5 Oz America The Beautiful Bullion

Sad how this fell out.

We have been waiting for years, then first get the gouge from a few resellers, then get stiffed by the US Mint. This was poorly managed, with too few sources. Face it, with 33,000, each of the ten dealers would be through-putting 3,300 pieces. That is 660 five piece orders for each of the resellers, assuming all get a set of five. At best, maybe 200 to 300 of those orders would have been processed. Most collectors would get their orders AFTER the year 2011 begins, and possibly even after the proofs become available, next year. It must be said, this is the most responsive the Mint has been in years, they are listening, and that's good, after the 2009 ASE outage.
But we are the odd men out in all of this. And if they honor those early orders to APMEX, and stiff the rest of us, surely there will be a legal fallout. Monopolistic trade practices have their own special rewards in our court system.

 

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Price is a function of supply and demand. I'm betting that the demand for these early hockey pucks will be permanent, as it has been for the 1995-W ASE.

The First Spouse coins are trading at bullion levels because there's no initial demand for them. Only the first three coins in the series reached that 20,000 plateau; the mintages on the rest are lower due to poor sales. The mintage of the uncirculated finish Anna Harrison coin, for example, is 3,537. The proof coin is only 6,250.

Of course, as the MS Jackie Robinson $5 commemorative shows, a few years down the road, interesting things could happen with these low mintage issues. I'm not convinced that gold bullion is a buy at the current time, but the First Spouse coins offer a possible additional upside at very little cost over generic bullion.

Disclaimer: I made a similar bet when I bought Commemorative Arts Medallions at the same price as generic bullion. I won't win that bet, but I didn't lose anything either.

 

Why would anyone melt a beautiful 5 oz. 0.999 silver coin? What would you turn it into, an ugly silver bar? It's already a silver bar, just in the shape of a coaster.

Just an observation: I bought the first First Spouse coin issues (both uncirculated and proof). I was disappointed that the value did eventually decline to bullion value for some, but that has resulted in a 100% return on my investment. A few, like the uncirculated Jackson and Van Buren liberty versions are being BOUGHT by dealers for $1,000 each, a nearly 50% premium over bullion value.

 

Remember the Mint's system slowing to a crawl when the UHRs came out at noon that day? And some other highly anticipated releases...

I wonder if we can multiply that times five? Once more for each of these discs. It may take a while to get all five ordered.

 

As a result of this, I will never ever buy from APMEX again and I will no longer recommend them to anyone.

 

Perhaps, the Mint needs to collect order pre-requests, determine the size of demand, have a lottery based on pre-orders placed before a set date, inform those names selected from the order-request lottery what lots are available, give customers and dealers alike the opportunity to buy (lock in a price) direct from the Mint and to pay within X number of days from being contacted about availability per the request. At that point, the customer pays in full and waits for the product to be delivered -OR- declines the offer if the price is unsuitable or if the customer has changed their mind, at which point the availability falls to the next customer with an order request. Mintage would be determined by demand and what quantity the Mint could produce within the year of issue and within materials (precious metals) and facilities allowed per any standing coin legislation.

 

How about Gainesville coins? Their behavior was worse. They quoted different customers different prices and raised their asking price 46% from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. Altogether, they ended up with a 181% markup over their cost.

 

While I've purchased from both Apmex and Gainesville in the past and have only found them to deliver excellent products and equally top rated customer service, I was more distressed by the competitive greediness, even in light of the currently lucrative precious metals market, that these dealers reacted to the release of the 5 oz. Parks coins. I especially took note of Apmex in this regard as they clearly could be seen to be again taking advantage of the path to numismatic profitability, something which runs counter to their self announced withdrawal from numismatic inventory towards the end of 2009. That's when they began running a huge sale of all their 'numismatic' inventory stating they would no longer carry such products. While that is debatable, since any coin product they continued to carry could be collectible-- many precious metals products that are both bullion and those that can be considered numismatic remain on sale, they more or less attempted to narrow their focus to bullion only, with some exceptions. Well, the 5 oz coins were a major exception it seems, especially when it meant they could excuse their actions while their competition was also setting high prices and finding customers seemingly willing to pay anything to obtain the 5 oz. coins.

For me like many others expressing themselves here, this crossed a line and was a reputation damaging one. It will likely be no skin off their backs and no financial loss to their coffers, but the collective response should demonstrate the dimensionality of the customer base and remind them who makes them who they are. It's very unfortunate that such highly regarded companies let something like this taint their public image.

I have also found competitive prices and exceptional customer service from Provident Metals, and have been suggesting them as an alternate to these other companies when people look for bullion dealers or other options than the ones mentioned above. I have not encountered heard about the issue of the 5 oz. Parks coins in regards to Provident and I'm not sure if they ever even intended on obtaining and reselling them. If you are seeking another outlet for bullion, have a look at Provident. If you know them but haven't been to their site in a while, check it out, it's been redesigned recently.

 

Sorry, if this offends anyone but some individuals including myself, don't consider these as "coins" and I personally just consider them a glorified silver round that just happen to be produced by the US mint.

If I had one and given a choice, to either sell it or some sliver junk coins for melt. I personally would have no problem selling this glorified silver round first.

 

You are entitled to your opinion, but I find the "it's not a coin, it's a [token, round, piece of junk]" mantra to be a bit tiresome. The US Mint labels them as "bullion coins" and in fact, they are legal tender with a face value of $0.25.

 

I understand. You asked the question as to why anyone would have these melted and I provided you my reason.

 

Of course it would be silly to melt it if you could sell it for more than spot to someone else who actually did like the coin for its artistic qualities.

 

I was really getting at why is it necessary to melt silver at all to get investment value from it? Can't you just sell it to a precious metals dealer as is, if it's already in a 0.999 refined state?

I heard this also about First Spouse coins when the bullion value exceeded the original purchase price. They were said to be "thrown into the melting pot". Is it just more convenient to have gold bricks than a bunch of pesky coins?

 

I agree with Farstaff and he is entitled to his opinion and especially free to express it when asked. The fact of the matter, is the US Mint has described them as bullion coins and people falling all over themselves to own one by paying substantial premiums and crying over dealer sales policies when they can't get one, aren't prudent "investors". Likewise "collectors" shouldn't be involved in a hobby that is causing them so much stress trials and tribulations over things they can't control.

IMO, I too think they are nothing more than glorified silver rounds that were legislated into existence by a US Congress that should be focused on more important things. The legislation was so bad the coin is technically difficult to produce and of course the US Mint, a department of the US Treasury (another fine gubment institution) has managed to botch it up even worse. People looking to pay a 100%+ premium to acquire this bullion are setting themselves up for a pretty bad fall.

 

I'm certainly not defending the legislative process that resulted in the coins being too large and too thin. But it would take a constitutional amendment to take these decisions away from Congress. That's not likely to happen.

 

I think fatima was advocating that they use their grey matter when authorizing the coins. This doesn't take anything more than common sense, but being Congress, it is also probably not likely to happen.

 

I agree it's not likely to happen. They may be well-intentioned, but they don't have much knowledge of numismatics and they don't seem to think through the implications of the programs they pass. For example, I wonder if it ever occurred to anyone in Congress that putting together a complete set of First Spouse gold coins would cost about $38,000 even at the price gold was at in 2007 when the program started. With the price of gold now at $1400+ per ounce, we're looking at a cost of at least $75,000 and it probably will go up. I think a lot of collectors really wanted this series, but just gave up when it looked like it would require a choice between completing the set and living indoors.

 

Since we live in a supply and demand world,(The coin industry is built around it.) I fail to understand the problem with suppliers such as APMEX. If the demand is such, why would they want to give up their business profits to see some individual profit $1000 or so and they make a small profit on their large investment. To me, if there is a problem, it would be the mint under producing a product that they should have reconized as not meeting the demand. A lot of flippers are upset because some of the suppliers that they have sold to in the past have turned the tables on them.

 

Short answer is no. Most members of congress are millionaires with a number of billionaires. Many were simply born into this kind of money and have no concept of how much it is to the average person in this country.

 

obligation is why APMEX is to blame

APMEX is selected as a primary bullion distributor...that is why they had access to bullion released to limited dealers. Their status in this situation puts them under legal obligation to sell bullion at a reasonable margin so it enters the free market as bullion.

They abused their relationship with the Treasury and US Mint to make numismatic profit on bullion. Shame on them. The mint issued guidance prior to launch. APMEX did not follow, so the mint pulled back on the launch to reevaluate.

I put this all on the bullion dealers that tried to rake profit.