America the Beautiful 5 oz. silver bullion coins

How do you know those are not the quarters? You can't tell the difference if you can't see the edge in the pics. There is no scale to go by. What's the published source of this image? You mentioned you have 'pictures' plural, where are the others?

 

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Regardless of the math, the mint did report that the coins were warping in production. This is likely less of a problem with bronze medals because bronze is less dense than silver (and thus thicker for a given weight) and also harder so less likely to bend. I don't think it's the absolute thickness that matters so much as the ratio of the face area to the thickness.

 

Use the 'Advanced Search' button at the top of the page... select 'Search Single Content Type' tape on the next page, then enter specific keywords to narrow the search results. Anything with: 5 ounce bullion parks, should turn up several threads that have been ongoing about the 5 oz AtB bullion coins. The problem with searching threads in this manner is that you have to literally open the threads to see what the OP is, as many people suck at writing a succinct thread title. In this way these forums suffer from redundancy and it doesn't inspire many people to search very hard when you can just start a new thread. Nothing wrong with you doing that here though. :smile

 

As I have said earlier in the year about this in another thread, there are other countries mints who are producing 5 ounce and larger bullion coins... the US Mint only need mount a fact finding mission to their international colleagues operations to figure this out to get these proposed coins into production. There's just no excuse for the delay and continual problems with these.

 

They're the big ones - promise. Here's few other images. You have to swear not to tell anyone where you saw them! Notice the 10 piece "tube" in the mint employee's hand. These are very close to release.

 

Thanks. This is great to see. So where did you come by these images?

 

Ah hockey pucks!

 

Coin World had an article recently saying the the US Mint identified the problem as being caused by the edge lettering being too deeply incused. They reportedly had solved the problem and are making the coins in 3" size. Reportedly they have been making them since September. I'm not sure what's causing the delay in announcing them, though. There's not much time left to sell them before the end of the year.

 

I've read the same and give them no room for excuses, they've been using edge letter back to colonial era coins in the US all the way up to the modern dollar coins. Other mints have utilized edge lettering too, so I can't give them the benefit of the doubt as they squander their time and obvious resources, keeping collectors in the dark.

 

That's top secret! : ) Anyway these should be available with 2 weeks or so and I agree it has taken WAY too long to get these out. I guess the upside of that for collectors is that each of the 2010 issues will only be 100,000 pieces. Downside is potential gouging from the mint's "bullion distributors".

 

I guess you've let half the cat out of the bag then...

 

Can collectors buy from "bullion distributors"?

 

Not the 'bullion network' that buys from the Mint, but you can buy from dealers such as APMEX, Provident and others

 

I wonder if there are going to be any cool errors/varieties in these. TC

 

Well the coins are big enough that the quality control folks should be able to spot them before they go out... and they've had long enough to perfect the minting of these coins, if they ever see the light of day. Not saying there couldn't be any that get out but it seems, especially if mintage is as limited as they indicated that there will be very very few 'errors' slip out.

 

I was asking about these at a recent show and a dealer said he would think they would be 3-5 dollars over spot. My guess is they will be quite a bit higher. After going through the bullion network then a dealer before you can buy it, the markup will be quite high.
The limited time left at the end of this year and the fact that there are 5 of these for the year leaves this thing ripe for a retail frenzy. Although most collectors don't seem to even want one so it is hard to say.

I think these will be very nice after seeing some photos I am even more convinced, however the I won't pay $50 over spot or some ridiculous price. The mint should have sold these directly to collectors.

Lack

 

I won't cut them any slack on the "edge letter problems either. They claim they couldn't do it because the planchets were "paper thin". But they are actually almost twice as thick as the President dollars. And unlike the dollars the edge letting on the hockey pucks is being applied by a segmented collar during striking so there should be no problem with "buckling" of the coin. Unless of course the dies are buckling too.

If the mint did I guarantee they WOULD be $50 over spot. Look at the proof silver eagles at about $20 an oz over spot for one oz. Five oz at that rate would be $100 over spot. Look at the regular one oz bullion coins. The distributors pay $2 an oz over spot. A five oz coin at that rate would be $10 over spot. But I can see the five oz being more difficult to make so say $4 an oz over spot. That would make it $20 over spot TO THE DISTRIBUTOR. By the time they get to the secondary market they could easily be $30 over spot. Of course then you have the 100K mintag which give the potential for the coins having a collectible value as well. So that could push the secondary price up even more. You also have to wonder how many of that 100K will go to the regular collector market, and how much will be bought up and marketed at a high price through the TV people. That could cause them to be had to get in the regular market for awhile and create a temporary artificially high market as well.

 

$50 over spot price would be $77/oz or $385 for 1 5oz coin. $50 over melt price would be $185/ea. There is huge difference between spot price (which is per oz) and melt price which is per coin. These will likely be about $50 over melt price.

 

Yes fishy, I meant $50 over melt. My bet is it will be hard to to get them that cheap.

Lack

 

Thanks Krispy for the heads up on the APMEX contact.