Sorry to be a bit harsh, but what's everybody bitching about ? These are bullion coins - sold primarily for silver content. If you buy them at a large premium over spot then you are taking a punt on the numi value of the coin. Sometimes you win, often you lose - there are no guarantees. The Perth Mint certainly doesn't owe you any.
Fair call, let me try and cobble a decent reply (no guarantee) 1. ASE, Buff's, Philli's etc are bullion coins. Their design doesn't change from year to year with the exception of the date. Theoretically a coin minted 10 years ago is interchangeable with a coin minted this year. They don't carry a collectors premium. 2. Perth Mint's Lunar and Kooka series do have mintage limits mandated by law. Their designs change from year to year. This adds a collectors premium that people pay. To circumvent the limits by putting a lame privy mark on it, or by minting coins from past years. This devalues existing collections and IMHO means that collecting PM products for potential future numismatics gains an extremely risky prospect. As for the Perth Mint not owing us anything. The Perth Mint is owned by the Western Australian government ergo, the WA taxpayer and arguably by extension the Australian taxpayer. For all intents and purposes it's a state government department. I choose to believe that as an Australian Citizen I have the God given right to have my say what any Australian Government employee or organisation does or says. If they don't like it then they can quit their jobs, and enter the private sector where they'll have less job security and enjoy decreased benefits and get paid less but won't be subjected to government and taxpayer oversight.
For what it's worth - some of the bullion eagles (1996 for example) have a higher premium precisely due to that year's mintage amount so yes, mintage amounts (and tricks to manipulate) have a direct impact on prices
Gilded mintage limit it 50,000 - there's nothing to stop them minting upto that limit. I don't think they can mint gilded privy coins (this and past years anyway) as that would require an act of parliament. Future currency creation is not set so maybe we will see a gilded privy horse or something.
I can still get gilded rabbits and dragons at the post office, not the most popular series and not much love for them. I can't see the mint branching out with more varieties of that one. The coloured coins have gone mental, I can only remember I coloured rabbit the year before. I pick up a coloured dragon, then they release it with 8 others. Which then then start to box up and sell individually. Shouldn't be a surprise that they are churning them out but why bother saying they are a limited mintage, people would still have bought the 1oz if more had been made, it would only have been the speculators who try to corner the market who would have missed out.
Well, there you have it. Sorry, we have had no capacity to mint 1/2oz, 2oz, 5oz coins for the past 5 months. We've been busy making more 1oz Dragons.
300,000 plain + 200,000 German privy + X whatever privy is next off the production line (A definitive NO on Australian market privy!). 2011 pandas are starting to look rare
At least they could Inform the users, before they made the decision to mint those many coins. At least then we could prepare for this Privy Dragon.
This just demonstrates that given enough money the Perth Mint will be your bitch and do whatever you want.
I assume they will be releasing the 'privy' marked variety on future lunar releases with the same mintage, but what I would really like to know is if the Perth Mint intends to release the privy marked versions of the lunar bullion coins dating back to the beginning of the current lunar 2 series ?
As it says in the Perth Mint response posted earlier, the privy version was for a special order from a German distributor. I'm sure they weren't planning to make them, but got a large order that was obviously too lucrative to pass up. Maybe if the Germans decide they can sell 200,000 privy tigers then you might well see a bunch of those appear too. Seems they can mint whatever they like with a privy on it at any time - mintage rules don't apply to such 'new' coins.
The lunar snakes with lion privy are already approved. Is that for the Germans too? The mint is full of it. Count me out of any more Perth mint coins. It's a joke. Scorp
Hmmm, the coins are being sold for around the same price as the Koala coins on the PMB site. I don't see how this can be very lucrative or any more lucrative than just continue minting the 1/2oz, 2oz, 5oz dragons. Oh and what I said previously was wrong, silber-corner is not making them more expensive but cheaper with every new batch! Why would anyone buy them when they keep getting cheaper? Only 33.09 Euro now.
I too think that Perth Mint have been pretty deceitful, but am concerned about the lower mintage of the privy perhaps leading to a greater demand in the future. Previously the same thing happened to the 1997 Kooks .. and I think now all the privies are worth a lot more than the standard bullion issues, due to their limited mintages. Is it not possible that this could, in fact, be the case here also? Just a thought. Au
Let's be a group order organized and we can get a special order of SS privy (Pelican maybe?) on the Dragons too!
