Why does the U.S. mint not sell bullion coins to the public?

Here's a solution: Stop supporting the US Mint. There's a ton of interesting, beautiful world coins/bullion issues out there at reasonable premiums. I can appreciate your passion, Joe, but at some point the abused partner needs to separate and find another mate.

 

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Don't the dealers face the same challenges? "NO REFUNDS".

 

I'm trying to justify. I do want to believe in the integrity of capitalism but it is the peoples responsibility to ensure not the private concern or property of the rulers but to persuade the republic to uphold the standards of what is a democracy.

 

It was an "Act of Congress" that made it that way and it will take the same to change the law.

 

And, trying to get Congress to change anything these days is like winning the Powerball the second time.

 

I'm leaving it at this. I am fearful for the future of this thread.

 

And the law is that way because they tried to do it the other way, selling directly to the public, when they were doing the US gold arts medallions in the early 80's before the gold and silver eagles were authorized. It was a real headache and a convoluted system for the ordering. You had to go to the post office to get an order blank and have it time stamped, then you had to go call a phone number to get the up to the mint price quote and fill that in on the form, then back to the post office for another time stamp and to mail the order with a postal money order. The price quote was only good for a brief time and if the second time stamp was outside that period the order was no good and you had to repeat the process.

One of the real reasons they don't sell directly to the public is because of the shear number of orders they would have to handle. Most stackers are "small time" and they don't buy multiple monster boxes. Probably most don't even buy rolls. My bet is most silver eagles get sold to people who come in once or twice a month to their local shop and buy one, two, or three silver eagles. If the mint let them do that on their website they would have to process (order package and ship) from 170 to 500 orders to sell a single monster box. It's just much more efficient for them to sell to a distributor who places minimum orders of 50 monster boxes at a time. 1 order for 50 boxes or 25,000 orders of a single coin. And back when it was first set up they didn't have a website, all the ordering was by snail mail.

 

We have computers now and orders can be time stamped to the second.

They could make minimum orders with processsing fees to discourage small buyers and still gain revenue for smaller orders. The fact that they wont sell at all or give an option to sell even at a premium price is discouraging. It has never stopped any other business from selling to the public. Remember when they were accepting credit card purchases for the Sacagawea at face value and people were buying thousands to rack up rewards. They are either geniuses or dumber than poo on a dogs shoe.

 

I know, I don't give up easy.

 

It's kinda like changing a dirty diaper.

 

I know. I don't mean to directly blame the mint. It's always more complicated than what lies on the surface.

 

No, it's the only thing the U.S. Mint does right!

 

They need to utilize the post offices for bullion sales - like they sort of did for the gold 1980-84 Arts Medals 1/2 oz. and 1 oz. pieces.

 

I worked with raw material suppliers for many years. If you want a truckload or railcar, they are happy to sell it to you. If you need 50-100 lbs for development projects or small production runs, you need to get it from a distributor. As a high volume producer, I don't see why the Mint would operate any differently.

It takes a similar amount of labor for the mint to process an order from a dealer/distributor ordering multiple monster boxes as it does to process an order from a collector who wants 1 or 2. Overhead costs for small orders can add up quickly

 

One piece of aggravation could come from purists who think that bullion date ASEs need to be in MS-70. When I was a dealer, I set up next a dealer who sold four or five ASEs to an older man every month. This guy would sit with a glass and go over every one of them like he was buying an 1895 Proof dollar.

Unless the coin has a big mark it, it doesn’t matter if it’s an MS-67, 68 or 69. The coin is a hunk of bullion. MS-70 only exists in slabs and the marketing ploys of the TV barkers.

 

They could, but they don't need to. If they did it would reduce the sales the distributors make and their orders would reduce in size. Most likely there wouldn't be a significant change in the number of coins sold, but the workload for the mint would increase. And they do have minimum orders now, 25,000 oz.

 

What is mints price for $50 bullions? I'm sure it must be more than spot, which today would be $46,725,000 for 25,000 Oz`s. Seems absurd to me.