@MsMorrisine said:
i didn't really get 9 silver and I'd like to thank the kind ones who believed in me.
it was just a check to see if I'd get called hypocrite given I'm so outspoken about bots and abuses of the friends and family networks.
it was also a check to see if anyone would PM me offering to buy them. No one did the PM.
to those that believed you're the kind ones.
Do you feel that those who didn’t believe you were unkind? Based on the considerable information that was available, unless they knew you personally, it seems like they had good reason to doubt you.
And, even then, it was pretty clearly a troll. To what end was a mystery that has now been cleared up.
But, to be frank, it was unkind to put the people willing to give the benefit of the doubt in a position to be publicly embarrassed like that. For no reason at all, other than to put the forum to a cynical test.
That it seems to have passed with flying colors, at the expense of the future credibility of the person designing and administering the test. Believers being "the kind ones" is one way to describe them. There are other descriptors that are equally if not more accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
But @ProofCollection is correct insofar as lottery is not the only solution. Other world mints have frequent flyer programs for their direct retail customers.
They grant status based on annual purchase volume, and then early purchase windows for new releases that vary with status. Just like the airlines and hotel chains do for their best customers.
In the past, the Mint has not wanted to pursue this elitist route, but what they are doing now, with auction items and now this, perfectly lends itself to such a program. Anyone who is not a relatively large flipper would hate it, but it would solve the issue of outside buyers club members 100% while also rewarding the Mint's best retail customers.
And regular customers could fight over whatever scraps are left after large flippers get first dibs, next in line get second dibs, etc. Which would be nothing for anything even remotely hot. Kind of like an ABPP program for the unwashed masses.
Encouraging people to load up on common stuff in order to get access to the good stuff. It would also change the calculus of the flip, since sharp people would be willing to break even or take small losses on some things in order to get access to the really lucrative flips. Just like real dealers. Others would find themselves perpetually shut out of the really good stuff, no matter how many F&F accounts they have set up, how fast their internet connections are, or how sophisticated their bots are.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
But @ProofCollection is correct insofar as lottery is not the only solution. Other world mints have frequent flyer programs for their direct retail customers.
They grant status based on annual purchase volume, and then early purchase windows for new releases that vary with status. Just like the airlines and hotel chains do for their best customers.
In the past, the Mint has not wanted to pursue this elitist route, but what they are doing now, with auction items and now this, perfectly lends itself to such a program. Anyone who is not a relatively large flipper would hate it, but it would solve the issue of outside buyers club members 100% while also rewarding the Mint's best retail customers.
And regular customers could fight over whatever scraps are left after large flippers get first dibs, next in line get second dibs, etc. Which would be nothing for anything even remotely hot. Kind of like an ABPP program for the unwashed masses.
Encouraging people to load up on common stuff in order to get access to the good stuff. It would also change the calculus of the flip, since sharp people would be willing to break even or take small losses on some things in order to get access to the really lucrative flips. Just like real dealers. Others would find themselves perpetually shut out of the really good stuff, no matter how many F&F accounts they have set up, how fast their internet connections are, or how sophisticated their bots are.
An auction for 500,000 items is easy. You open it for two weeks or 2 months and sell them to the 500000th highest bid. It's as easy as the way they sell them now only more orderly. You don't auction them one at a time. They do IPOs this way with millions of shares. They sell Treasuries this way.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
But @ProofCollection is correct insofar as lottery is not the only solution. Other world mints have frequent flyer programs for their direct retail customers.
They grant status based on annual purchase volume, and then early purchase windows for new releases that vary with status. Just like the airlines and hotel chains do for their best customers.
In the past, the Mint has not wanted to pursue this elitist route, but what they are doing now, with auction items and now this, perfectly lends itself to such a program. Anyone who is not a relatively large flipper would hate it, but it would solve the issue of outside buyers club members 100% while also rewarding the Mint's best retail customers.
And regular customers could fight over whatever scraps are left after large flippers get first dibs, next in line get second dibs, etc. Which would be nothing for anything even remotely hot. Kind of like an ABPP program for the unwashed masses.
Encouraging people to load up on common stuff in order to get access to the good stuff. It would also change the calculus of the flip, since sharp people would be willing to break even or take small losses on some things in order to get access to the really lucrative flips. Just like real dealers. Others would find themselves perpetually shut out of the really good stuff, no matter how many F&F accounts they have set up, how fast their internet connections are, or how sophisticated their bots are.
An auction for 500,000 items is easy. You open it for two weeks or 2 months and sell them to the 500000th highest bid. It's as easy as the way they sell them now only more orderly.
Maybe. I was thinking more along the lines of a SB auction. Not an eBay one.
But, you are correct, if that's the way they would want to go. But what they do now works pretty well in general.
The bots slamming them on this one is an outlier. And only on the silver, because the price is apparently too low relative to the mintage, without regard to intrinsic value. No such problem with the golds, which, in retrospect, are priced far too high.
So, now that they learned, they can either do what I suggested and open early buying windows for their best customers for things like this, or just make more or price them higher, or a combination of the two, to drive the bots away and price them closer to the secondary market.
@MsMorrisine said:
i didn't really get 9 silver and I'd like to thank the kind ones who believed in me.
it was just a check to see if I'd get called hypocrite given I'm so outspoken about bots and abuses of the friends and family networks.
it was also a check to see if anyone would PM me offering to buy them. No one did the PM.
to those that believed you're the kind ones.
Do you feel that those who didn’t believe you were unkind? Based on the considerable information that was available, unless they knew you personally, it seems like they had good reason to doubt you.
And, even then, it was pretty clearly a troll. To what end was a mystery that has now been cleared up.
But, to be frank, it was unkind to put the people willing to give the benefit of the doubt in a position to be publicly embarrassed like that. For no reason at all, other than to put the forum to a cynical test.
That it seems to have passed with flying colors, at the expense of the future credibility of the person designing and administering the test. Believers being "the kind ones" is one way to describe them. There are other descriptors that are equally if not more accurate.
As one of the kind ones, I'm not remotely embarrassed for giving grace to a fellow forum member. I will never trust him again, but I will always believe that you let them earn distrust, not the other way around. I am proud, not embarrassed.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
They do millions or even billions in IPOs this way. You should tell them it doesn't work.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
But @ProofCollection is correct insofar as lottery is not the only solution. Other world mints have frequent flyer programs for their direct retail customers.
They grant status based on annual purchase volume, and then early purchase windows for new releases that vary with status. Just like the airlines and hotel chains do for their best customers.
In the past, the Mint has not wanted to pursue this elitist route, but what they are doing now, with auction items and now this, perfectly lends itself to such a program. Anyone who is not a relatively large flipper would hate it, but it would solve the issue of outside buyers club members 100% while also rewarding the Mint's best retail customers.
And regular customers could fight over whatever scraps are left after large flippers get first dibs, next in line get second dibs, etc. Which would be nothing for anything even remotely hot. Kind of like an ABPP program for the unwashed masses.
Encouraging people to load up on common stuff in order to get access to the good stuff. It would also change the calculus of the flip, since sharp people would be willing to break even or take small losses on some things in order to get access to the really lucrative flips. Just like real dealers. Others would find themselves perpetually shut out of the really good stuff, no matter how many F&F accounts they have set up, how fast their internet connections are, or how sophisticated their bots are.
An auction for 500,000 items is easy. You open it for two weeks or 2 months and sell them to the 500000th highest bid. It's as easy as the way they sell them now only more orderly. You don't auction them one at a time. They do IPOs this way with millions of shares. They sell Treasuries this way.
True about IPOs and Treasuries, but those are much deeper markets. Those auctions are not open for weeks or months before closing, and they gross far more in a single auction that the Mint's aggregate numismatic sales in any given year.
I stand by what I said about thousands of identical modern coins or medals not lending themselves to auctions. What the Mint, and mints all around the world, does to sell its new releases generally works perfectly fine.
Something like this is a rare exception. And only because it was stupid, in retrospect, to set the mintage at the same stupid low number across three similar products with very different prices.
They never did that before with anything else. They don't make the same number of proof ASEs as one ounce AGEs.
I'm shocked people are interested in the silver even at $750. But they are. So they should have made a lot more of them, or priced them a lot higher. Or sold them via lottery or advance sale windows to preferred customers.
Trying to auction 2K of them is not the answer. Because I'm pretty sure that, with no bots, and 2K all at once, the excitement would be gone. As well as the flip.
As many as you want, but at the highest possible price. Which, if true, would beg the question of just what people would be willing to pay? Probably a lot less than people currently think.
@jmlanzaf said:
An auction for 500,000 items is easy.
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
Don't know, and it's irrelevant to my comment that the auction was held and the coins were sold. I was not addressing how it was managed, just that it was done.
How often does the mint sell coins where there are more buyers than coins and there aren't complaints about how the sale was conducted?
The armed services privy sales went pretty well I thought. They sold out.
It's always a matter of degree, the marketing was not thought out properly on the silver mintage and the gold pricing. The sales ordering and fulfillment on silver were overwhelmed.
@jmlanzaf said:
An auction for 500,000 items is easy.
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
60 years ago.
SpaceEx just sold 555.5 million shares without a hitch.
Yeah. Not my point. I think those GSA sales took something like 8 years to complete. And the last tranche was a clusterf***, coming during 1979-80. Not a model of anything, other than the government not being able to get out of its own way.
And, yeah, SpaceX did just fine, even though retail participants still holding today, let alone those who bought from people like you, cannot say the same.
@fathom said:
The armed services privy sales went pretty well I thought. They sold out.
It's always a matter of degree, the marketing was not thought out properly on the silver mintage and the gold pricing. The sales ordering and fulfillment on silver were overwhelmed.
Those are marketing decisions, period.
They did, even though the first one was kind of a mess, with bots gobbling up a lot, and those sales being purged multiple times until the Mint offered a bunch of them for sale at like 6:00 p.m. on some random day. People who caught them made out. Subsequent privies did sell out, although interest waned over time, with a ton of the last one sitting for a while after the Mint raised prices in January.
Silver was overwhelmed due to bots. Not a guess at this point, given how many were re-offered for sale on Friday, and how quickly they disappeared. The Mint has to either decide to look the other way and let bots grab pretty much all of things like this, or they have figure out a way to block them without manual purges after the fact, followed by 7:30 a.m. resales.
@fathom said:
The armed services privy sales went pretty well I thought. They sold out.
It's always a matter of degree, the marketing was not thought out properly on the silver mintage and the gold pricing. The sales ordering and fulfillment on silver were overwhelmed.
Those are marketing decisions, period.
They did, even though the first one was kind of a mess, with bots gobbling up a lot, and those sales being purged multiple times until the Mint offered a bunch of them for sale at like 6:00 p.m. on some random day. People who caught them made out. Subsequent privies did sell out, although interest waned over time, with a ton of the last one sitting for a while after the Mint raised prices in January.
Silver was overwhelmed due to bots. Not a guess at this point, given how many were re-offered for sale on Friday, and how quickly they disappeared. The Mint has to either decide to look the other way and let bots grab pretty much all of things like this, or they have figure out a way to block them without manual purges after the fact, followed by 7:30 a.m. resales.
Overwhelmed yes, not enough product, bots or not major error, could have sold many thousands more.
Everybody is blaming bots but the issue is production, the miniscule number was a marketing gaffe of a unicorn first time product. They should have known demand would be higher than 2026 even at 25x melt.
@jmlanzaf said:
An auction for 500,000 items is easy.
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
60 years ago.
SpaceEx just sold 555.5 million shares without a hitch.
Yeah. Not my point. I think those GSA sales took something like 8 years to complete. And the last tranche was a clusterf***, coming during 1979-80. Not a model of anything, other than the government not being able to get out of its own way.
And, yeah, SpaceX did just fine, even though retail participants still holding today, let alone those who bought from people like you, cannot say the same.
That's a lot of words avoiding the whole point.
In 2026, they just sold 500 million shares of SpaceEx in a "Dutch auction". You cannot say that you can't do this with 500,000 coins (or less) which is my only point.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
@MsMorrisine said:
i didn't really get 9 silver and I'd like to thank the kind ones who believed in me.
it was just a check to see if I'd get called hypocrite given I'm so outspoken about bots and abuses of the friends and family networks.
it was also a check to see if anyone would PM me offering to buy them. No one did the PM.
to those that believed you're the kind ones.
correction
i missed a late PM from someone wanting to buy the silver medals
I won't name names here or in PM, but wow. I suppose it's fair game but money really makes the world go round. i suppose a pm is better than a direct reply to the thread
@jmlanzaf said:
An auction for 500,000 items is easy.
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
60 years ago.
SpaceEx just sold 555.5 million shares without a hitch.
Yeah. Not my point. I think those GSA sales took something like 8 years to complete. And the last tranche was a clusterf***, coming during 1979-80. Not a model of anything, other than the government not being able to get out of its own way.
And, yeah, SpaceX did just fine, even though retail participants still holding today, let alone those who bought from people like you, cannot say the same.
That's a lot of words avoiding the whole point.
In 2026, they just sold 500 million shares of SpaceEx in a "Dutch auction". You cannot say that you can't do this with 500,000 coins (or less) which is my only point.
But I can. 500 million shares of a hot IPO is not 500,000 coins being sold at a multiple of intrinsic value.
I mean, sure, at any price, you can sell anything. But the Mint would not get $173 per coin if they tried to sell 500K proof ASEs in a Dutch auction. Which is why that's not how they sell them. Not because you just discovered fire here.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
@jmlanzaf said:
An auction for 500,000 items is easy.
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
60 years ago.
SpaceEx just sold 555.5 million shares without a hitch.
Yeah. Not my point. I think those GSA sales took something like 8 years to complete. And the last tranche was a clusterf***, coming during 1979-80. Not a model of anything, other than the government not being able to get out of its own way.
And, yeah, SpaceX did just fine, even though retail participants still holding today, let alone those who bought from people like you, cannot say the same.
That's a lot of words avoiding the whole point.
In 2026, they just sold 500 million shares of SpaceEx in a "Dutch auction". You cannot say that you can't do this with 500,000 coins (or less) which is my only point.
But I can. 500 million shares of a hot IPO is not 500,000 coins being sold at a multiple of intrinsic value.
I mean, sure, at any price, you can sell anything. But the Mint would not get $173 per coin if they tried to sell 500K proof ASEs in a Dutch auction. Which is why that's not how they sell them. Not because you just discovered fire here.
Lmao.
🤡
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
logged in at 4:25am pst this morning and was put into the waiting room for approx wait time of 1 minute which took nearly 6 minutes so don't know if any silver bells showed up or not
BST references: jdimmick;Gerard;wondercoin;claychaser;agentjim007;CCC2010;guitarwes;TAMU15;Zubie;mariner67;segoja;Smittys;kaz;CARDSANDCOINS;FadeToBlack; jrt103;tizofthe;bronze6827;mkman;Scootersdad;AllCoinsRule;coindeuce;dmarks;piecesofme; and many more
Waiting room here also -- maybe that's a sign they are trying to do something? I never saw ATS above 0 for Silver, but it appeared that both gold coins were not updated today (their numbers did go down by 1 or 2, which might have been regular orders). I'm hoping they held off updating the Liberty Bells because they are trying to figure out how to handle the Bots. But that's probably just me being optimistic...
@DotStore said:
Waiting room here also -- maybe that's a sign they are trying to do something? I never saw ATS above 0 for Silver, but it appeared that both gold coins were not updated today (their numbers did go down by 1 or 2, which might have been regular orders). I'm hoping they held off updating the Liberty Bells because they are trying to figure out how to handle the Bots. But that's probably just me being optimistic...
The waiting room is just triggered by traffic, nothing else.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@DotStore said:
Waiting room here also -- maybe that's a sign they are trying to do something? I never saw ATS above 0 for Silver, but it appeared that both gold coins were not updated today (their numbers did go down by 1 or 2, which might have been regular orders). I'm hoping they held off updating the Liberty Bells because they are trying to figure out how to handle the Bots. But that's probably just me being optimistic...
The waiting room is just triggered by traffic, nothing else.
Yes that's probably true -- that's why I coupled it with no updates to the Gold coins either. While other items did get updated such as the Unc Sets (ATS actually went up).
@DotStore said:
Waiting room here also -- maybe that's a sign they are trying to do something? I never saw ATS above 0 for Silver, but it appeared that both gold coins were not updated today (their numbers did go down by 1 or 2, which might have been regular orders). I'm hoping they held off updating the Liberty Bells because they are trying to figure out how to handle the Bots. But that's probably just me being optimistic...
The waiting room is just triggered by traffic, nothing else.
Yes that's probably true -- that's why I coupled it with no updates to the Gold coins either. While other items did get updated such as the Unc Sets (ATS actually went up).
Any sign of price weakness and we'll see a big upswing in unc sets as the backorders get canceled.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
We have had instances where product orders were cancelled because the USM had an issue with product distribution---i.e. a few of us were buying several hundred of an item that was available during a "last chance" sale at year end.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
Except they do. They did so by the thousands with the Army privies, and they did so for about 1,000 on this one.
People have made the same argument before. Maybe it was even you. I didn't keep a record.
The Mint can do what it wants here. Just Google it. The Mint has put out multiple statements, via multiple venues, regarding its efforts to prevent bots from placing orders, and threatening to removing from its bulk purchase program any dealer found to have used bots.
The Mint doesn't need a specific prohibition against bots in its T&Cs, because it accepts all orders at its discretion. Aruge all you want about what should be, and why, but this is what it is. Believe it or not.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
You're assuming the reason. It could simply be that bot users were using the same credit card/shipping address for multiple orders and the Mint caught them. They might have even done it for something like identical IP addresses. Or they could have done a "bot sweep" - although that would seem to be legal per the last reading of the T&C.
But, per the original question, the one thing we can be SURE about is that the 1000 coins that came free were cancellations. There's no other way to sell 2000 and have 1000 available later when the total mintage is 2000.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
You're assuming the reason. It could simply be that bot users were using the same credit card/shipping address for multiple orders and the Mint caught them. They might have even done it for something like identical IP addresses. Or they could have done a "bot sweep" - although that would seem to be legal per the last reading of the T&C.
Yes. Always, I am assuming. And yes, there is always a potential, possible, plausible, theoretical, alternate explanation.
But the bots were very aggressive here. And the Mint has made no secret about its disapproval of their use. Unlikely anyone who knows what they are doing with bots tried to use the same credit card and shipping address dozens or hundreds of times. Twice in two days. Knowing by now that those get flagged and cancelled.
I'm guessing that the Mint knows who the bots are via an audit trail. Probably based on how they bypass the UI and complete a transaction in less time than the rest of us can load a page. I don't think the Mint cares about IP addresses, since that would knock out legit customers sharing an internet connection, and would kill the F&F accounts many here successfully use.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
You're assuming the reason. It could simply be that bot users were using the same credit card/shipping address for multiple orders and the Mint caught them. They might have even done it for something like identical IP addresses. Or they could have done a "bot sweep" - although that would seem to be legal per the last reading of the T&C.
But, per the original question, the one thing we can be SURE about is that the 1000 coins that came free were cancellations. There's no other way to sell 2000 and have 1000 available later when the total mintage is 2000.
I'm not assuming anything which isn't to say that I know the reason either. I'm merely using process of elimination of the list of possibilities based on the mint upholding it's published terms. As with any business, they can always do what they want and they can also make mistakes. The scenarios you lay out fall under the violation of HHL which are stated grounds for cancellation. While I don't put it past the public at large to try to get away with such a violation, I just don't think it accounts for what would appear to be half of the initially successful orders as that would have involved placing a second order during a very short timespan and I would just think that most people would expect the attempt to fail and wouldn't want to jeopardize a successful first order.
@coiner said:
The USM has to take a position on automated means (BOTS) to place orders.
Change their policy to ban it. If found, they cancel your order and your customer account for good - one strike and youre out.
Clearly with technology these days the USM can record card numbers, addresses, names that used BOTS to purchase and keep a record to not allow them to purchase again.
Won't stop 'em. You can have dozens of randomly generated CC numbers off of one credit card if you want. Addresses, you don't understand the scale these bot operators are working at. They're renting out half the wall at your local UPS store if they need to. It's all they do for a living. They literally have all day to work on their automation and think of ways to beat the controls the system uses, and lots of resources to do so as well. They're deploying these bots for any kind of hot, limited release they can scalp and make a few bucks on.
Even 2FA can be beat with bots. Google Voice, Twilio, TextNow and some others all will give you a phone number you can receive texts with.
A lottery is the only true answer to the problem. Either that or go back to the old way and have a broken website for an hour while the product sells out... Honestly, I'd prefer that, I had much more success that way.
No, a lottery is not the only answer. As stated above, the mint could implement a changing API before each hot product release. It wouldn't be hard to do.
They could also hold an auction. But people will hate almost any change.
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
You're assuming the reason. It could simply be that bot users were using the same credit card/shipping address for multiple orders and the Mint caught them. They might have even done it for something like identical IP addresses. Or they could have done a "bot sweep" - although that would seem to be legal per the last reading of the T&C.
Yes. Always, I am assuming. And yes, there is always a potential, possible, plausible, theoretical, alternate explanation.
The comment wasn't directed at you...
But the bots were very aggressive here. And the Mint has made no secret about its disapproval of their use. Unlikely anyone who knows what they are doing with bots tried to use the same credit card and shipping address dozens or hundreds of times. Twice in two days. Knowing by now that those get flagged and cancelled.
If the mint disapproved of bot use they'd update their TOS.
I'm guessing that the Mint knows who the bots are via an audit trail. Probably based on how they bypass the UI and complete a transaction in less time than the rest of us can load a page. I don't think the Mint cares about IP addresses, since that would knock out legit customers sharing an internet connection, and would kill the F&F accounts many here successfully use.
You're right, IP addresses are not a good method. You could have several people placing orders from their workplace, for example. I agree that the mint could identify the accounts via forensic means but it also involves some assumptions and guesswork and making accusations. I'm not sure they're that comfortable going that far, or have the motivation.
I see a lot of commentary in this thread from people who have no idea what they are talking about, so let me clear a few things up:
1) people running bots are using proxies. They are not dumb enough to use the same IP for the sessions.
2) the mint 1000% tries to cancel bot orders and catches a majority of them. BUT, some sneak through.
3) The people using bots are not using the same names, payment methods and addresses. It is very easy to come up with 10-15 mules for this stuff and even easier to come up with hundreds of different credit cards to use.
I got two of the 1oz gold bells today which I pre-sold in fake transactions on Pure.
The cheapness of the materials and the lack of care put into a ludicrously-priced luxury statement item like this is incredible. Cheap box, generic booklet, non-personalized letter on thin paper stock, folded over in the packaging. The bell itself randomly floating in an oversized capsule. Chincy chincy chincy.
Comments
And, even then, it was pretty clearly a troll. To what end was a mystery that has now been cleared up.
But, to be frank, it was unkind to put the people willing to give the benefit of the doubt in a position to be publicly embarrassed like that. For no reason at all, other than to put the forum to a cynical test.
That it seems to have passed with flying colors, at the expense of the future credibility of the person designing and administering the test. Believers being "the kind ones" is one way to describe them. There are other descriptors that are equally if not more accurate.
Oh please, let the pedantic screeds be no more.
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't an optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
Sorry, but an auction would not work with such a large quantity. Don't you think they would if they could?
If the gold were offered at auction, the premiums they would garner would be a fraction of what they seek. With 2K all at once, both one ounce and half ounce, there is a risk the premium could fall below what they get for other gold items they sell directly on their site. Which would risk undermining the value proposition of everything they sell.
No. A few dozen or a few hundred lends itself to an auction. Not a few thousand.
But @ProofCollection is correct insofar as lottery is not the only solution. Other world mints have frequent flyer programs for their direct retail customers.
They grant status based on annual purchase volume, and then early purchase windows for new releases that vary with status. Just like the airlines and hotel chains do for their best customers.
In the past, the Mint has not wanted to pursue this elitist route, but what they are doing now, with auction items and now this, perfectly lends itself to such a program. Anyone who is not a relatively large flipper would hate it, but it would solve the issue of outside buyers club members 100% while also rewarding the Mint's best retail customers.
And regular customers could fight over whatever scraps are left after large flippers get first dibs, next in line get second dibs, etc. Which would be nothing for anything even remotely hot. Kind of like an ABPP program for the unwashed masses.
Encouraging people to load up on common stuff in order to get access to the good stuff. It would also change the calculus of the flip, since sharp people would be willing to break even or take small losses on some things in order to get access to the really lucrative flips. Just like real dealers. Others would find themselves perpetually shut out of the really good stuff, no matter how many F&F accounts they have set up, how fast their internet connections are, or how sophisticated their bots are.
An auction for 500,000 items is easy. You open it for two weeks or 2 months and sell them to the 500000th highest bid. It's as easy as the way they sell them now only more orderly. You don't auction them one at a time. They do IPOs this way with millions of shares. They sell Treasuries this way.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
But why only talk about the downside? With the silver, these were clearly under priced and would result in a bounty at auction.
Agreed. Even a dutch auction.
Maybe. I was thinking more along the lines of a SB auction. Not an eBay one.
But, you are correct, if that's the way they would want to go. But what they do now works pretty well in general.
The bots slamming them on this one is an outlier. And only on the silver, because the price is apparently too low relative to the mintage, without regard to intrinsic value. No such problem with the golds, which, in retrospect, are priced far too high.
So, now that they learned, they can either do what I suggested and open early buying windows for their best customers for things like this, or just make more or price them higher, or a combination of the two, to drive the bots away and price them closer to the secondary market.
As one of the kind ones, I'm not remotely embarrassed for giving grace to a fellow forum member. I will never trust him again, but I will always believe that you let them earn distrust, not the other way around. I am proud, not embarrassed.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
They do millions or even billions in IPOs this way. You should tell them it doesn't work.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Not necessarily. This thing with the bots was only suspected on Thursday. Not confirmed until Friday.
What we know now is that the Mint is actively canceling hundreds of orders. Which means secondary market pricing right now reflects a fraction of the advertised 2026, since lots of folks/bots with confirmed orders will be unable to ever deliver. So we still have no idea what actual secondary pricing will be.
Other than it will be below $10K for the half ounce gold and $20K for the full ounce. To be honest, $5K for a half ounce silver medal makes no sense in the same market that will not support a $10K half ounce gold coin with the same mintage.
it was an experiment
i like some of the replies
True about IPOs and Treasuries, but those are much deeper markets. Those auctions are not open for weeks or months before closing, and they gross far more in a single auction that the Mint's aggregate numismatic sales in any given year.
I stand by what I said about thousands of identical modern coins or medals not lending themselves to auctions. What the Mint, and mints all around the world, does to sell its new releases generally works perfectly fine.
Something like this is a rare exception. And only because it was stupid, in retrospect, to set the mintage at the same stupid low number across three similar products with very different prices.
They never did that before with anything else. They don't make the same number of proof ASEs as one ounce AGEs.
I'm shocked people are interested in the silver even at $750. But they are. So they should have made a lot more of them, or priced them a lot higher. Or sold them via lottery or advance sale windows to preferred customers.
Trying to auction 2K of them is not the answer. Because I'm pretty sure that, with no bots, and 2K all at once, the excitement would be gone. As well as the flip.
As many as you want, but at the highest possible price. Which, if true, would beg the question of just what people would be willing to pay? Probably a lot less than people currently think.
Have you considered changing your avatar to one with crossed fingers?
GSA sold nearly 3 million silver dollars (about a dozen different date/mms) by auction.
And without computers.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I still have the "Tarnished, mixed date" CC dollar I won for $15.
Yeah. How many years did that take, and how big of a mess were the last few auctions?
60 years ago.
SpaceEx just sold 555.5 million shares without a hitch.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Don't know, and it's irrelevant to my comment that the auction was held and the coins were sold. I was not addressing how it was managed, just that it was done.
How often does the mint sell coins where there are more buyers than coins and there aren't complaints about how the sale was conducted?
The armed services privy sales went pretty well I thought. They sold out.
It's always a matter of degree, the marketing was not thought out properly on the silver mintage and the gold pricing. The sales ordering and fulfillment on silver were overwhelmed.
Those are marketing decisions, period.
Yeah. Not my point. I think those GSA sales took something like 8 years to complete. And the last tranche was a clusterf***, coming during 1979-80. Not a model of anything, other than the government not being able to get out of its own way.
And, yeah, SpaceX did just fine, even though retail participants still holding today, let alone those who bought from people like you, cannot say the same.
They did, even though the first one was kind of a mess, with bots gobbling up a lot, and those sales being purged multiple times until the Mint offered a bunch of them for sale at like 6:00 p.m. on some random day. People who caught them made out. Subsequent privies did sell out, although interest waned over time, with a ton of the last one sitting for a while after the Mint raised prices in January.
Silver was overwhelmed due to bots. Not a guess at this point, given how many were re-offered for sale on Friday, and how quickly they disappeared. The Mint has to either decide to look the other way and let bots grab pretty much all of things like this, or they have figure out a way to block them without manual purges after the fact, followed by 7:30 a.m. resales.
Overwhelmed yes, not enough product, bots or not major error, could have sold many thousands more.
Everybody is blaming bots but the issue is production, the miniscule number was a marketing gaffe of a unicorn first time product. They should have known demand would be higher than 2026 even at 25x melt.
That's a lot of words avoiding the whole point.
In 2026, they just sold 500 million shares of SpaceEx in a "Dutch auction". You cannot say that you can't do this with 500,000 coins (or less) which is my only point.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Necessarily. Silver bell prices are rapidly and consistently approaching the $4k mark on ebay and Pure.
We don't know this. Of course as always you think you know and you pass this off as concrete knowledge when it is nothing but speculation. We have no idea if the mint is cancelling orders and why (is it because of suspicion with the order or credit card related) or if customers are cancelling.
I've thought this myself. However, it's too early to say the market didn't support "these" price levels. The coin has been out 3 days and sold approximately 3/4 of the mintage. Even if a few hundred more units of each come back on the market, if it sells out by the end of the year (still very do-able) I would say the market "supported" the coin offering just fine. If I were mint director, for special offerings I would look at any instant sell out as leaving money on the table and target 3-6 month sellouts as an indication of optimal pricing strategy.
correction
i missed a late PM from someone wanting to buy the silver medals
I won't name names here or in PM, but wow. I suppose it's fair game but money really makes the world go round. i suppose a pm is better than a direct reply to the thread
But I can. 500 million shares of a hot IPO is not 500,000 coins being sold at a multiple of intrinsic value.
I mean, sure, at any price, you can sell anything. But the Mint would not get $173 per coin if they tried to sell 500K proof ASEs in a Dutch auction. Which is why that's not how they sell them. Not because you just discovered fire here.
Say what you want. Think what you want. Canceling 1K out of 2K is nothing other than the Mint purging bots. No customer is canceling something they bought for $750 that could be resold for $4K. Half of all credit cards are not suddenly unable to support a $750 purchase.
Also, the market isn't supporting gold right now. Pointing out that things could change with them, while proudly pointing to $4K silver medals, is the very definition of wanting to have it both ways.
So, which is it? If the market is valid for the silver, it is for the gold as well. With the only difference between them being that several hundred of the gold are sitting on the Mint website, unsold, while several hundred of the silver are off the market because the Mint won't release them.
3-6 month sell outs will very rarely be a thing. People habitually move on to the next thing.
The Mint should be looking to produce slightly below demand at whatever price point it chooses. And be willing to leave a little on the table to support the secondary market. Otherwise, people will stop chasing most things that are sold for significantly more than intrinsic value, and everyone will move on to collecting something else.
Lmao.
🤡
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I got an avatar that they may consider...
BST references available on request
How do you know that 1k silver medal orders were cancelled?
How can you say that? The fact they haven't sold out doesn't mean that the market isn't supporting them. An "instant sellout" isn't a requirement for making that statement. If the inventory sells in over a few month period that will qualify.
Again, failing to sell out instantly doesn't mean the market doesn't support them. It's taken the 2026 Proof gold buffalo a month to sell out, but it's now gone. I would consider that a success, even if it still took a few more months.
Whatever. If you watch mint product sales reports you can see that things still sell after the initial excitement is over. Believe it or not, there are people who want to own these Bells who don't even know they exist yet.
OK, but product demand is not the same as "Day 1 demand" which you seem to think is all that matters. Demand can and should be satisfied over the period of several months.
We know 1000 silver were canceled because the ATS went from 2021 to zero on release day... and then jumped up to 1000 again on the second day. There is no other explanation for selling 2000 and then having 1000 on the next day.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Between the bots and some searching here...the waiting room got put into effect @ 7:29:40 am (EDT).
BST references available on request
logged in at 4:25am pst this morning and was put into the waiting room for approx wait time of 1 minute which took nearly 6 minutes so don't know if any silver bells showed up or not
jdimmick;Gerard;wondercoin;claychaser;agentjim007;CCC2010;guitarwes;TAMU15;Zubie;mariner67;segoja;Smittys;kaz;CARDSANDCOINS;FadeToBlack;
jrt103;tizofthe;bronze6827;mkman;Scootersdad;AllCoinsRule;coindeuce;dmarks;piecesofme; and many more
Waiting room here also -- maybe that's a sign they are trying to do something? I never saw ATS above 0 for Silver, but it appeared that both gold coins were not updated today (their numbers did go down by 1 or 2, which might have been regular orders). I'm hoping they held off updating the Liberty Bells because they are trying to figure out how to handle the Bots. But that's probably just me being optimistic...
The waiting room is just triggered by traffic, nothing else.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Yes that's probably true -- that's why I coupled it with no updates to the Gold coins either. While other items did get updated such as the Unc Sets (ATS actually went up).
Any sign of price weakness and we'll see a big upswing in unc sets as the backorders get canceled.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Except the mint has no grounds to cancel them other than for payment errors and violating order limits. As discussed previously, the TOS doesn't prohibit bots and the implication here is that orders are being cancelled because of bot use. I would be surprised if the 1000 order cancellations were due to exceeding limits. It just seems futile to even try.
The USM can cancel for anything they see fit.
We have had instances where product orders were cancelled because the USM had an issue with product distribution---i.e. a few of us were buying several hundred of an item that was available during a "last chance" sale at year end.
I'm sure that TOS will be revised shortly.
Except they do. They did so by the thousands with the Army privies, and they did so for about 1,000 on this one.
People have made the same argument before. Maybe it was even you. I didn't keep a record.
The Mint can do what it wants here. Just Google it. The Mint has put out multiple statements, via multiple venues, regarding its efforts to prevent bots from placing orders, and threatening to removing from its bulk purchase program any dealer found to have used bots.
The Mint doesn't need a specific prohibition against bots in its T&Cs, because it accepts all orders at its discretion. Aruge all you want about what should be, and why, but this is what it is. Believe it or not.
You're assuming the reason. It could simply be that bot users were using the same credit card/shipping address for multiple orders and the Mint caught them. They might have even done it for something like identical IP addresses. Or they could have done a "bot sweep" - although that would seem to be legal per the last reading of the T&C.
But, per the original question, the one thing we can be SURE about is that the 1000 coins that came free were cancellations. There's no other way to sell 2000 and have 1000 available later when the total mintage is 2000.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Yes. Always, I am assuming. And yes, there is always a potential, possible, plausible, theoretical, alternate explanation.
But the bots were very aggressive here. And the Mint has made no secret about its disapproval of their use. Unlikely anyone who knows what they are doing with bots tried to use the same credit card and shipping address dozens or hundreds of times. Twice in two days. Knowing by now that those get flagged and cancelled.
I'm guessing that the Mint knows who the bots are via an audit trail. Probably based on how they bypass the UI and complete a transaction in less time than the rest of us can load a page. I don't think the Mint cares about IP addresses, since that would knock out legit customers sharing an internet connection, and would kill the F&F accounts many here successfully use.
I'm not assuming anything which isn't to say that I know the reason either. I'm merely using process of elimination of the list of possibilities based on the mint upholding it's published terms. As with any business, they can always do what they want and they can also make mistakes. The scenarios you lay out fall under the violation of HHL which are stated grounds for cancellation. While I don't put it past the public at large to try to get away with such a violation, I just don't think it accounts for what would appear to be half of the initially successful orders as that would have involved placing a second order during a very short timespan and I would just think that most people would expect the attempt to fail and wouldn't want to jeopardize a successful first order.
The comment wasn't directed at you...
If the mint disapproved of bot use they'd update their TOS.
You're right, IP addresses are not a good method. You could have several people placing orders from their workplace, for example. I agree that the mint could identify the accounts via forensic means but it also involves some assumptions and guesswork and making accusations. I'm not sure they're that comfortable going that far, or have the motivation.
Don’t get ripped off by the flippers on EBay
Buy from a reputable national dealer
I see a lot of commentary in this thread from people who have no idea what they are talking about, so let me clear a few things up:
1) people running bots are using proxies. They are not dumb enough to use the same IP for the sessions.
2) the mint 1000% tries to cancel bot orders and catches a majority of them. BUT, some sneak through.
3) The people using bots are not using the same names, payment methods and addresses. It is very easy to come up with 10-15 mules for this stuff and even easier to come up with hundreds of different credit cards to use.
I got two of the 1oz gold bells today which I pre-sold in fake transactions on Pure.
The cheapness of the materials and the lack of care put into a ludicrously-priced luxury statement item like this is incredible. Cheap box, generic booklet, non-personalized letter on thin paper stock, folded over in the packaging. The bell itself randomly floating in an oversized capsule. Chincy chincy chincy.