I'd buy one, in either metal , but for the first year I'd prefer it in gold . The ultra high relief are the most beatiful coin .The other day a dealer showed me one that had been whizzed , but it was still beautiful . B y the way , what color is paladium . rzage
I was hoping for gold as well. Paladium adds a new wrinkle to things. Never owned any but, as the article points out, other countries have issued coins using this metal. I always see paladium listed on the web site that I use to check on the price of gold and silver. As for the colour...my wife tells me that it is very close to that of platinum.
There is a reason why palladium for coins just don't work out - from historical point of view, palladium prices just fluctuate so widely that it's difficult to put a "face value" of what a palladium coin should be at. This practically killed some very interesting palladium projects such as the Australian emu, Russian ballerina, Chinese panda and so on.
Market volitility may have been the reason for the demise of the issues that you mention but right now palladium is trading at roughly half of what gold is trading at. Possible reason for considering it for the new St. Gaudens? Also...Montana mining interests....no motive there... Seems I remember reading about something regarding the Morgan dollar and Nevada mining interests but that's another story.
Yea but didn't you see what happened in 2000-1? Russian politics decided that Russia should not supply additional palladium to the rest of the world, complied with the problem that US legislations demanded new clean air act to be enact and thus made palladium price surge higher than platinum at one stage near 1,100USD as American automobile manufacturers decided to stockpile. When Russia cleared it's politics, prices fell from a moderate 300USD to a mere 200USD after that event. Some major US automobile companies in particular Ford had to write off millions for their hoarding in that short period of time. Take it this way, if that happened to be coins, if you sold it at 1100USD, good job but if you bought it at 300 and realized that it's worth 200USD after that drama, you wouldn't be a happy man. I wouldn't either. What is more interesting is that there are more platinum deposits found recently than palladium which may in turn reverse the price of palladium and platinum since palladium works reasonably well as catalysts where platinum has been the preferred choice. That said, Russia I think supplies more than 50% of the current world supply, South Africa at 33%+ and the rest from North America. Mints in general don't want to mess around with metals that are too volatile. That said, how many countries do you know that still mint coins in platinum? Not a lot to be exact. Why not mint coins in other novel metals? Like Rhodium? Well sure they work for a while but not for a long period of time. The only exception I know is the Austrian silver-niobium coin but otherwise, it just doesn't work out. Kazakhstan is trying out the silver-tantalum coin series but we'll see how long that will last.
If they think of it they could mix the Palladium with Copper, Gold or just about anything to make it have a Gold color. Or they could just plate it with Gold or Copper. Of course they could just have someone like the Franklin Mint paint them with Gold paint. Then too there is the possibility to outsourse them to China and have them made of Lead. :goof: Pending on the price at the time I'm still not sure I'd buy one.
gxseries: If I worried about the price of precious metals I wouldn't be collecting coins. I buy coins for my collection based on whether or not I like the design/series not intrinsic value and future possibilities of a windfall. The probability of the US Mint making a high relief St Gaudens in the classic design of 1907 intrigues me....I'd like to see it produced in gold but if the powers that be decide on paladium I'll purchase that. If given a choice of gold or palladium I'll choose gold.....just have to save my money as I know (either way) it's going to be expensive.
