https://www.coinworld.com/news/worl...ith-coin-shaped-like-hockeys-stanley-cup.html Back prior to the 2000's, I collected Canadian coins alongside US coins. I focused on the older King George stuff but tried to keep up with their yearly mint sets and the occasional commemorative. When they became extra prolific around the turn of the century with holograms and colorized coins, I stopped trying to keep up. It seemed as if the RCM was simply trying to produce as many options as possible each year. But now they have decided to mint this new $50 bullion Stanley-Cup shaped "coin". It will be interesting to see if this gimmick is simply a one-time experiment or will this open up the floodgates for future weird designs?
They do have a lot of stuff that doesn't interest me at all, but once in awhile they still make some really nice coins. I actually just ordered this last week. It hasn't arrived yet so this is a file photo.
They catch a lot of flak for some of the things they do. I will say for the product in question for the OP it was a let down by them for once. Their artwork and attention to detail is usually top notch which should be expected from the often super stiff premiums they ask, but that was one product where the detail fell short of expectations.
The RCM will churn out anything that they think that they can offload to anyone not a pure collector. They have minted coins of many shapes not round, colored them by 3 different methods, and featured designs from everything from kindergarten kids to space freaks. From time to time they have great works of art, but over 80% of everything they put out can be purchased at 50-70% of issue price on the secondary market after a few years. Go to the RCM site if you want to see what their idea of numismatic offerings really is.
I think Bill hit the nail on the head. The RCM (and also the US Mint) are aggressively targeting the non-numismatic community. They have two jobs now: produce coinage for the nations monetary needs and try to sell coin "stuff" to the public.
Those are some beautiful coins. And I don't deny that they have produced some incredibly beautiful stuff in the past. The last things I attempted to put together a set of was their commemoratives of various airplanes (I'm also an aircraft buff). I purchased a few of them but finally got tired of keeping up and gave up. And that's the problem now. If a collector is a completist, there is no way to keep up. Someone else mentioned it was like the post office offering so many things. That flood of offerings, I believe, went a long ways towards stiffling the stamp-collecting community. Of course, same thing happened here with the early commems (with 1936 being the prime example).
To me that's more a reflection of their crazy high premiums on most things than a judgement of the work. It's just hard to constantly sell ungraded silver at a 100 dollars an ounce or more and expect that premium to hold
That's exactly the problem - you can't be a completist. There's just too many offerings and they're too expensive. It's the same with the other big mints like the Perth mint. And as you said, stamps have this problem, as do baseball cards, which are other things I collect or had collected. For some people, the fun is trying to get the full set, and when you realize you can't do that, the fun is gone. I used to be like that with coins, thinking I needed to have everything. Once you realize you can't though, you can just buy the ones you really like and it's a lot more manageable.
"Someone else mentioned it was like the post office offering so many things." That's one of the problems with the RCM .. their stuff IS sold at every post office in glass cases. So when Myrtle and Fred are in the line to mail something they say "Oh, wouldn't little Jimmy just love that for birthday/Xmas" ... and another sale is made!
Kind of like introducing a sex doll as one's date at an exclusive black-tie cocktail party. There is a hushed murmur about the impropriety of it all among guests until the host of the party finally interjects, screams at them and throws the "couple" out of the party. Only in the case of the Canadian Mint, the hammer is likely to be some state treasurer who yanks the sales tax exemption on such a product claiming it isn't a coin, hence subject to taxation.
How is this a coin? Wouldn't "figurine" or "miniature" be a more correct assesment? If Anheuser-Busch (I mean Enbev) makes a hard cider, we don't call it beer simply because it was made with a similar process by a beer company...
Now that, uh, thing would certainly not work as a circulation coin. But lots of coins made specifically for collectors - typically from small islands in Oceania - have odd shapes. As collector coins are usually surcharged, you would not get them in order to spend them at face anyway. This coin for example has a face value of $50 but costs more than $350 ... Christian
Nope..Looks like it has one of those carabou and an elk.....but no moose. How could it not have a moose??! I think the Canadian mint jumped the moose with that coin.
