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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;tedmurlap, post: 1092516, member: 29006&quot;]I did account for such price inflation. Please re-read my original message.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let me address some other technicalities here so that everybody can focus on the actual issue I raised rather than getting sidetracked by irrelevancies: as a simplification, I lumped the 1/11oz of silver and copper alloy in a gold eagle in with the 1oz of gold in the specific example numbers I cited in my original message. I also used a markup of 4.5% rather than the mint&#039;s quoted 3%, partially to cover lumping the silver and copper in with the gold. None of these things undermines my argument, which is that the mint sets the price of each coin as a constant percentage (1.03% or whatever) of the cost of the raw metal, even though the cost of the metal has increased faster than the mint&#039;s other costs (including labor and other materials) even when adjusted for inflation, and the result is that even if the mint was just recovering its costs ten years ago, it&#039;s recovering far more than just its costs today, which it isn&#039;t authorized to do. In order to recover just its costs, the mint would have to increase its per-coin absolute markup (for example, $10 ten years ago) just to match price inflation for its expenses, and then ADD the cost of the raw metals. Thus, for example, if the metals cost $325 ten years ago and a coin cost $335, which is a markup of $10 to cover the mint&#039;s expenses, and today the metals cost $1300 and there has been 7% annual inflation over the past ten years (that&#039;s very generous; in fact it&#039;s been lower than that), then today the mint&#039;s expenses are $20, so the coin price should be $1320. In contrast, the mint&#039;s scheme of setting the markup as a constant percentage of the cost of the metals would result in a coin price of $1340. That&#039;s a $40 markup, which is double the markup which the mint is authorized to charge.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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