I REALLY liked Provident Metals. But they were bought by JM Bullion a couple of months ago. And although I reserved judgment at first and wanted to give them a chance to see what JM Bullion would do with Provident, unfortunately and much to my disappointment Provident Metals has proven to be just an extension of JM Bullion - boooooooring. Provident had someone with a lot of creativity doing their marketing emails. They would send a fun, new email every day with great GIFs and fun text describing their sales. Every day something new would be added to what was on sale for that week and it held my interest between the fun emails and the daily items on sale. And it wasn't boring items on sale either. There would be some really good, popular things on sale every few weeks with a large variety of sale items. The sales would range from favorite rounds and bars, to popular coins, Junk Silver, Historic Gold, Eagles, Half Eagles and Double Eagles. There would even be sales on Copper Rounds which I like giving out to the kids at extended family get-togethers. Provident was a good, small company with quality products, good year-round pricing, good sales, good customer service and a great marketing department all wrapped up in one really great company. Now, the Provident prices are about 10-cents less than JM Bullion for a 1 ounce gold coin which is a negligible difference. Booooring sales. Nothing interesting. Nothing popular ever on sale. Never any of the fun items on sale. And no creative emails with fun tag lines and entertaining GIFs. So, this is my Farewell Ode to Provident Metals. Bye Bye to the Provident Metals I knew and loved. It was great while it lasted and I, for one, will miss you a lot. {sniffle, sniffle}
Unfortunately, that seems to be the way of the world. One company covets the success of another company, buys them out and thinks it will change all of their woes. The same thing happened to Medallic Art Company. It was the oldest and one of the most successful private mints in the country. Then, Northwest Territorial Mint bought MACO, and now both are out of business. Chris
I haven't been following, was there a particular reason for the Acquisition ... or did the owner(s) just decide to cash out, retire, etc?
Hey, maybe they'll bring back the zombucks series and extend it to world coins. I always wanted a Chinese Punker Bear Zombuck.
Both JmBullion and their Sister Site Provident Metals now have the same stupid pop up when you visit their site. They both have terrible Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. I am done with the sites. Look, when I buy silver I want to buy 1 ounce government issued coins. Their "deals" all feature generics at under a dollar over spot or high premium silver with a special discount. All I want are government issued silver coins at about $1 or 5-6% over spot. That is what I buy. They are offering me nothing at the moment that I want, and that is why I haven't placed an order in some time.
I don't know. I just got an email from Provident one day saying that JM Bullion had bought the company. They didn't share the back story. If anyone knows I would be curious...
Provident Metals was my first "go to" place, with APMEX the place for all the non-standard (AGE, ASE) coins for me. there were a few others but I can't recall the names off the top of my head.
Yeah. The final blow was when the owner of NWTM lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit and was arrested by the FBI for running a Ponzi scheme. Fortunately, the ANS was able to rescue many of the medal dies. See link. Cal http://blog.greysheet.com/american-...oric-extensive-medallic-art-company-archives/
Thanks for posting this. Perhaps one day I might be able to buy the dies from the ANS for one of my (less historic) MACO medals. Chris
