Does anyone know why the mint is still selling the 2005 silver proof sets? Did they mint a lot of the set and instead of destroying the extras ruin the value of the set by inflating the mintage ?
They are still selling them because they can - the law permits it. And it saves them a lot of money to boot. The additional sets they sell won't make any difference at all in the value of the sets on the secondary market.
It shouldn't affect the price, but if the public perception changes, it certainly could decrease the price.
Not only will doing this affect the price of the 2005 Silver Proof Sets but will make all future sets suffer. I have seen this happen on coins with mintage caps, but never on an annual set. It definitely affects the price I'll pay for 2005 proof coins in original sets and certified examples. Search eBay and you'll see that the same collectors and dealers are the people setting prices. Now I'm not willing to bid as much and when a somewhat new collector goes to sell because of hard times, they'll never turn back to coin collecting, This is possibly the worst thing the mint could do to hurt the credibility of the silver proof program. It has me looking at the Canadian Mint. How could that NOT affect future prices.
I heartily agree. Between this and the mess with the 2006 Eagle Anniversary coins, the mint's credibility is dropping like a stone with me. It is impossible for this to not have an effect on the price of the '05 proof sets. They are increasing the supply and the numismatic market is definitely driven by supply, demand, and perception. Steve
Maybe this whole issue speaks more to the failure of the mint to generate more interest in the silver proof sets rather than an attempt by the mint to fleece collectors, dealers, etc. If you look at the value of these sets since '92, there has been a steady decline in the value of these sets since '97; Even though on average the mintage numbers aren't significantly higher than they were during the more sought after years in the mid-90's. The fact that the newer sets are less expensive isn't unusual in itself but I think if you look at steadily lower prices for almost the last 10 years, the mint's inability to sell all of it's 2005 inventory, and all the interest in their other silver products, you can conclude that maybe the market is a bit too saturated to make the silver proof set attractive to most of us. The price of the most valuable coin in the set (Kennedy Half) is even lower than it had been just a few short years ago. I believe the mint may have to decrease the mintage numbers significantly in order to generate more interest in these silver proof sets. If the price of silver goes sharply one way or the other, none of this may matter anyway. The program may just get scrapped. :hail:
Ya know, until about 2002 nobody ever really cared how many of the Proof sets or the Silver Proof sets that the mint sold. They just didn't care one way or the other. But in '02, the price for the '99 sets began to creep up. By '03 the price for the '01 sets began to creep up. Now why did all this happen ? Easy, it happened because a lot of the new collectors, those who never collected coins before 2002 - suddenly had to buy them for their sets. And when everybody else saw the prices going up - they suddenly had to buy as many as they could so THEY could get in on the easy profits. Well gang, until about 3 or 4 years ago - there were no profits to be made by buying US Mint products on the secondary market. And that's easy to understand too - because until then, they were money losers on the secondary market. But now all of a sudden it seems like the only thing that too many people care about are the easy profits to be made in the secondary market. But the mint isn't issuing the coins for people to make profits - they are making them for the mint to make profits, and for collectors of course. What happened to all the collectors - the ones who didn't care ? Where did they go ?
I just bought the 2006 proof, silver proof, and P&D mint sets tonight on eBay...it was a pretty good deal too. They were all in one lot for a total of $77.75 with shipping (I figured it as $18.25 for the mint sets, $23.25 for the proof set, and $36.25 for the silver proof set). The only proof set I had before tonight was a 1983.:hatch:
I consider myself a collector; not an investor. As a collector, the number of coins of a particular type is of interest to me because rarity matters. Although none of the modern proofs are rare by any strectch of the imagination, the fact that the mint can fudge mintages is somewhat disconcerting. If it were strictly a monetizing agency, as was probably the original intent, I wouldn't take issue with the things that they do. A major area of focus for the mint nowadays, however, is to market to collectors. In doing so, they need to be far more careful in the way they word their ads and thier marketing practices. I suppose under the premise that coin "collectors" such as yourself, not being interestd in the "value" of a coin would not find a problem if the mint were to begin issuing 1933 saints from the original dies with no way to tell them from the coins minted in 1933. Steve
