Nine Nine Nine Fine Apollo 11

Reading an article this morning on the difficulty of producing the concave dies for the 1.5-inch Apollo 11 silver dollar and 3-inch silver puck, I was reminded that these coins will be .999 silver instead of the usual .900.

Does anyone think this makes the coins more desirable than a .900 commemorative? The same? Or are they just another overpriced piece of bullion?

FWIW, I don't think it makes much difference, BWDIK?

 

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I wouldn't care if they were made of lead. It's a long overdue tribute to our nations greatest accomplishment and I can't wait for them. In the long run though, I doubt that will make them any more desirable unless it has a positive effect on the image quality. I haven't done the math but whats that maybe a dollar difference per ounce?

 

I’m going to round a tiny bit here but, 1 oz of .90 contains .9 oz of silver. 1 oz of .999 contains (for all intensive purposes...) 1 oz of silver. It’s a tenth of an ounce difference per ounce, which at current market prices works out to be $1.53. Now the mint doesn’t sell at spot so at the end of the day you’re talking a $2-3 difference per ounce. Still waiting to see the prices on these, but I think overall much of the value will be held because of what it is commemorating, not what it’s made of.

 

Is the regular size dollar coin going to be .999 fine? In the legislation the 3 inch puck is specified as being .999 fine but the 1.5 inch is specified as "not less than .900 fine". When did they make a decision to make it .999? (Which would be allowed by the way the legislation is written)

 

Yes, from the linked article:

Like the 3-inch coin, the 1.5-inch dollar is composed of .999 fine silver, the first commemorative silver dollar struck in .999 fine silver instead of the usual 90 percent silver, 10 percent copper.

I guess what I was asking (in a poor way) was does the extra 10% silver make the coin "cooler" than other commemoratives, or is it a complete non-issue?

 

It's a non issue for me but they are way overdue. Those of us who remember will buy regardless of the composition. The .999 fine is just a marketing strategy which the Mint will hype to no end and charge extra for. IMHO.

 

Why do they need to be curved though?

 

I believe it is supposed to be as though you are looking through an astronauts helmet.

 

Hmmm sounds a bit gimmicky to me...

 

For the mint???? No, you don’t say!

 

They're starting down the path of the RCM.

 

Not through, "at" the visor of the helmet. The image of the flag, lunar lander, and astronaut Neil Armstrong, is based on the famous image of the refection of the scene off of the visor of Buzz Aldrin's helmet visor which is curved.

 

Slightly more desirable to a small subsection. Most people probably won't even realize it or assume that is the norm. If it's a one off it could get some popularity like the silver halfs do, but if that becomes the norm it'll be a big nothing burger other than they were probably tone more like ASEs

 

Yes it will be overpriced but it is long overdue. About time someone did this and hopefully it will be a nice looking piece.

 

Sometime during the Obama administration. They were wasting lots of time and money making 90% silver blanks for the silver proof sets, so they decided to say that they needed to be AT LEAST .900 fine. All of the new silver proof sets probably have .999 fine silver coins in them, not .900, matching everything made since 1837.

 

There's a reason the Mint chose .999 silver.

The article explains that "...there were problems with proper metal flow...

"Some of the problems were more pronounced when using the traditional 90 percent silver blanks, but were easily corrected with the softer .999 fine silver blanks, which allowed for smoother metal flow."

 

When are these supposed to be available?

 

January 24th last I checked.

 

Wouldn’t something like this require changing the size of the coin? I know it’s not much, but the density of .999 silver would be higher then .90 silver .10 copper. Meaning the coin would need to be smaller? Am I thinking through this correctly? Also, I wouldn’t be extremely surprised if someone happened to get a 90/10 coin as a mistake. There’s basically no way of knowing without doing a specific gravity test or XFR gun or similar methods, so someone could easily mix up the blanks.

 

Can't be smaller, the weight and diameter are specified in the text of the law and that diameter and weight matches for a 90% silver coins. Only way to do it for a .999 fine coin would be to reduced the thickness by over 10%.