US Mint Purchases?

What are the best items to buy directly from the Mint? Would love to hear opinions, see pics of best buys and best ways to go about it.

 

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You will probably get all sorts of suggestions depending on what others like. The important thing is what do you like and how does it fit into your collecting scheme?

Chris

 

I'm just going to agree with this because my opinion of modern Mint products is unprintable.

 

I buy the AGE proofs, ASE proofs and the ATB 5oz P silver. I like the coin and chronicles sets also.

 

I may agree with that unprintable thought as I do not find many of the coins appealing to the eye. I'm just looking at from a collecting standpoint and future value.

 

Future value would basically just be anything that generates a ton of buzz like the baseball gold did or has a very low mintage and excitment like the first groups of the RP presidential dollars. Those are about as close as you get to a sure winner, everything else is very hit or miss and most things will end up being cheaper in the after market when the initial wave dies down.

 

I'm not a modern collector but if you are getting into any kind of coin collecting with an eye towards "future value" (making money?) then IMO your money would be better invested elsewhere.

 

This ^^^... I'm with superdave overall in regards to this but if I smell a winner I might take a bite

 

I buy pretty much much all my US modern coins from the mint. Proof sets/mint sets, commemorative coins, etc. A recommendation would be to try to buy items in a group. That way you save on shipping costs. For example I'm going to be buying the quarter proof set & presidential dollar proof set in one order. That way I only pay shipping for once. If I bought them separately I would end up paying an extra 5 dollars.

 

Very little!!

 

none of them.

 

Get yourself a laundry list of items no longer available at the Mint and go to the secondary market on EBay and see how many there are and what they are getting -- if they are not sitting there growing cobwebs.

 

I've done that before and sometimes Ebay auctions do offer better prices than what they were originally sold for by the Mint. But it seems more & more often that buyers are bidding things for a lot higher than even the original price. If you go the Ebay route be very disciplined!! Decide upfront the maximum you want to spend on a coin and don't go above that amount. Don't get caught up in bidding wars. You will lose out on some coins but at least you won't vastly overpay for a coin.

 

This was the best buy ever!!





Paid $25.95 sold for $200. (Should have held out a bit longer!)

Followed by this:



This one was the absolute worst!



I should never have ordered these at $59.95 each! That was just plain stupid.

 

I have been a regular US Mint customer since 1976 and have always been pleased.

 

Dang! I forgot all about this one as the best!



Paid $299, sold for $1,250

 

The best way to approach purchasing US Mint products is to first realize that 99.9% of them are losers! Straight up!

You will rarely, if ever, recoup your original costs.

Of course, every now and again, the US Mint either screws up or produces some type of rarity.

It's up to YOU to pay close attention to what is published and what you see on Coin Forums!

Specifically, if a past product has been extremely popular, then it's easy-peasy to draw a correlation between what they had vs what they will have. For example, the 2006 20th Anniversary SAE Sets were a three coin set which included the 1st ever Reverse Proof coin from a US Mint. The set got poo-pooed once folks figured out the two of the three coins in the set were available as individual products AND the fact that a total mintage of 250,000 sets would be produced. (All of this came on the heels of the 10th Anniversary American Eagle Set which consisted of 4 Gold Eagles and and relatively Rare 1995-W Proof Silver Eagle.)

Naturally, folks were "expecting" something unique with the 20th Anniversary Sets. The only unique thing was that Reverse Proof but there'd be a quarter of a million of them!

Surprisingly, the sets eventually sold out after months and months BUT they were hugely popular typically bring triple their oroginal value in the after market. (That might even be true today)

Along comes the 25th Anniversary Set................but the figures were way low at only 100,000 sets being produced. This was announced a month in advance of the release date and given the popularity of the 2006 Sets, anybody and his brother could have figured out that with a household limit of only 5 sets, these would sell out in hours. (Which they did!)

The trick was in being prepared by:

1. Having an US Mint Account
2. Being logged on before the release time of 12 noon ET on the release day
3. Refreshing and ordering immediately

Not everybody got in and a lot walked away with blood oozing from their fingertips. The net result was a spectacular opportunity followed by the US Mint changing the household ordering limits on future products and increasing mintages.

That all worked well until the screwed up with the Truman Coin & Chronicles Set where some fool decided that only 17,000 would be needed. They repeated that with the Eisenhower C&C and finally killed the after market by bumping the Kennedy up to 50,000 sets and the Johnson up to 25,000 sets.

The whole point of the post is that I would have NEVER known about any of the above if I'd just sat at home and waited for the US Mint mailers to arrive. A LOT of time was spent on Coin Forums and on perusing the US Mint product schedules.

Aside from the 99.9% losers, there are some occasional winners.

 

I feel like that's their marketing strategy. Small mintage for the first release or two to build up demand then crack the mintage up killing the market while maximizing their profit in sales.

 

[QUOTE="19Lyds,

Paid $25.95 sold for $200. (Should have held out a bit longer!)

Not trying to be picky, but if you are referring to the 2008 reverse of 2007, isn't this the wrong picture ?

Dave