Comments on: Anniversary Kennedy Gold Coin, Proof Platinum Eagle Sell Out

By: jim

jim — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 06:00:45 +0000

Well, what would you expect from a rudderless ship? The mint hasn’t had an official director since Jan 2011 and with these career bureaucrats like Peterson and Jeppson just hanging around with no vested interest in the direction or integrity of the mint screw-ups are likely to continue to happen.

Maybe with Boehner out of the picture at the end of October the Republican party will gain a more positive nickname “than the party of no”, Obama may once again propose a name for director of the mint and it’ll actually happen.

By: RonnieBGood

RonnieBGood — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 02:07:39 +0000

I was extremely disappointed in the way the gold Kennedy was handled.

This should be right next to New Coke in the ranking of bad business decisions.

By: Sue

Sue — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 18:23:22 +0000

Hi,
Have a question for Mike Unser:
Is there a way to find out how many returned orders the US MINT gets for a particular item? Maybe when they finally sell out? I am sure they keep track.
I am interested in only the 2014 Silver Kennedy set & the 2015 Kennedy Chronicles
Thanks.

By: Whistler

Whistler — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:17:12 +0000

1968 Proof sets going off sale soon…..

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 20:26:12 +0000

More importantly, the mint needs to make sure its products are available for their defined periods. The sudden ‘sellout’ of the 2012 proof and silver proof sets are a great example of this. These are coins which do not have a set production limit and have always (read that as since 1968) been available during the current year (or a period of 12 months if released at some time other than the first of the year). There have been many examples of coins being ‘sold-out’ before their product or mintage limits were reached. While I don’t think that products should be available years after their introduction (Presidential covers come to mind), there should be some assurance that coins will be available, particularly when there is historical precedence, but certainly for no more than 1 year. Thus the 2014 APEs should have been made available as long as there was interest, up to the 1 year limit.
The other way to solve this is to open an order window of a given time, and accept all orders during that window, regardless of how many coins are minted. This has been done on a few occasions (the 1998 Kennedy Collector’s Set and the 2012 SF ASE set are a couple of examples).

By: TheCurseOfTheRodainTrilogy

TheCurseOfTheRodainTrilogy — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 17:32:13 +0000

I concur, Jim. The Mint needs to learn the lesson that repeat customers come to buy valuable products (ie low mintage (50K max on gold, 150K max on silver) and 1st come, 1st serve sales), not stuff that theit is begging us to buy 1 or 2 years after it was made.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 04:51:59 +0000

The max mintage for the platinum coin was 15,000. At 4,596 the mint quit selling way below the max. I wouldn’t call this a sell out but rather facing the fact that nobody wants to buy any more of these coins. Besides the mint needs to stop sales of the 2014 coin so that the 2015 coin will sell. Knowing that so few coins need to be minted the mint could easily set a new max limit at like 5,000, and sell only in the year they were minted, namely 2015.

By: Dwight

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 00:20:05 +0000

On ebay on the low end an ungraded 2014-W 50th Anniversary Kennedy Half-Dollar Gold Proof Coin with its Original Government Packing, item # 111733577705 sold Buy It Now for $925.99 with free shipping on August 3, 2015 @ 09:04 AM by seller bagman48. Contrast this price to the high end when another ungraded 2014-W 50th Anniversary Kennedy Half-Dollar Gold Proof Coin with its Original Government Packing, ebay item #381352706825 sold Buy It Now for $1,325 with free shipping on September 3, 2015 @ 05:57 AM by seller simba-house. These two items had a price difference of $399.01 for identical coins. The gold coin could have been bought directly from the U.S. Mint for $1,127.50 by time they finally sold out on September 25, 2015.

By: vadim

vadim — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 21:41:07 +0000

I was one of those duped buyers who thought the mintage limit will be low. Bought 5 of these at 1,240 and boy do I regret making this purchase. Now, this coin, ungraded, is sold on eBsy as low as $925. Now, I understand that gold went down, but what about the numismatic value? U.S. Mint has killed the rarity of this coin and possibly any chance of braking even in the near future.

By: Dwight

Dwight — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 19:26:47 +0000

The U.S. Mint had dropped the price of the 2014-W 50th Anniversary Kennedy Half-Dollar Gold Proof Coin down to $1,090.00 on Wednesday July 29, 2015 when the London Fix price of gold had been low as $1,080.00 per troy oz. the previous week on July 24. 2015.