A friend gave me some old coins to look over and included was a set of four "coins" from "The National Historic Mint". They purport to "commemorate" the U.S. Constitution and about the size of a silver dollar (but definitely not silver). My impression is that this is the sort of outfit that manufactures "collectables" to sell via mail order to the unwary, but maybe I'm wrong. Have any of you ever heard of The National Historic Mint. My internet searches have not turned up anything. Thanks.
It's most likely a private mint and the "coins" that you have are possibly medals which are worth pretty much their base metal value. Welcome to cointalk btw.
i did a quick search and found several articles on the ent about this 'mint'... none of them favorable. BBB link Chicago Sun Times NY Times my opinion - and its only an opinion .. stay away from them. If you already have the medals/tokens, do what you wish with them, but i woukldn suggest buying anything else from them. check this out on the BBB link... (it appears the article is from 1992, which might explain why info on this 'mint' is hard to find) 'Last year 1,421 people lodged complaints against Direct Marketing Enterprises, the Westbury, L.I.-based company behind Cheeselovers International and the National Historic Mint, among others. That's 400 fewer complaints than 1990, but still more than any other company the bureau tracks' all i can say to that is WOW!!!
Thanks for your response and the links to the articles. (I guess my internet-searching skills need improvement!) Thanks again.
Welcome to the forum PJ. I think your gut reaction is right. I work in a coin shop and we see stuff like this all too often. We pay next to nothing for it if we buy it all. Why? Nobody is actively seeking it out to add to their collection. Doesn't matter if it's a "limited edition" of only 2000 pieces - if people aren't looking for it it's basically worthless. Outfits like this suck people in with numbers. It's when they decide to sell it they see how little the numbers mean when applied to supply and demand. My opinion of course but we sure have a lot of junk like this laying around the shop collecting dust.
