I have noticed while surfing the Royal Mint's web site that they produce a fraction of the unc/proof sets than does the US mint. What's up with that? For example, they are only making 100,000 of the UNC Royal Shield of Arms collection, 20,000 of the proof set and 10,000 of the silver proof set. In fact, I could not find a set on their web site that had a mintage of greater than 100,000. Even the UNC Britannia had only a 100,000 max mintage. Can you imagine if only 100,000 US mint sets were made or only 20,000 US proof sets were made or only 10,000 silver proof sets were made??? How about only 100,000 UNC ASE's!!! It would be pandemonium. As a collector, of course, that is awesome to have a very limited number made, with such a high demand, but apparently this is not the case over in England. Maybe our British friends can chime in and explain. Thanks. Joe
It's quite simple really, there is little demand over there. In fact, outside the US, mintages for such coins are almost always very small. Mintage numbers in the UK are among the largest in most cases. It's not unusual to have mintage numbers under 100 pieces in many countries.
One of the more interesting things about these modern sets is that they often represent the sole surviving population of the coins they contain in a very few years. Back before silver and gold were removed from coinage collectors saved all the coins in circulation whether they had precious metals or not. Afterward they mostly ignored all the coinage and the general public bought the mint sets because they were available. These sets generally started in the 60's and '70's and the silver was removed in the '50's and '60's. Not only are some of the pre-mint set coins nearly impossible to find in nice condition but due to generally low sales and staggering attrition even the mint set coins can be rare. Mintages of these sets were generally only a few thousand and there was simply no demand on the secondary market. This led to their destruction to be sold in poundage and as singles. There are many mint sets not listed in Krause but these tended to be unofficial or semi-official sets. They were generally made in even smaller numbers and had even higher attrition. The semi-official sets are most interesting since they often contain superior examples of coins that can't even be found in their typical condition. Mintages are usually based on anticipated sales and for foreign governments a lot of these will be US sales. In more recent times there is a lot more domestic demand for all the coins. Sometimes they are made to order but more typically excesses are simply heavily discounted or destroyed.
The other large difference is the size of the respective populations the UK is roughly 60+ Million what is the population of the USA? then figure out the percentage in each country that are collectors LOL as Mint sets are very popular over here and can sell out quite fast
in fact i know some rare pieces form india with mintages under 10000 that are priced below $10 cant wait for rich city when the collectors wake up the mohur prices have gone up 10 times so all i can wait for some of my most desirable modern coins to begin their upward path to freedom
think about it Joe how many morons can you find that will pay $510 for an ordinary silver piedfort set
Sort of on topic. The 2005 proof britannia had a mintage of only 2,500! The UNC britannias have a constant unchanging mintage of 100,000 per year. I'm UKish and for some reason I'm not too fond of the britannias...I only have 2. However I will buy the 1oz silver Kangaroo and Kookaburra from australia and the silver panda from china every year. This year I was surprised at the low mintages of the newly designed british coins. I think the proof base metal collection has an issue limit of only 20,000 and they are sure to be one of the most popular sets in recent years.
what a coincidence i also have only 2 proof Britannias not counting the ones that come in the year sets the only monarch i like don the coins was Edward 7 what a head and vicky was good in her early years but other than that nothing really
