sell.
And, considering that the overhead will exist whether or not they sell these coins, or any numismatic coins, for that matter, I'd humbly suggest they take a cost accounting approach, and just look at variable costs when deciding whether or not to produce a given product.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting they should sell anything at the variable, or marginal cost of production. I'm just suggesting that trying to sell 275K+ plus units of anything at 300% of its intrinsic value is likely to fall flat, and so-called "government reimbursable cost models" won't change that.
Making a little less is better than making nothing at all, which is what will happen if they throw their numismatic program into a death spiral. In which case they will still have their overhead. Which they won't be capturing by charging banks 30 cents for a circulating quarter.
They'll be eating it, just like they currently eat the production costs of cents and nickels over their face value. So maybe they don't need to throw the kitchen sink into their pricing model when deciding what to charge for any given numismatic item, so long as it can be made and marketed for less than the price the market will bear at a given mintage.
This is all very true, and they got it exactly right last year. As evidenced by quick sell outs (other than the proofs, which they clearly overproduced and adjusted for this year), and the coins holding their value in the secondary market, while collectors were able to easily get whatever they wanted without having to pay premiums to flippers.
The Mint then reacted to whatever inflation they are experiencing at the mother ship, as well as ~$5 increase in the price of silver, by keeping the mintage the same while jacking up the price by $15 in order to maintain their margins.
In hindsight, they should have either eaten their increase in costs, which would have just dug into their healthy margins, rather than throwing the product from a profit to a loss, or reduced the mintage enough to make the product attract at the premium they chose to charge. But they were greedy, did neither, and the market has spoken.
Whatever you think they need to do with respect to "government reimbursable cost models," they made less money, and covered less overhead, selling 175K units of each of the Morgan and Peace uncircs at $91 than they would have by selling 275K at $76, even taking into account the increase in the price of silver. Which, by the way, has already pulled back somewhat from its recent highs.
The EXACT same thing is now going to happen with the proofs. G-U-A-R-A-N-T-E-E-D. Nobody wins if they kill a program, and they are now well on their way to doing that here. They are not the Perth Mint, or the Royal Canadian Mint, and cannot price items with mintages in excess of 100K the same way world mints price products with mintages under 10K.
Nor do they need to. They just need to get a clue. Otherwise, they'll be applying "government reimbursable cost models" to the carcass of a dead golden goose. This is not food, water or shelter. At some price, we will all be taking a pass. It's not complicated.
>
these aren't struck on ase blanks
"0.859 troy ounce of .999 fine silver"
$105.93713620488940628637951105937 per troy ounce!
Of course not but they can be melted No?
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
@NJCoin
There are different types of funding in the gov but without getting into minutia, funded or reimbursable. One is paid or by Congress and the other has to be funded by revenue. The mint is mostly Revenue based so reimbursable. Inside that agency there are directorates that have their own programs and portfolios. The circulating coinage is different than collectible. I’m not familiar with their portfolios but it is easy to see how losing money on pennies could be made up with quarters and there is most likely accounting magic where the Treasury or reserve buys the change to sell to banks at face value with different colored dollars. Collectible coins are rarely sell outs and even at lower volumes the peace/Morgan series can be winners.
My point was that the lower mintages are most likely the result of newness wearing off and the flippers moving on as 23 was a dud for them. That simply doesn’t make them losers for collectors or does it mean they would sell them cheaper to move more. Facts are a reimbursable program has to break even and cover costs. They are not trying to maximize transactions or profit. The mint is well run similar to the patent and trademark office unlike other groups always begging for money. Their books are fine. You’re applying free market ideas to a Luxury niche gov program, try telling ford there is only 10k of steal in the F150 when commenting on their price at the dealer. Tell them how many more they would sell if priced closer to melt!
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
I totally get it. MY only point was that using government account gimmicks to justify a price that the market simply will not support is self-defeating.
They would have made more money just shoving some of their fixed costs up their you know whats, and selling more at a lower price. Even if that required accepting lower margins. Their fixed costs remain fixed regardless, and now they lost around 100K in sales on the first two issues, and will likely lose 100K more on the next two. All to make an extra $15 on the 175-200K they will sell, in support of reimbursable government accounting.
Putting fixed costs aside, because, as I said, they will be paid whether they sell 0 coins or 100 million, using the intrinsic value of the planchet as a proxy for all variable costs, and using a very generous $30 as a proxy for that 0.859 ounce of silver, I'd rather sell 275K of anything, including these precious silver dollars, at a gross profit of $46 than 175K at a gross profit of $61. How about you?
The simple fact is, if they are going to bother doing this at all, they should be doing it in a way that maximizes returns for the Treasury, while supporting the market. The only reason not to flood the market is to not destroy it. The same holds for not pricing at such an unreasonable level that people lose interest.
There is a price that maximizes sales, interest and profit for the Mint. And that just so happens to be around $75 for these. Not $90. And not $35 either.
And, yes, I'm trying to tell Ford it's not Lamborghini, or Kia, and it needs to price its product accordingly. The Mint is now pricing its product like it's the Perth Mint, or the Royal Canadian Mint, and it sliced 100K off demand for this product as a result. If that was the intended result, the mintage would have been set at 150K, not 275K. Same for the upcoming proofs.
I added both Peace dollars and reverse proof set to my subscription earlier in the year. Yes, I'm in the same camp over the price point. First, in the long term, the cost will become irrelovant as the metals values closes the gap. Currently nearing $30 per ounce and indicating a bit more rise before leveling off. Second, although a medal and not a coin, many collectors treat them as an inclusion to the former series meant for commerce. So, if say half of them sell while the remainder become confined to the melting pot, the market value will react in a possitive manner. Again, while frustrated over the $95 price tag, from a personal veiwpoint it's a collection not an investment. The real question becomes how does this differ from the purchase of proof Morgan or circulation strike Peace that's clearly over face/metal value? On a percentage basis the modern variants are far lower. Just my thoughts.
You can thank those union workers for the cost.
I’m with you, Ebenezer!
Those darned workers at the coin factory!
When will they ever learn?
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!
It’s against my better judgement. Maybe the mint can do something original for their money, but not for my money.