"Rare" 2015 ASE minted in Philadelphia or San Francisco

Just read something interesting (in a blast email marketing spam) -

"In 2017, the public found out that the U.S. Mint was secretly minting a small number of Silver Eagles at the Philadelphia and San Francisco Mints due to a Freedom of Information Act. Only 79,640 of the near 50,000,000 2015 Silver Eagles were minted at Philadelphia. That's about 1/10th of a percent! This is the single rarest Bullion Strike Silver Eagle in terms of mintage. Keep in mind, many of the sealed boxes that were minted at the Philadelphia Mint were opened prior to this information being released in 2017, which means those will never be graded as a Philadelphia coin, which just adds to the rarity of this piece."

First off, is there truth to this? If so, why, and what were the S mintages?

Second- any idea how to tell the Philly & SanFran pieces apart from West Point issues?

 

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Coinworld article from 2015:
https://www.coinworld.com/news/prec...-labels-for-certified-2015-silver-eagles.html

 

This seems to be a more comprehensive article, but it also clarifies that none of the 2015 ASE coins were minted at the San Francisco facility:

https://coinweek.com/bullion-report...ion-coin-branch-mint-attribution-information/

 

Well, there you go, another way for the TPG's to make money. The ASE Bullion was never intended to be anything other than bullion. It was never intended to be graded and slabbed. Some people now will want to capture marking on boxes in an effort to "certify" the mint. In 2011 the US Mint put some information out regarding the bullion piece in the 5 piece Anniversary Set regarding the ability to produce the volume needed. They stated that some pieces would be struck at the San Francisco mint. None would have a mint mark. Immediately the TPG's and major dealers started working on a scheme to identify which ones came from S Mint so they could be slabbed and more money could be made. We were told that you couldn't tell them apart. Well, you can because there is a significant difference in the fields. But, that is another story.

 

The TV salesmen had something of a field day with this, but it’s much ado about nothing, IMO. More graded bullion nonsense. It could have been minted in my back yard and it wouldn’t have made any real difference — except to the saps who buy coins from HSN.

 

The prices on these reached high levels when the news came out (I haven't checked where prices are now).

Basically, the only way to tell the coins apart is to have the sealed monster box (which has a label that says which mint it came from). The coins are completely identical (not even a mint mark to differentiate them).

 

As the 2nd coin world article George links to says, it's worse than that... the data about the box markings was determined to be in error and retracted.

 

Goshdarnit! Would you quit blaming the TPG's for this SNAFU. Have you spoken to Mike Mezack? Maybe he can tell you who is lying. By the way, he's still selling Silver Eagles as such. ~ Chris

 

I guess you are right - if the collectors would stop asking for irrelevant labels there wouldn't be any.

 

there was the crazy 2017 and prior Congratulations Set ASEs too.

 

Grading bullion coins as already mentioned
Is a waste of time an effort and most important dollars since the vast majority
Coming out of the mints are already gem
brilliant uncirculated so there’s no reason
to pay more I’n premiums that are almost
Impossible to get back