Will the Baseball Hall of Fame Gold coins sell out first day?

Just checked mine. They shipped the blasted thing UPS with signature required? Land o' Goshin.......that means they'll probably send out the rest of the order 'priority' (postal service) and it will be dropped at my doorstep.

 

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I hope so!

 

The answer to the OP's original question is: NO.

The gold HOF coins sold out the day after their initial release day:

http://www.numismaticnews.net/article/mint-stats-buyers-find-gold-in-baseball-offering

TC

 

My silver proof is now been moved up to ship on 16 April. I ordered late on the first day.

 

I called the US Mint today just to say hello. I was told that my first day gold and silver orders are a lock. I was also told that my second gold order the next morning is still in play! The CS rep said lots of credit card orders are being cancelled for a number of reasons but many for exceeding their limits. Gold is expensive. They will not contact the customer if there is an issue but just cancel the order. The rep implied that there were or will be many cancellations. It will interesting to see how this all plays out. TC

 

Here's hoping my gold order on Friday before noon makes it....

 

Has anyone's gold shipped yet?


Ask me about holding real physical precious metals in an IRA or HSA plan.

 

I have a gold proof in hand that I am selling on ebay!

 

Well... Joe, your coins didn't "ship"... You acquired yours at the coin show last week. And you are referring to the one you have listed for $4,500... I mean, reduced for $4,299.99... LOL! Good luck with that! It's more than a little out of touch with reality even if by "best offer" you'd expect and accept much less. The hysteria over labels and plastic is the only thing being hit out of the park, so to say.

 

I was there with two friends. One buddy sold his gold proof for 3k. My second buddy sold both his unc and proof on ebay yesterday for 7k. Might be a little out of touch with reality, but they are selling. If you look at the history several more have sold for that amount or more. This is one of those coins that if I sell great....I have 4 more coming....if not then, I will keep it with my collection.....and I still have 4 more coming. I have nearly tripled my money for what amounted to standing in line for 5 hours. Not bad for a half days work. I will do that all day every day.

 

I understand, and I know you're flying high on a rush from a recent financial boon attributed to a hobby you know, respect and enjoy, but the values are not sustainable and only blows values of the coin out of proportion. Seeing so many dollar signs makes people do things and think things they wouldn't normally. I know you desperately want to share the enthusiasm for successfully flipping these coins for the amounts you and others have, but the reality is most collectors will never realize the same returns you and a select few did due to the release of the coins at the show and some arbitrary labels placed in plastic holders. It reduces the quality of your posts to bragging and that's rather telling of how this sort of thing does more harm to the overall collecting hobby than good.

Acquiring new coins is no longer as equal as it was prior to 2013 when the Mint started this little PR event gimmick, allowing people to get their coins on release day while others are made to wait for orders to be fulfilled for weeks or even months in some cases. The Mint knows there's demand and seldom have the inventory ready to ship in a timely manner to eager and loyal customers. If they can prepare for a coin show then they can have quantities minted for mail order within a week of taking orders... instead, people are getting bags over-nighted to them with no coins!

Perhaps if coin show attendees were allowed to place orders at the Mint booth and receive their coins later in the mail the way online orders and phone orders are handled, it would be a more fair system with a less skewed initial aftermarket. Because of it TPGs have instantly seized on the opportunity to quickly make money off instant certification of coins, bypassing their much more lauded process of carefully inspecting, tracking and evaluating coins, only now to almost blindly attach labels that have nothing to do with the coin. It's unfortunate to see many duped into accepting this in the hobby over the quality of the actual coin and process of evaluation, which for most spent very little time in anyone's hands, let alone under the gaze of the experts evaluating them, before being encapsulated and traded (especially for a coin with totally new specifications, lest the Mint has been allowing graders advanced access to these coins to prepare for these events).

 

I am not going to disagree with one word that you have said, but you basically summed up the hobby and where it is at in a nut shell. Collectors are paying gobs of money for labels. The TPGs recognize this. Collectors have paid tons of money for the Eric P Newman labels, they paid tons of money for the Chicago labels and yes, they are going to pay tons of money for the Saddle Ridge hoard labels. This is not new news. The TPGs know this and have even come out and stated as such with the Saddle Ridge hoard labels. This is the future. There has to be winners and losers in this game. Wouldn't you rather have the small guy like me win instead of the big shot dealers or do you just want everyone to lose.....or maybe you just want everyone to win? That sounds great if everyone would win, but that would defeat the purpose of gambling....and basically me and everyone who bought our coins early, had them slabbed and sold them on ebay were gambling. It could have very well gone the other way. Whats that saying..."there is no winning for losing"...or something like that. There has and always will be a winner and loser. I learned this the hard way back in 2001 when I dragged my feet and didn't buy the buffalo dollars. It was my first one since the commemorative program restarted that I missed....and I never missed another one again. Keeping with the baseball theme, like the great Yogi Berra said, "The future ain't what it used to be kiddo". Well the kiddo part is from my dad, cuz he calls everyone kiddo.

 

The future you spoke of is already the history of the past few years as well as the present situation, but it's one (I think, ugly) side of the coin industry, not the hobby. I don't think the past or future of this hobby is or ever was (should be) about gambling. In fact, most people who collect don't do it as a gamble, it's not simply about financial reward, it's not an investment nor a "flash trade" investment opportunity, which is what flipping these coins in minutes after buying them on release day has become equivalent to. It's no longer an arena of the pre-sale and in-hand offer on an auction site. It's predominantly for the dealers with industry access to and business at the coin shows to take advantage of, and their behavior is setting the actions of the collectors who attend in motion.

This behavior (hype, creating a buzz, etc.) inspires sales of products to those who cannot attend and desire or lust after the returns they imagine others are making. But as I explained, most don't reach this, while those who manipulated the market, capitalize and devour the hobby, its resources and realistic value of coins among collectors. Reality or not, it is a particularly nasty character flaw that has infected coin hobbyists, that this is some sort of competition as you strongly alluded to a reality of winners and losers, competing and gambling for success, financial success.

Baseball like any sport is a competition, even more so when backed by strong marketing campaigns that tug at peoples weaknesses for loyalty to a team, a home town, a nation and essentially what is a form of social control. Go to the game, go early, get a bobble-head, spend more time at the stadium consuming over priced food, beverages and souvenirs-- that's a captive audience that marketing ensnares and decided for them what to buy and how much to milk the flock for.

This is what has crept into the hobby and these are the results.

 

Crept into our hobby? It’s been there since the beginning, just as it has been for all speculative ventures. In a nutshell, it’s greed, it’s capitalism, pure and simple. I think you also mixed a little consumerism in there too. We’re all conditioned to believe we have to have it, just to feel good, even if it's a crappy hotdog at a ballgame.

Soooo, I do not begrudge someone making a “killing” in our hobby, I have many times and I believe many of us here got our 5 2011 ASE sets or any number of other issues that boomed.

As for buyers buying labels, who knows. I don’t like the idea, it may all crash someday, but who knows. I do know, anyone walking into the shop with a fancy label, gets the same offer as any other label.

 

I don't begrudge others for selling coins at a profit or businesses from serving demand, that would be too easy to read into my previous comments. Mine were more of taking a look at the reality of value proportion and the distortion initial aftermarket pricing causes. Such expectations do more harm than good to the hobby. When faced with ridiculous profit most quickly sell out, loosing focus of the core of what they are doing. Then it becomes profit first, collection later. As Joe said, as a last resort with his gamble, the coins are for the collection. As he cited the E.P.Newman sale, I'll point to a great article CoinWeek just did on how poorly flippers fared in their expectatons when trying to milk sales of these coins through eBay auctions initiated as soon as the coins arrived from Heritage. Why keep trying to one up the prices? The consumer doesn't just consume, they are now trained and led to compete and that same competition becomes marketable (hyped) raising expectations and forgetting what new products are worth so agree to pay more for then upon the next release and cycle of wild spending. Yesterday Cabbage Patch dolls or bobble heads, this weeks topic coins, tomorrow anything and everything else. Why must this hobby and everything else people entertain themselves with be turned into a fight.

Many feel the Mint's premium an excessive mark up, but some defend the costs of design, production, marketing and distribution to consumers. Knowing that the Mint already managed to profit and TPGs will have a slice as well, how much greater increase does one really need to take from these things that have no historical basis for maintaining these values. It's the wildly hopeful BINs now that show the detachment from reality and desire to grab more from others. These latest coins are far from the rarest modern commemorative coins from the U.S. Mint and yet we see a BIN of nearly 10 times retail prices was set. The proof cited earlier for nearly $5K isn't the lowest minted coin even in the series, the uncirculated gold coin (as usual) is turning out to be lowest. The move to assert greater values on event labels and create a niche of higher value coins is the most exploitative area of all. I'm not against earning a profit, and if these latest coins are indeed that hot as the wishful BIN price suggests, then start the bidding at what was paid for them plus slabbing and watch the prices climb. Ratcheting up the figure forces potential buyers into offering an unrealistic price, essentially fearing something too far below the BIN price would be unacceptable. But as I joked, the initial BIN was already adjusted down and offers have been getting declined. Values are distorted. The window of opportunity is closing as delivery of the bulk of the inventory nears, and that rush of selling at such elated prices felt over the past week is also beginning to dwindle.

 

I hope to get this coin, if the price ever goes down enough on a raw.

 

Would someone please tell me whose buying these labelled coins? Are these people deluding themselves into thinking they can make a profit on these in the future? I have yet to see a post anywhere from someone saying "wow I just picked up the uncirculated and proof gold HOF Baltimore labels for $7K." Are these only registry people with deep pockets? I only ask because I would never pay these prices for a label. TC

 

TC: could be anyone or no one at all, just fantasy. There are fantasy sports leagues that people get involved in too. Or it could be sales made to those heavy hitters out there with a Major League salary to back it up.

 

You seem to be suggesting here that you would like to see a coin collecting politbureau or czar to tell us when we can sell our coins and for how much, and how we should collect?
Your posts seem to suggest that it's nothing more than sour grapes on your part because you didn't get in on these.

 

Not at all! How could I support individuals and businesses from profiting and believe such a thing. And you're assuming that I didn't get in on these, erroneously.

I'm talking about something deeper and quite changed about peoples focus, particularly caring more about massively profiting ahead of collecting.