Past Time for Lotteries for Limited Mint Issues …. How It Could Work and Not Work

Well, that's assuming flippers are a market that the mint should even be worried about catering to. In the end the mint may lose money since people are wasting far more on their products than they should have to, thereby limiting peoples disposable income for possible future mint purchases.

If they pick a round number for every special issue they intended to make, say 500k mintage and people put orders in until a certain date, say it got to 105k and then that was the cut off, that wouldn't put the mint out. They could be prepared to make 500k now only have to make 105k. Even if they had to do it six months in advance so they knew what they had to order and produce. They'd sell the maximum amount, for more and everybody could get what they want. I get it. They picked 1945 and 75,000 for the 75th anniversary on that one. Ok fine.

All I can say is this hours long refresh game with odds like trying to get through on a live national radio program sucks. Real collectors are getting blocked out by kids living in moms basement, youtubers and people's bored friends at work, trying to turn a quick profit and take advantage of people. There has to be a better way to serve the collecting community. Without the collecting community, flippers who couldn't care less about this stuff, have nobody to flip to. I want to put a reservation in. I don't and won't wait in line at the restaurant for an hour.

 

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Be happier no, no matter what they do some people will complain. When the complaints are rolling in many that want the super limited item would lose interest if it was another high mintage common thing or something minted to demand. When they did the mint to demand special ASE set something like 10% of the orders were canceled or returned when people saw how high the mintage was

Part of the reason for these very limited items is to generate excitement. That excitement gets new people interested, people interested in a new series they may have ignored before, free PR as people talk about them forever and so on.

People would be screaming from the hill tops the mint is gouging people if they charged $100 for an ASE especially one with a mintage of 150k

 

1 Mint to demand and it isn't "special" anymore, just a normal offering.

2. Yes the Mint would make more money.

3. No they would not be happier because now that every one who wants one can get one, there is no aftermarket and those people who bought from the mint for $83 for a proof silver eagle now find they can buy them on ebay for $45. And when thet happens they aren't happy. And that is in general what happens every time they have a mint to demand offering.

As for the idea of a lottery, say you have 20,000 coins and you open up that 48 hour period when orders can be placed then select 20,000 winners. The big dealers simply place half a million orders and they win the lions share of the coins awarded. They only have to pay for the coins they actually buy so half a million order placed doesn't hurt them. Now if you had to pay a non-refundable fee in order to place an order that would cause them to place much fewer orders, but it would also drive away a lot of collectors who wouldn't want to risk the fee money and possibly get nothing. So the dealers still get the lions share of the coins.

 

Agree in general. But if the Mint limits accounts, lottery numbers and shipments to one per address or credit card number, how does a dealer get a 1/2 million addresses and credit card numbers? Might be able to recruit a couple hundred surrogates ... that's about it.

Cal

 

I'd volunteer to be a surrogate if they'd give me the three legged buffalo I want.

 

So it sounds like . . . heads the dealers win; tails the collectors lose.

 

With mint to demand, true collectors (acquire to keep indefinitely) don't lose. The coins they might buy from the mint could go up or down in value with time. Anyone who buys to flip is acting as a dealer regardless of what else they might call themselves. But if there is acquisition satisfaction at the price at which the mint sells the coin, then the true collector got value for money. Mint to demand can be done economically at the mint as long as the minting is done in batches which pays for the setup and handling.

Personally, I'm not interested in collecting modern U.S. Mint issues and haven't been for 30+ years. I tried a couple of times for low mintage coins and would have flipped them. Yes, that would have made me a small-time temporary dealer! However, the chances of success are so low and the feeding frenzy so hectic, I won't try the current system in the future. If the mint institutes a lottery, I might give it a shot.

I did try it once with a limited Royal Mint sovereign issue hoping to make some money. At the time, I didn't own any British coins. To my surprise, I got a coin and it graded MS70. Even more surprising, I still have the coin 3 years later with no intention of selling. Sometimes the collector gene overpowers the profit gene ... nothing new there!

Cal

 

Plenty of "true collectors" sell coins and don't keep them until their death.

Plenty of them get sick of seeing the value of their mint products crash immediately in the aftermarket. The number of people that have given up on modern products because of this is far more than the number of people being upset they missed out on an exciting product.