Cayman Islands 1988 Proof Set - No FM Mint Mark!

7Jaguars

I just saw a 1988 proof set from Cayman Islands and NO FM monogram as opposed to the 1986 & '87 sets. I am referring to the 50c and $1 coins.

7Jaguars

BTW, this is a Royal Mint proof set so had posted earlier about how the 86 and 87 sets retained FM monograms on the reverse of the 50c and $1 as well as the 1986 $5 as these were retained designs from the 84 FM set...

GritsMan

It's surprising the Royal Mint would even allow ONE year of someone else's mint mark on their releases. Would love to learn the real story behind this.

7Jaguars

I thought maybe I was the only one that thought this odd and of interest.

These had to have been low profit, possible loss leaders for the Royal Mint so maybe not that much attention was paid to the issue; still reputation involved possibly IMO.
Somebody, perhaps Dan Carr said how much it cost to prepare a die and don't know if that included labor but let us say that it costs 2k per die so 14k for a 7 coin set if dies NOT reused. If you then include packaging and say perhaps 10 dollar per set and that shipping is covered by charging it to the first level buyer...Labor cost hard to calculate but let us say there are 150 man hours @ 20 per hour at least then 20k to bring the coins out. Advertisement another 10k.

Follow the math then: 300 x 160 = 48k gross for the RM. Less at least 30k in overhead as calculated leaves only a profit of less than 20k....Yikes. If even two dies were reused that would be another 4k added to the bottom line raising profits 20%. Besides, who checks the coins carefully enough to matter? Well, at least me!