Comments on: US Mint Year-End 2012 Sales Report for Numismatic Products

By: Dwight

Dwight — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 17:53:23 +0000

There is a typographical error regarding the date of the table figures for US Mint Sales: Numismatic Products. December 31, 2012 was actually a Monday instead of “Wednesday”[sic] as had been erroneously stated.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 19:04:42 +0000

ThunderFish 2. – The mint is not supposed to… Where did you hear that? The only thing the mint’s published is the calculations for the price of the gold and platinum coins. We have no idea what process and what gating factors the Mint uses to determine the cost of silver based and clad based products. As I’ve said before the pricing of the silver coins hides a lot of sins the mint is unwilling to expose. The price of the silver eagle is set to go up $3 while the cost of silver is down $1. It’s now twice the melt value. At 850,000 coins that’s a lot of extra cash with no explanation of why. It’s certainly not inflation.

By: ThunderFish

ThunderFish — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:35:35 +0000

Nobody, myself included, wants to pay more for products. I get the concern over the Mint raising the prices on the Silver products. But I think we often lose sight over certain things:

1. The Mint is supposed to “make a profit”. It is self-sustaining, and does not receive tax dollars to operate.. Now that Dollar coins are no longer made for circulation, it lost a boatload of the seignorage it was earning. And with less people buying many of the products on the whole (as we see from the sales reports), they need to continue to make ends meet,
2. The Mint is not supposed factor in a coin or coin set’s future on the secondary market when deiciding mintage levels. Obviously, we care about that. And the Mint does need to be aware that coin collectors care about it. But, they cannot make all of their decisions based on what will sell on ebay or at a coin show a month, a year or five years from now. I was not around hundreds of years ago, but I would assume (and correct me if I am mistaken) that early coin collectors collected coins mostly for the beauty and artistry, and not the financial benefits of a coin. We cannot be naive now and not think that $ is a major player in what coin collectors buy, but the letter and spirit of why the Mint does Numismatic products is not originally tied into that.

The Mint has PLENTY of issues that it needs to address, but I read a lot of these posts and I often wonder whether the collectors who consistently gripe ever take a step back to think about things from a more general perspective.

By: ThunderFish

ThunderFish — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:18:21 +0000

The Mint would be crazy to get involved in grading its own coins and coin collectors would be nuts for wanting them to grade their own coins. THink about it. At some point, a coin will get graded as a 69 or 70, but a different grader will say the coin was graded too high. The Mint would have a black eye because customer will be lead to call into question the “integrity” of the US Mint on the whole because of a perceived grading error. The Mint would be crazy to want that type of pressure. It already gets dumped on plenty as it is. Besides, as a collector, you should want an “independent party” grading your coins. That is part of the allure of the grading system.

By: annie

annie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:15:03 +0000

follow up: the mint don’t have to put up non sense maximum mintage. just let the collectors and investors decide how many they gonna buy on each issue. like the good old years. by putting the max. the mint will only suffer. cause if the issue is quite popular. then the mint won’t sell more.

one more thing is that the mint should sell proof70 or ms70 on their own. hire some professional graders. the mint grade them self. i think this will be another way to make money for the mint.

By: annie

annie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:04:00 +0000

in order for the mint to make profit and sell more with fare prices. let’s said silver coins. the mint have to stop issuing those many garbage sets. just concentrate on American eagle proof and burnished silver coins. special occasion American eagle set. annual proof, silver proof and mint uncirculated set. forget about the quarter sets. one issue per year modern commemorative coins. discontinue bags and rolls. those are non sense. that’s it.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 04:08:32 +0000

Peter Stevens – yeah, it’s hard to tell what they mean when they say “sold out” when a maximum limit was never published. “Sales ended” is a more truthful sounding phrase and since it’s applied to the 2011 set, maybe so. If in fact the 2012 set is done selling then a sleeper without the mint letting on it was going to happen?
annie – what if they actually release the first palladium eagle? Going to pass that up this year?

By: annie

annie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 03:14:00 +0000

by seeing the 2013 mint products. there are nothing to buy from. i will pass this year.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:57:53 +0000

Concerning the 2012 American Eagle Silver Proof Dollar minted at San Francisco. I have seen the total minted for the Two Coin set for the earlier release of 2012 but have’nt head about the mintage total for the recent American Heritage set released in December 2012. I would be interested in knowing the combined totals for both releases.

By: Peter Stevens

Peter Stevens — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:17:35 +0000

The 2011 Proof Set will be the lowest mintage since the 1950s. Will prices skyrocket? I think it’ll drag down prices on the 2008 and 2010 proof sets.

But if the 2012 Proof Set sales have genuinely ended (which I find doubtful), those will immediately become the key dates of the series… they’d have a fraction of the mintage of the 2011 sets.