NN: Mint Stats as of July 27, 2017....Commem's not selling well.
Goldbully
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Could the Boys Town $5 gold be a sleeper?
Mint Statistics: Not the time to buy commemoratives
Posted on July 27, 2017 by Dave Harper
Remember the Lions Club silver dollar? Buyers didn’t this week, either. The Mint sold 86 proofs and 24 uncirculateds. The Boys Town results were slightly larger, but not so large to make it worthwhile to cite the figures.
Silver American Eagle sales figures are not doing a whole lot better. The 2016 uncirculated coin rose by 630 to 201,374. The proof of that year was up by 1,699 to 565,066. The 2017 Eagle offerings did somewhat better. The proof registered 2,000 to increase to 290,007. The uncirculated 2017 Eagle was up by 4,857. This being the largest number is probably due to this coin being the most recent one to go on sale.
The proof platinum American Eagle has gone another week without selling out. The increase of 731 takes its running tally to 8,775 out of a possible 10,000.
The $100 American Liberty gold proof rose by 117 to 23,689. The Liberty medal was up by 579 to 39,264.
Comments
I see a new $5 key date coming out of 2017!! Wow, those are pathetic numbers for both the proof and Unc. coins.
A key point the table emphasizes is the overwhelming pile of "stuff" the Mint is producing and selling. To me, this seems excessive.
I do not see any future rarities in those figures....Cheers, RickO
The mint is issuing too much stuff, and they are playing too many games with some of the stuff they issue. I would have liked to have purchased the Truman and Kennedy presidential dollar folders that a coin and a medal, but the Mint limited the mintage. They were mostly sold out to flippers within minutes and now cost double the issue price or more. Forget it. I'm out at those prices.
This latest thing with the "enhanced Uncirculated" coins is a joke. The mint did a much better job of celebrating their 200th anniversary in 1992 a couple of nice medals in bronze and silver.
I dislike buying Mint issues that I find borderline average just because they are low mintage and could be a key date modern.
But, a 'collector' has to do what a collector has to do.
I totally agree with your first part: "The Mint is issuing to much stuff".... In addition, the slow sellers appear to be available for years.
Only time will tell if the "enhanced uncirculated" set is a joke. I have a suspicion, that it will be a fairly quick sell out (less than 30 days), with short term rising premiums in the secondary market.
Even if they don't sell a single additional piece between now and a month prior to going off sale, these will likely not be "key coins" in the manner that we have experienced it in the past, if for no other reason that someone will start a thread on the boards screaming "new key date..." and will post to it every day to attract attention and increase sales for those willing to speculate. Kind of an inverse self-fulfilling prophecy.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
THIS!! The National Park five dollar gold coin would've been much much scarcer except for someone screaming about it being a key date a few weeks before they went off sale. The mint probably sold more coins the following week then it did the previous four months combined.
It's early enough I think we can talk about it safely; the Boys Town silver Unc dollar looks like it should be the new dollar key, beating out the Paralympics dollar, which had held that spot for over 20 years. I have a Boy's Town dollar myself; The design is actually really nice, especially the reverse.
I am kinda impressed that The Mint continues to sell the 225th Anniversary gold at the pace of around 100 to 150 coins per week. It's both unattractive and pricey, and it doesn't 'fit' well with previously issued denominations, and some people might consider it 'poster art', but buyers still show up every week. People have plunked down roughly 40 million dollars for these things in a short period of time.
There is a seasonality in numismatics, and now is smack dab in the dog days of summer. People head outdoors and off on vacations. Most of this stuff will still be available when the weather gets cooler and people return to indoor pursuits.
From time-to-time, The Mint really does need to set an issue limit of 5,000 on some damn thing, overprice it just a little bit, and then make certain that nobody in the regular world can get one, and then everyone here will complain about that. Just to change the tempo of the avaricious moaning.
Earlier this year, I read a comment from a mint spokesperson that it was probably a mistake to have both commems this year celebrate service organizations, which generally do poorly.
Congress really needs to re-examine what commems they issue. Then the mint needs to re-examine what designs they put on the commems. They're not doing the represented organizations any good if sales doesn't pass the initial operational cost.
They haven't had a real successful issue since the 2014 BBHoF. Next year is Breast Cancer and World War 1. I don't think they've chosen the "winners" yet.
If you look at the other world mints that the Mint store is actually competing with in the marketplace (Perth, RCM, etc.) they are rather restrained. At least our Mint Store isn't colorizing coins, and none of them glow in the dark...
It's not just the US Mint Store that's having poor sales. Perth just announced their sales are down, too. Maybe those high-profile business executives with lots of money who are collectors of this stuff are putting their money elsewhere.
The Royal UK mint started cranking out multiple series as well in gold, silver and platinum in 1oz, 2oz, 5oz, 10oz and kilo coins. Some have mintages well under 1,000 but the price over spot is so high even hard core collectors would do a double-take.
Well Sales won't be down on Tuesday with 225,000 sets selling out in a matter of minutes.
Would you take the over / under on 15 minutes