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Message:: [QUOTE="terky, post: 7888654, member: 114225"]Well I am pretty sure they do not have their own printing and manufacturing capabilities (I was a printer for 36 years). The capital required to purchase a press for example capable of these booklets is many millions of dollars alone + countless ancillary pieces of equipment for pre-press, finishing etc. It is true that the higher the quantity produced the lower the unit cost, but that price plateaus rather quickly and flattens out. Add to the fact that there are no shortage of idle printing companies begging for work and you start to see that owning a full blown print facility is a capital intensive business. On top of that I can't imagine more than 10,000 copies would ever need printed (the universe of worthy potential candidates for expensive coins is quite limited). And that is a small run for any major printing company. Postage can be reduced by using Business mail, it used to be called Bulk mail. But that too for books of this size and weight is substantial, trust me. Now look at it this way > HA for example may sell perhaps (oh let's say $10 million in sales they otherwise would have missed out on...just a guess). That would make them $2,000,000. Not chicken feed. Let's say the 10,000 copies with art, prep, printing, finishing and postage sets them back $200,000 which is about right. Not bad now is it? Plus all that name recognition and good-will associated with a great quality printed piece.[/QUOTE]