@fathom said:
So the Mint blew it with the v75 and so its OK to create another feeding frenzy?
Look I am in the market for the long term I do not want to see moderns or classics marketed this way. It's an unforced error by the firm, long time participant or not.
People will feel burned at some point, in the reselling or the initial purchase price, that is never a good thing.
There is a reason collectible watches or jewelry or art is not marketed this way.
Do not compare it to sportscards which can be stamped out like so many Pringles.
We are in a hobby where state of the art manufacturing and design of precious metal products that are perpetually intrinsic are treasured for generations. Let's treat it that way.
Disagree with everything but the fact that you don't want to see it.
Many sportscards are quite rare, by the way, 1804 dollar rare.
Are they manufactured with the same skill and materials?
@Arkie said:
(First post, new member, long time lurker observer)
I'm new to hardcore collecting, but a seasoned statistician. I've been "collecting" for some 20+ years, but a very niche focus. Recently, I've started to venture out into new areas now that I've filled my niche (almost) completely. So I saw that VaultBox email come in... looked at the CoinWeek article and their video... and thought to myself... "oh, I'm all over this!" Not from the collector perspective, but from the statistics and probability side! Then I'll decide if I will buy one.
TLDR version: Nope. I don't think I will. But I'm also not one to get a rush from scratch-offs or mega-milions either, in fact they make me queasy, so there's that. If you're a collector that also likes to play the lottery... this is actually still much better odds than the lottery, even beyond the fact you will "win" "$255" with your single $596 scratch-off.
Specific coins in the boxes and the collecting aspects aside, this is what I came up with as the reason I would sit it out. Yeah, there will be somewhere around 136 to 272 boxes that provide return on investment (depending on what valuation you really consider), and a handful that will greatly return on investment, but that's too "unlikely" for my blood.
Geeky side note: I took the listing of coins in each set (common, uncommon, and rare) and unpacked it into a true listing of each of the 800 coins (1 row per coin). Then ran a vector combination of those three sets to get every possible combination of how a single box could be "randomly" assembled -- (800^3) or 512 million rows of data -- and calculated the value of each of those potential boxes.
The following table has the proportion of the 512M box combinations that would provide a return on investment, at 100% of the NGC listed value, at 90%, 80% and 70% (for those of us that pad those for what we would actually consider the market value.
So, at say 80% of the value listed by NGC, there were 21.3% of the combinations that resulted in a box worth over $596. If you consider each combination as having an equal chance of becoming a box, that would approximate 170 profitable boxes out of the 800. If you take NGC values at their word, there would be around 272 profitable boxes.
Adj Value
ROI
% Vector
N Vector
Avg $ Adj
100%
YES
34.0%
174,193,580
1314
NO
66.0%
337,806,420
419
90%
YES
26.7%
136859940
1352
NO
73.3%
375140060
395
80%
YES
21.3%
108981490
1365
NO
78.7%
403018510
366
70%
YES
17.1%
87425560
1352
NO
82.9%
424574440
332
I tried to calculate the most common box values (mode) in the ROI groups and upper bounds of what could be commonly found as profitable (such as excluding the outlier high dollar coins), but my home computer couldn't handle working that out over 512M records and I can't justify pointing one of our powerful ones on it for a curiosity.
Sheesh, why are you giving away quantitative info like that? I spent a few hours this weekend building a probability matrix to assess value levels for each box. I got 33.1% at 100% value that were profitable (265.08 boxes) but my value cutoff was slightly higher than yours. When you give away hard work like this it in not in your interest or the interest of others that do hard work to understand value of an offering. Sheesh............
I think folks should do their own research and not give it away. You gave away valuable research. Sheesh.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, here is my data, assuming NGC retail for each coin. I did not want to present this until after the offering closed but now I feel forced to. The post above should have been kept quiet in order to not bias decisions on whether to be in or not in the offering IMO.
@spacehayduke said:
The post above should have been kept quiet in order to not bias decisions on whether to be in or not in the offering IMO.
I blame it being a researcher in the public sector… and heavily influenced by GI Joe as a kid… “and knowing is half the battle. Go Joe!”
At least I refrained from linking to the scripts I used and can be readily used when they get to “series 2”. :-) If they get to series 2. And if they publish the coins list again.
Altruism aside, if the odds had come out differently, I probably would have waited until I received a confirmation for my order. LOL
@fathom said:
So the Mint blew it with the v75 and so its OK to create another feeding frenzy?
Look I am in the market for the long term I do not want to see moderns or classics marketed this way. It's an unforced error by the firm, long time participant or not.
People will feel burned at some point, in the reselling or the initial purchase price, that is never a good thing.
There is a reason collectible watches or jewelry or art is not marketed this way.
Do not compare it to sportscards which can be stamped out like so many Pringles.
We are in a hobby where state of the art manufacturing and design of precious metal products that are perpetually intrinsic are treasured for generations. Let's treat it that way.
@telephoto1 said: ...They salted W quarters into regular ones. Etc.
...but they weren't charging $1250 per bag for you to buy $1000 worth of quarters in order to hunt for them...
Still a lottery.
And they do charge $20 or more for $10 in quarters.
Not via the banks they weren't... which is how these were mostly being disseminated.
I wasn't talking about the Ws. Look at the 3 roll sets of Women's quarters.
A lottery is a lottery, no matter who runs it.
Not really. The Mint's lottery is just that supply is less than demand, so some (or many) will be shut out. But everyone who wins is buying the same thing at the same price. And the "losers" only lose a flip, or the opportunity to add something to their collection at the issue price. They don't actually spend money and get nothing, or little, in return.
An actual lottery is one where you buy a ticket, but have no idea ahead of time what you got. Nothing, $5, $500 million, etc.
This is an actual lottery, without regard to whether or not people are going to be shut out on Wednesday, because people don't know what they are going to get, and they are not all going to get the same thing. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Mint being unable to meet demand for hot new issues.
@spacehayduke said:
Now that the cat is out of the bag, here is my data, assuming NGC retail for each coin. I did not want to present this until after the offering closed but now I feel forced to. The post above should have been kept quiet in order to not bias decisions on whether to be in or not in the offering IMO.
Why? Why not bias decisions if a numerical analysis shows that it's a bad deal? What is your interest in not dissuading people from participating, after you did the work to see what a bad deal it is? Or to provide the benefit of your work to the community in case anyone wants to take the plunge in spite of the bad economics?
I could see not wanting to share work if it would lead to increased competition, but are you honestly a buyer based on the analysis you performed? If not, why not let others benefit from your work?
Do you have an interest in the success or failure of VaultBox? Is there any reason you would want it to succeed, at the expense of less sophisticated people on this forum, if you did "valuable" work and determined, objectively, that it's a bad deal?
@fathom said:
So the Mint blew it with the v75 and so its OK to create another feeding frenzy?
Look I am in the market for the long term I do not want to see moderns or classics marketed this way. It's an unforced error by the firm, long time participant or not.
People will feel burned at some point, in the reselling or the initial purchase price, that is never a good thing.
There is a reason collectible watches or jewelry or art is not marketed this way.
Do not compare it to sportscards which can be stamped out like so many Pringles.
We are in a hobby where state of the art manufacturing and design of precious metal products that are perpetually intrinsic are treasured for generations. Let's treat it that way.
@telephoto1 said: ...They salted W quarters into regular ones. Etc.
...but they weren't charging $1250 per bag for you to buy $1000 worth of quarters in order to hunt for them...
Still a lottery.
And they do charge $20 or more for $10 in quarters.
Not via the banks they weren't... which is how these were mostly being disseminated.
I wasn't talking about the Ws. Look at the 3 roll sets of Women's quarters.
A lottery is a lottery, no matter who runs it.
Not really. The Mint's lottery is just that supply is less than demand, so some (or many) will be shut out. But everyone who wins is buying the same thing at the same price. And the "losers" only lose a flip, or the opportunity to add something to their collection at the issue price. They don't actually spend money and get nothing, or little, in return.
An actual lottery is one where you buy a ticket, but have no idea ahead of time what you got. Nothing, $5, $500 million, etc.
This is an actual lottery, without regard to whether or not people are going to be shut out on Wednesday, because people don't know what they are going to get, and they are not all going to get the same thing. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Mint being unable to meet demand for hot new issues.
Still a lottery. Drawing straws is free, but it's still a lottery. And frankly, if the flip doesn't materialize, they all paid and all lost.
Well, then that's not a lottery at all. Nor does it purport to be. The Mint puts products on sale. It doesn't promise flips. No one who can order pays and loses, because they buy exactly what is offered for sale. Not a mystery box with a unknown value.
@DCW said:
Do you guys really think these things will be a quick sellout?
The excitement is supposed to come from the WWII privy marked AGE?
Now that the cat is out of the bag, only if more than 800 people are anxious to play a $600 lottery with a 80%+ of losing up to a few hundred dollars, because there is a 1 in 800 chance to make $20K+, and up to a 20% chance to make between a few dollars and a few thousand dollars.
Bad odds, bad expected value, but who knows? People play Powerball with 50 cents of every dollar collected returned in prizes because they like the thrill and the chance to become a multimillionaire.
@spacehayduke and @Arkie did a very nice job utilizing relatively sophisticated statistical analysis. Most people with common sense, but lacking their statistical prowess, would get to the same place.
That doesn't change the fact that many lack basic common sense, and many like a gamble no matter how bad the odds, so it really is an open question as to whether these will be a quick sell out, or a sell out at all. Some very smart people made a significant bet that it will be, but smart people have been known to make bad calls in the past, and surely will in the future.
The 75th anniversary is the big prize, but the excitement is the chance to get more than you are paying for. Even if it turns out to be less than 20%. Whether it's a quick sell out or a dog remains to be seen.
@spacehayduke said:
The post above should have been kept quiet in order to not bias decisions on whether to be in or not in the offering IMO.
I blame it being a researcher in the public sector… and heavily influenced by GI Joe as a kid… “and knowing is half the battle. Go Joe!”
At least I refrained from linking to the scripts I used and can be readily used when they get to “series 2”. :-) If they get to series 2. And if they publish the coins list again.
Altruism aside, if the odds had come out differently, I probably would have waited until I received a confirmation for my order. LOL
You don't need to apologize or justify not being selfish, and being willing to share "valuable" information that you developed that does not disadvantage you in any way. As opposed to holding it back for an "I knew it all along" moment after the sale, or just keeping it to yourself because you have no interest in sharing what you know and helping people avoid financial mistakes.
@DCW said:
Do you guys really think these things will be a quick sellout?
The excitement is supposed to come from the WWII privy marked AGE?
Personally, I think they’ll get quite a few card collectors buying them, as that’s the company’s main gig and the NGCX is also playing into that 0-10 grade market. I signed up for the reminder for when it goes on sale (out of curiosity more than anything) and the spam that followed was all about cards.
I wish everyone luck if they do buy. And I hope we do get to see some shiny high end coin pics. While I don’t play the lottery or cards, I do enjoy watching people do it — with THIER money lol
Anyone find it odd that vaultbox says you will get one common, one uncommon, and one rare (and the video even mentions that) but the unboxing produces two commons (2013 and 2014 mint state Eagles in 9.9) and one rare?
Starting to think maybe the value of all this is in the slabs themselves. Like the NGC black slabs. Maybe if it flops, the slab collectors will covet the Vaultbox red slabs. 😆
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Anyone find it odd that vaultbox says you will get one common, one uncommon, and one rare (and the video even mentions that) but the unboxing produces two commons (2013 and 2014 mint state Eagles in 9.9) and one rare?
In the coins list, other than a few older ASE, it looks like they are considering burnished and proof to be “uncommon”. There’s even fairly recent ASE MS in “10” that are in the “rare” group.
Anyone find it odd that vaultbox says you will get one common, one uncommon, and one rare (and the video even mentions that) but the unboxing produces two commons (2013 and 2014 mint state Eagles in 9.9) and one rare?
In the coins list, other than a few older ASE, it looks like they are considering burnished and proof to be “uncommon”. There’s even fairly recent ASE MS in “10” that are in the “rare” group.
There are definitely some common coins in the "uncommon" group. I'm just saying that they messed up the video by including two coins that are both in the common group (as designated by vaultbox) and not including any from the uncommon group. For a promotional video, you'd think they would at least get that right.
I am also curious what they do with that box they, well, unboxed. I didn’t factor that one coming out of the combination of possible boxes. It would pull one ROI box out if that is one of the 800, as it was a good one (coincidentally).
Personally, the guy didn’t look happy enough to see a 1oz gold come out of the bed to be real to me. My eyes would have widened and smiled big, even if it wasn’t MY box. No Academy Award nomination for him.
@U1chicago said:
And I answered my own question. It was just a promo-and they messed it up.
@Arkie said:
I am also curious what they do with that box they, well, unboxed. I didn’t factor that one coming out of the combination of possible boxes. It would pull one ROI box out if that is one of the 800, as it was a good one (coincidentally).
Looks like you found the answer!
Now I want that demo-box. It’s going to be famous.
@U1chicago said:
There are definitely some common coins in the "uncommon" group. I'm just saying that they messed up the video by including two coins that are both in the common group (as designated by vaultbox) and not including any from the uncommon group. For a promotional video, you'd think they would at least get that right.
I thought one of those was burnished that they pulled out. I might be misremembering though. Was to focused on waiting for the valuable red plastic.
Anyone find it odd that vaultbox says you will get one common, one uncommon, and one rare (and the video even mentions that) but the unboxing produces two commons (2013 and 2014 mint state Eagles in 9.9) and one rare?
In the coins list, other than a few older ASE, it looks like they are considering burnished and proof to be “uncommon”. There’s even fairly recent ASE MS in “10” that are in the “rare” group.
The categories are not mean to be taken literally, since no commons, other than that 75 anniversary gold, are truly "rare." Even a 30,000 mintage, when all are saved by collectors, is not "rare" in the classic sense.
The categories are just proxies for relative value, to ensure each box gets one less valuable coin, one slightly more valuable coin, and one even slightly more valuable one, with the rare prizes sprinkled into the "rare" category (the red core ones).
@Arkie said:
(First post, new member, long time lurker observer)
I'm new to hardcore collecting, but a seasoned statistician. I've been "collecting" for some 20+ years, but a very niche focus. Recently, I've started to venture out into new areas now that I've filled my niche (almost) completely. So I saw that VaultBox email come in... looked at the CoinWeek article and their video... and thought to myself... "oh, I'm all over this!" Not from the collector perspective, but from the statistics and probability side! Then I'll decide if I will buy one.
TLDR version: Nope. I don't think I will. But I'm also not one to get a rush from scratch-offs or mega-milions either, in fact they make me queasy, so there's that. If you're a collector that also likes to play the lottery... this is actually still much better odds than the lottery, even beyond the fact you will "win" "$255" with your single $596 scratch-off.
Specific coins in the boxes and the collecting aspects aside, this is what I came up with as the reason I would sit it out. Yeah, there will be somewhere around 136 to 272 boxes that provide return on investment (depending on what valuation you really consider), and a handful that will greatly return on investment, but that's too "unlikely" for my blood.
Geeky side note: I took the listing of coins in each set (common, uncommon, and rare) and unpacked it into a true listing of each of the 800 coins (1 row per coin). Then ran a vector combination of those three sets to get every possible combination of how a single box could be "randomly" assembled -- (800^3) or 512 million rows of data -- and calculated the value of each of those potential boxes.
The following table has the proportion of the 512M box combinations that would provide a return on investment, at 100% of the NGC listed value, at 90%, 80% and 70% (for those of us that pad those for what we would actually consider the market value.
So, at say 80% of the value listed by NGC, there were 21.3% of the combinations that resulted in a box worth over $596. If you consider each combination as having an equal chance of becoming a box, that would approximate 170 profitable boxes out of the 800. If you take NGC values at their word, there would be around 272 profitable boxes.
Adj Value
ROI
% Vector
N Vector
Avg $ Adj
100%
YES
34.0%
174,193,580
1314
NO
66.0%
337,806,420
419
90%
YES
26.7%
136859940
1352
NO
73.3%
375140060
395
80%
YES
21.3%
108981490
1365
NO
78.7%
403018510
366
70%
YES
17.1%
87425560
1352
NO
82.9%
424574440
332
I tried to calculate the most common box values (mode) in the ROI groups and upper bounds of what could be commonly found as profitable (such as excluding the outlier high dollar coins), but my home computer couldn't handle working that out over 512M records and I can't justify pointing one of our powerful ones on it for a curiosity.
You don’t need to do anything involving all combinations of coins. If there is no correlation between the groups the expectation of the sum is the sum of the expectations and you can simply model the distributions for each group. If you are interested in the fraction of boxes that generate significant returns you can use the shortcut that virtually all of the excess value is in the rare coins. Just take each of those values and add it to the EV of groups 1 and 2. That’s only 800 coins (and probably way fewer values as you only have to worry about distinct cases and I doubt there are 800 of those) and easy enough to do in a spreadsheet. If you want to get more accurate just account for the standard deviation for each of groups 1 and 2. I suspect the distribution will be normal enough. You mentioned that the expected value of the box is actually $850 based on NGC’s guide? I assume that’s the sum of all 2400 coins / 800? That’s surprising to me but nice to hear!
@david3142 said:
You don’t need to do anything involving all combinations of coins. If there is no correlation between the groups the expectation of the sum is the sum of the expectations.
Something similar was my first run on it. However each of the groups’ values were severely skewed and the imprecise aspect of that didn’t set well with me. It actually bugged me half the weekend, as I have plans for doing more with it than the simplistic ROI cut-off. Plus it was an opportunity to generate a massive data set for another purpose.
That and the cut-over under-over proportion of every combination seemed easier to explain/argue.
Edited…
@david3142 said:
You mentioned that the expected value of the box is actually $850 based on NGC’s guide? I assume that’s the sum of all 2400 coins / 800?
I must have overlooked this part. Not following here. What’s the $850? I think the raw mean value per box was something like $725. But the substantial skew really influences that mean to the point of silliness.
@david3142 said:
You don’t need to do anything involving all combinations of coins. If there is no correlation between the groups the expectation of the sum is the sum of the expectations.
Something similar was my first run on it. However each of the groups’ values were severely skewed and the imprecise aspect of that didn’t set well with me. It actually bugged me half the weekend, as I have plans for doing more with it than the simplistic ROI cut-off. Plus it was an opportunity to generate a massive data set for another purpose.
That and the cut-over under-over proportion of every combination seemed easier to explain/argue.
Edited…
@david3142 said:
You mentioned that the expected value of the box is actually $850 based on NGC’s guide? I assume that’s the sum of all 2400 coins / 800?
I must have overlooked this part. Not following here. What’s the $850? I think the raw mean value per box was something like $725. But the substantial skew really influences that mean to the point of silliness.
Thanks very much for your response (and your initial work!)
You wrote that “you will win $255 with your scratch-off”. I interpreted that to mean that 595+255 was the expected value of the box. I apologize if I misinterpreted that. $725 isn’t too bad for the consumer. I would guess any piece could be resold at 60-70% of published values so that’s an EV of about $470. It would be fun to plot a histogram with both frequency of box value and contribution to EV. Only 1/800 boxes will have that $20K coin but it contributes about $25 to the EV total!
@david3142 said:
You don’t need to do anything involving all combinations of coins. If there is no correlation between the groups the expectation of the sum is the sum of the expectations.
Something similar was my first run on it. However each of the groups’ values were severely skewed and the imprecise aspect of that didn’t set well with me. It actually bugged me half the weekend, as I have plans for doing more with it than the simplistic ROI cut-off. Plus it was an opportunity to generate a massive data set for another purpose.
That and the cut-over under-over proportion of every combination seemed easier to explain/argue.
Edited…
@david3142 said:
You mentioned that the expected value of the box is actually $850 based on NGC’s guide? I assume that’s the sum of all 2400 coins / 800?
I must have overlooked this part. Not following here. What’s the $850? I think the raw mean value per box was something like $725. But the substantial skew really influences that mean to the point of silliness.
Thanks very much for your response (and your initial work!)
You wrote that “you will win $255 with your scratch-off”. I interpreted that to mean that 595+255 was the expected value of the box. I apologize if I misinterpreted that. $725 isn’t too bad for the consumer. I would guess any piece could be resold at 60-70% of published values so that’s an EV of about $470. It would be fun to plot a histogram with both frequency of box value and contribution to EV. Only 1/800 boxes will have that $20K coin but it contributes about $25 to the EV total!
The $725 is generous, and probably fictional in the real world, if it's based on NGC values, but the skew he's talking about is the deviation between the few coins at the top and all the others. After you take them out, as you must because only 3 people out of 800 will get them, the average value for the remaining 797 boxes falls far below $595, if it ever actually was above it to begin with. Which it kind of can't be if VaultBox is going to make any money on this.
@david3142 said:
You wrote that “you will win $255 with your scratch-off”.
I probably could have been clearer there. You're "winning" $255, as that is the lowest possible value combination of the three coin groupings. So unlike a scratch off, where you might end up with nothing but a pile of silver stuff to wipe into the trash... you're always going to get >= $255.
@david3142 said:
You wrote that “you will win $255 with your scratch-off”.
I probably could have been clearer there. You're "winning" $255, as that is the lowest possible value combination of the three coin groupings. So unlike a scratch off, where you might end up with nothing but a pile of silver stuff to wipe into the trash... you're always going to get >= $255.
What the heck happened? The release date said it was tomorrow, 1/25 at 9am PST? I had even "subscribed" my email for updates and received no type of notification that there would be pre sales? I was planning on buying one just to review for the forum but I guess were SOL now.....
I got this email but thought it was for today so I checked website at 12:02 and it said out of stock BUT upon reflection I want to point out it doesn't say SOLD OUT so maybe it will be available tomorrow. My apologies if my post turns out to be a false alarm!
Comments
58
59
Not via the banks they weren't... which is how these were mostly being disseminated.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
Are they manufactured with the same skill and materials?
Are they as historically significant?
Apples and Oranges.
60
61
Sheesh, why are you giving away quantitative info like that? I spent a few hours this weekend building a probability matrix to assess value levels for each box. I got 33.1% at 100% value that were profitable (265.08 boxes) but my value cutoff was slightly higher than yours. When you give away hard work like this it in not in your interest or the interest of others that do hard work to understand value of an offering. Sheesh............
I think folks should do their own research and not give it away. You gave away valuable research. Sheesh.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, here is my data, assuming NGC retail for each coin. I did not want to present this until after the offering closed but now I feel forced to. The post above should have been kept quiet in order to not bias decisions on whether to be in or not in the offering IMO.
I blame it being a researcher in the public sector… and heavily influenced by GI Joe as a kid… “and knowing is half the battle. Go Joe!”
At least I refrained from linking to the scripts I used and can be readily used when they get to “series 2”. :-) If they get to series 2. And if they publish the coins list again.
Altruism aside, if the odds had come out differently, I probably would have waited until I received a confirmation for my order. LOL
Do you guys really think these things will be a quick sellout?
The excitement is supposed to come from the WWII privy marked AGE?
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Not really. The Mint's lottery is just that supply is less than demand, so some (or many) will be shut out. But everyone who wins is buying the same thing at the same price. And the "losers" only lose a flip, or the opportunity to add something to their collection at the issue price. They don't actually spend money and get nothing, or little, in return.
An actual lottery is one where you buy a ticket, but have no idea ahead of time what you got. Nothing, $5, $500 million, etc.
This is an actual lottery, without regard to whether or not people are going to be shut out on Wednesday, because people don't know what they are going to get, and they are not all going to get the same thing. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Mint being unable to meet demand for hot new issues.
Well now that the cat is out of the bag.....😂🤣
I still ain't buying one🤣😂
Why? Why not bias decisions if a numerical analysis shows that it's a bad deal? What is your interest in not dissuading people from participating, after you did the work to see what a bad deal it is? Or to provide the benefit of your work to the community in case anyone wants to take the plunge in spite of the bad economics?
I could see not wanting to share work if it would lead to increased competition, but are you honestly a buyer based on the analysis you performed? If not, why not let others benefit from your work?
Do you have an interest in the success or failure of VaultBox? Is there any reason you would want it to succeed, at the expense of less sophisticated people on this forum, if you did "valuable" work and determined, objectively, that it's a bad deal?
Sheesh.
62
63
Well, then that's not a lottery at all. Nor does it purport to be. The Mint puts products on sale. It doesn't promise flips. No one who can order pays and loses, because they buy exactly what is offered for sale. Not a mystery box with a unknown value.
Hopefully someone on the forum buys one of these bad boys and reports back. And may it be the privied AGE that is found!
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Now that the cat is out of the bag, only if more than 800 people are anxious to play a $600 lottery with a 80%+ of losing up to a few hundred dollars, because there is a 1 in 800 chance to make $20K+, and up to a 20% chance to make between a few dollars and a few thousand dollars.
Bad odds, bad expected value, but who knows? People play Powerball with 50 cents of every dollar collected returned in prizes because they like the thrill and the chance to become a multimillionaire.
@spacehayduke and @Arkie did a very nice job utilizing relatively sophisticated statistical analysis. Most people with common sense, but lacking their statistical prowess, would get to the same place.
That doesn't change the fact that many lack basic common sense, and many like a gamble no matter how bad the odds, so it really is an open question as to whether these will be a quick sell out, or a sell out at all. Some very smart people made a significant bet that it will be, but smart people have been known to make bad calls in the past, and surely will in the future.
The 75th anniversary is the big prize, but the excitement is the chance to get more than you are paying for. Even if it turns out to be less than 20%. Whether it's a quick sell out or a dog remains to be seen.
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You don't need to apologize or justify not being selfish, and being willing to share "valuable" information that you developed that does not disadvantage you in any way. As opposed to holding it back for an "I knew it all along" moment after the sale, or just keeping it to yourself because you have no interest in sharing what you know and helping people avoid financial mistakes.
Personally, I think they’ll get quite a few card collectors buying them, as that’s the company’s main gig and the NGCX is also playing into that 0-10 grade market. I signed up for the reminder for when it goes on sale (out of curiosity more than anything) and the spam that followed was all about cards.
I wish everyone luck if they do buy. And I hope we do get to see some shiny high end coin pics. While I don’t play the lottery or cards, I do enjoy watching people do it — with THIER money lol
Anyone find it odd that vaultbox says you will get one common, one uncommon, and one rare (and the video even mentions that) but the unboxing produces two commons (2013 and 2014 mint state Eagles in 9.9) and one rare?
And I answered my own question. It was just a promo-and they messed it up.
Starting to think maybe the value of all this is in the slabs themselves. Like the NGC black slabs. Maybe if it flops, the slab collectors will covet the Vaultbox red slabs. 😆
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
In the coins list, other than a few older ASE, it looks like they are considering burnished and proof to be “uncommon”. There’s even fairly recent ASE MS in “10” that are in the “rare” group.
There are definitely some common coins in the "uncommon" group. I'm just saying that they messed up the video by including two coins that are both in the common group (as designated by vaultbox) and not including any from the uncommon group. For a promotional video, you'd think they would at least get that right.
I am also curious what they do with that box they, well, unboxed. I didn’t factor that one coming out of the combination of possible boxes. It would pull one ROI box out if that is one of the 800, as it was a good one (coincidentally).
Personally, the guy didn’t look happy enough to see a 1oz gold come out of the bed to be real to me. My eyes would have widened and smiled big, even if it wasn’t MY box. No Academy Award nomination for him.
Looks like you found the answer!
Now I want that demo-box. It’s going to be famous.
I thought one of those was burnished that they pulled out. I might be misremembering though. Was to focused on waiting for the valuable red plastic.
So they admitted to deceptive advertising practices by calling it an promotional box?
So the unboxing was just smoke and mirrors? And they messed it up? Wow! Just wow!
The categories are not mean to be taken literally, since no commons, other than that 75 anniversary gold, are truly "rare." Even a 30,000 mintage, when all are saved by collectors, is not "rare" in the classic sense.
The categories are just proxies for relative value, to ensure each box gets one less valuable coin, one slightly more valuable coin, and one even slightly more valuable one, with the rare prizes sprinkled into the "rare" category (the red core ones).
The deception was NOT properly labeling it when posting it. I seriously can't wait to see how this plays out on Wednesday!
You don’t need to do anything involving all combinations of coins. If there is no correlation between the groups the expectation of the sum is the sum of the expectations and you can simply model the distributions for each group. If you are interested in the fraction of boxes that generate significant returns you can use the shortcut that virtually all of the excess value is in the rare coins. Just take each of those values and add it to the EV of groups 1 and 2. That’s only 800 coins (and probably way fewer values as you only have to worry about distinct cases and I doubt there are 800 of those) and easy enough to do in a spreadsheet. If you want to get more accurate just account for the standard deviation for each of groups 1 and 2. I suspect the distribution will be normal enough. You mentioned that the expected value of the box is actually $850 based on NGC’s guide? I assume that’s the sum of all 2400 coins / 800? That’s surprising to me but nice to hear!
Something similar was my first run on it. However each of the groups’ values were severely skewed and the imprecise aspect of that didn’t set well with me. It actually bugged me half the weekend, as I have plans for doing more with it than the simplistic ROI cut-off. Plus it was an opportunity to generate a massive data set for another purpose.
That and the cut-over under-over proportion of every combination seemed easier to explain/argue.
Edited…
I must have overlooked this part. Not following here. What’s the $850? I think the raw mean value per box was something like $725. But the substantial skew really influences that mean to the point of silliness.
Thanks very much for your response (and your initial work!)
You wrote that “you will win $255 with your scratch-off”. I interpreted that to mean that 595+255 was the expected value of the box. I apologize if I misinterpreted that. $725 isn’t too bad for the consumer. I would guess any piece could be resold at 60-70% of published values so that’s an EV of about $470. It would be fun to plot a histogram with both frequency of box value and contribution to EV. Only 1/800 boxes will have that $20K coin but it contributes about $25 to the EV total!
The $725 is generous, and probably fictional in the real world, if it's based on NGC values, but the skew he's talking about is the deviation between the few coins at the top and all the others. After you take them out, as you must because only 3 people out of 800 will get them, the average value for the remaining 797 boxes falls far below $595, if it ever actually was above it to begin with. Which it kind of can't be if VaultBox is going to make any money on this.
I probably could have been clearer there. You're "winning" $255, as that is the lowest possible value combination of the three coin groupings. So unlike a scratch off, where you might end up with nothing but a pile of silver stuff to wipe into the trash... you're always going to get >= $255.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks!
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Sold out! Who got one? I didn't try but would love to see if anyone here took a shot and got one or two....🤑🤑🤑
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Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Wait, what? pre order sellout? Out of stock prior to the release date?
BST: endeavor1967, synchr, kliao, Outhaul, Donttellthewife, U1Chicago, ajaan, mCarney1173, SurfinHi, MWallace, Sandman70gt, mustanggt, Pittstate03, Lazybones, Walkerguy21D, coinandcurrency242 , thebigeng, Collectorcoins, JimTyler, USMarine6, Elkevvo, Coll3ctor, Yorkshireman, CUKevin, ranshdow, CoinHunter4, bennybravo, Centsearcher, braddick, Windycity, ZoidMeister, mirabela, JJM, RichURich, Bullsitter, jmski52, LukeMarshall, coinsarefun, MichaelDixon, NickPatton, ProfLiz, Twobitcollector,Jesbroken
Release date was today at 12 noon Eastern time....sold out instantly!
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Now we wait to hear from some lucky devil who beat the odds.
BST: endeavor1967, synchr, kliao, Outhaul, Donttellthewife, U1Chicago, ajaan, mCarney1173, SurfinHi, MWallace, Sandman70gt, mustanggt, Pittstate03, Lazybones, Walkerguy21D, coinandcurrency242 , thebigeng, Collectorcoins, JimTyler, USMarine6, Elkevvo, Coll3ctor, Yorkshireman, CUKevin, ranshdow, CoinHunter4, bennybravo, Centsearcher, braddick, Windycity, ZoidMeister, mirabela, JJM, RichURich, Bullsitter, jmski52, LukeMarshall, coinsarefun, MichaelDixon, NickPatton, ProfLiz, Twobitcollector,Jesbroken
What the heck happened? The release date said it was tomorrow, 1/25 at 9am PST? I had even "subscribed" my email for updates and received no type of notification that there would be pre sales? I was planning on buying one just to review for the forum but I guess were SOL now.....
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I got this email but thought it was for today so I checked website at 12:02 and it said out of stock BUT upon reflection I want to point out it doesn't say SOLD OUT so maybe it will be available tomorrow. My apologies if my post turns out to be a false alarm!