ok if American silver eagles don't circulate as currency in the open , and are used mainly for bullion content then how do they get bag marks???
I have never seen one with bag marks. But, my thought would be from handling by owners. People who consider them bullion often put them in rolls or don't handle them with care because they are bullion. But, new from the mint...I have never seen one baggy.
Also, the bullion dealers might also damage the coins when the remove them from the tubes and they get sold individually. Lets say someone buys a green box of them with the intent to sell them as BU raw. He may dump the tube into a tray causing the coins to bump each other. Who knows really, all sorts of possibilities! They could also get damaged in the minting process before they go into the tubes. I'm don't know the minting process for the bullion coins, so this may or may not be a possibility.
I've seen slabbed ASE's marked "first strike" or "early releases" (so they supposedly shouldn't have been handled much, if at all) that had significant nicks or small gouges that suggested not all that much care was taken in processing them at the mint.
The terms "First Strike" and "Early Releases" have absolutely nothing to do with the method of handling by Mint employees or their equipment. Chris
They are not marketing ploys by the grading services. These terms were dreamed up by the mass marketers like Coin Vault and others. Since all of the grading services are in business to make money, it would be stupid for any of them to turn business away when others aren't. Chris
Do these coins go through the same minting process as those coins intended for circulation: ie- at the end of the line they simply fall into a bin before they are packaged?
No, they are loaded into the die by hand and extra care is taken so they do not hit other coins. This is especially the case with proofs.
Bag mark is a typically used as a generic name for just about any contact mark on a coin, not just those the result of the coins being in a bag. Yeah, Proofs are, but business strikes are not fed into the dies by hand, or handled by hand at all. They use machines. But business strikes are not ejected from the dies and into a large hopper likes coins struck for circulation are. Business strike may get a few marks on them from the machines or being in the tubes. But the huge majority of ASE business strikes (like 95% or more) are thought of as nothing more than chunks of silver bullion by the dealers who sell them. So no care is taken when the coins are handled by them. I've seen dumped out of tubes into buckets at dealer shops. So it is not at all unusual for a lot of them to get bag marks.
The US Mint website states that business strikes are also hand loaded, well at least for West Point mint coins. It states: "In a process similar to that used to create the magnificent American Eagle Proof Coins, American Eagle Uncirculated Coins are hand-loaded into the coining press, struck on specially burnished blanks and carry the "W" mint mark of the United States Mint at West Point."
But. your quote pertains specifically to American Eagle Uncirculated Coins which are the coins produced specifically for collectors. It does NOT pertain to the bullion versions of the coin.
This is true...however, to many dealers there isn't a difference. They are both treated like bullion. But from a production standpoint, you are probably correct.
Precisely my point. I was responding to earlier posts that suggested it was post mint handling that accounted for "baggy" looking coins.
But the OP referred, or at least seems to refer, to the bullion strikes not the proofs or the "Uncirculated", burnished pieces. After all how many of the burnished pieces do you see with a lot of "bag marks". I seriously doubt if many if any dealer treats the "burnished" W mintmarked ASE's as just bullion.
