Can you post a picture of the presentation case? Interested to see how nice these are, like to see how 1 set weights 3lbs...
And I'm the high bidder! Just 23H and 53M to go, and they'll be mine for the issue price Think of it as a bump for a good guy who was kind enough to delay his workday just to provide us all with drooling material. ETA: Outbid already, gosh darn it.
I found like 5 listings of sets in hand here is a one for a single set http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-25th-Anni...986?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0fedb00a
Check the completed listings - a box of 5 went for $3500, looks like most of the individual sets will be near $700... SWEET <
Some are reporting that when they received their box, several of the coins came out of their slots, and some had even came out of their capsules and slid around inside the box. That would make it very difficult to leave sealed, and send back out to slosh around even more in the boxes and get marked up even worse on the way to be graded. If this is fairly common occurrence, the 70 grades may be extremely scarce.
I've seen some pretty ugly photos of what you're describing. I guess a strip of the easy-peel tape that comes on (e.g.) new printers and similar electronics to hold the doors closed during shipping, placed over the tops of the coin capsules and onto the side of the box before the lid was closed, was too much to ask for. Sad.
In one of my sets the proof and the W uncirculated came out of their slots, but thankfully did not come out of the capsule. It is a beautiful set.
My first single set came today (ordered at 12.06am, the other order from 12.25am changed to shipped today). The box is huge, it would easily have fit 5 sets. Not banged in shipping either. The coins were all in their slots and look very nice, except that the proof has some weird waviness in the fields.
Damn... You would think the mint could do a bit better. Just sent my unopened boxes to NGC. Scares me now.
Prices are going to tank for a while IMO, probably a couple months at least. I think it'll get as low as $500. Ebay was cancelling a lot of auctions, so there will be an even greater oversupply of flipper auctions once people start receiving their sets. A lot of people charged $1500 on their credit cards, and I'm hazarding a guess that many don't have that much in discretional cash laying around, and especially not right before the holiday season. Same thing happened with the UHRs, the prices tanked over the holiday season, then started moving back up afterwards when the supply dried up.