Collectors didn’t have a lot of time on Thursday to order the new 2016-W Mercury Dime Centennial Gold Coin. The 24-karat gold coin went on back order after about 20 minutes and then became unavailable by the 40-minute mark.
"The status of the Mercury Dime 2016 Centennial Gold Coin will remain as currently unavailable until all order reconciliations and order cancellations have been processed," U.S. Mint spokesman Michael White said in a brief statement.
The U.S. Mint set the mintage of the highly-anticipated collectible to 125,000 and it imposed a household ordering limit of 10 pieces.
Many who ordered or tried needed patience. A number of buyers described their difficulties in ordering online because of the volume of traffic, saying they experienced website sluggishness and connection timeouts — especially within the first 10 to 15 minutes.
Curiously, Mint officials didn’t have significant stats available for CoinNews at this writing, such as how many coins sold in the very early going or how many were at its fulfillment warehouse for shipping. We’ll offer more information here as it becomes available.
At $205 per coin, excluding shipping and if they all sold out, the United States Mint would take in orders totaling more than $25.6 million. The collector coins are already selling in the secondary market at significant premiums. Those in original packing have prices from around $295 to $350 while early release MS70s are listed from around $400 to $600.
The gold Mercury dime is one of three .9999 fine gold coins the U.S. Mint will release in 2016 to celebrate popular designs introduced 100 year ago. Launching later in the year are the gold Standing Liberty quarter and the gold Walking Liberty half-dollar. (See mock-ups of these gold coins.)
The centennial issues are struck to weights of 1/10 oz. gold for the dime, 1/4 oz. gold for the quarter, and 1/2 oz. gold for the half-dollar. The 1916-dated coins bearing the original designs have a composition of 90% silver and 10% copper.
