If you run a French fries stall, and have to tell 5 evenings in a row to customers that you ran out of French fries, then you order more potatoes for next week. The US Mint stall doesn't.
1. There you have it, they should make their own blanks. If mint would be private owned, such lame excuses would not go far. 2. That is my point, they should sell them on their own to end buyer instead of letting others have all the profit. 3. You can't return bullion. Period. Otherwise people would be buying it all the time and returning it, when the price would go down.
1. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't....I don't know the logistics (and whether there is a cost benefit or not) involved. Besides, that they made their own blanks would not in any conceivable way address what the original article's point was in the first place. 2. The US Mint may stand to lose a lot of money if they began to sell bullion ASE's retail....that's the whole point about cost overhead like the cost of returns. 3. There is no such thing as "can't return" when it comes to retail sales from the US Mint. That notion you have is not realistic. 4. If the US Mint would be able to make as much profit from selling bullion ASE's retail as they do selling to the few large distributors, then I'm sure they'd have done that long ago. It's just not cost effective for them to do it and if they did, they'd somehow have to justify a $12 premium (or some significant amount like that) on a 1 ounce bullion coin. It's just not feasible I suspect for them to sell bullion retail. .
Other mints (at least I didn't came across stories of it) apparently do order enough blanks. US Mint doesn't, causing those ASE production interrupts. Why not? In the end, it's just a blank. They could just order 50 million blanks. It doesn't matter, they are blanks, they can use them for 2016 ASE's, 2017 ASE's, whatever with those dimensions. And, their premium is quite higher than the one on other regular bullion coins. So they should have more financial room on the production.
About that returning, I wonder, the US Mint produced 888,888 (no joke, just coincidence) monsterboxes over the last 30 years. 580,609 of them were produced 2008+. Those that bought these, sell them later on. Those will reappear for sale during the coming decades. So actually, the future of the US Mint, relative to recent years, is one of crippling sales. They must know that too, so maybe that's why they became reluctant to order blanks? Also, they have to pay the silver in the blanks, so maybe they try to order them when the silver price sits on a bottom? So there are several explanations for that running out of blanks. I find it hard to believe that they would be unable to find enough blanks production. Likely they are just financially planning. There might also be a time shift involved, since the Mint sells to the higher supply chain, which then sells through smaller dealers towards hoarders. Meaning that a certain ounces sales figure, may not be correlated to hoarders demand at the price at the time. But if all taking into account, there should in this explanation be some time shifted correlation between price and runout of blanks. Still leaves the question why the Canadian Mint never (or did it?) ran into production suspension due to not enough blanks. Because they have in recent years also quite high sales figures of maple leafs: 1988 1,062,000 1989 3,332,200 1990 1,708,800 1991 644,300 1992 343,800 1993 1,133,900 1994 889,946 1995 326,244 1996 250,445 1997 100,970 1998 591,359 1999 1,229,442 1999-2000 dual date 300,000 2000 403,652 2001 398,563 2002 576,196 2003 684,750 2004 680,925 2005 955,694 2006 2,464,727 2007 3,526,052 2008 7,909,161 2009 9,727,592 2010 17,799,992 2011 23,129,966 2012 18,132,297 2013 28,200,000 2014 29,245,000 Also big numbers blanks to order here.
Yes, I can only assume that in many cases the US Mint buys blanks when it is cheaper for them to buy them. Since they don't have control of the production of those blanks, they can not magically buy blanks that are not available to buy. When those blanks are unavailable to buy, then at some point after the production of the last batch of blanks they may have to ration. I guess people like Golden don't understand the mechanics of production of bullion coins like the ASE. The blanks don't grow on trees all year round. .
If you plant your own apple tree and it costs you more to maintain and harvest it than if you simply paid another for their apples, then you'd be making a bad investment. .
But if those others don't have enough of them and you don't do anything about it year after year, you're missing out on a lot of profit. And mint without capacity for making blanks is not really a mint. Maybe they should outsorce striking coins also and just wait for paychecks at home.
The US Mint is not worried at all about losing profit on bullion ASE's because they outsource blanks. They are almost certainly saving money by doing this. The rationing is seldom and is always only very temporary. The US Mint can easily make up next month what they can't sell this month when it comes to bullion ASE's. I think you can stop worrying about bullion ASE production by the US Mint...they're good without all the worrying. In fact, they have millions of ASE's in surplus right now....so seriously, you can stop your worrying. .
I'll worry about what I want, thank you. And market does not work like you imagine, when investors are buying, if ASE is not available, they'll buy something else. That is why there is a surplus of ASEs right now.
The US Mint should consider developing interesting gold and silver coin series akin to the Chinese Pandas. They can still use the Lady Liberty motif if they want but change it in interesting and unpredictable ways every year (e.g. Liberty smiling, crying, winking, with belly, showing skin, with kids, with family, as various ethnicities, in various occupational poses Etc Etc. Please forgive these spur of the moment characterization but you get the drift?). Right now people are wondering what the 2017 Chinese Panda coins will look like; that maintains interest in the series. The Mint can make it a pure Collector series by minting proof coins only. The US Mint has enough data on demographics and sales to determine how to mint just enough coins to stimulate gradual coin price appreciation over the years.
And Yes, Find ways to reduce the Collector scalping that goes on during product launch. The "free-market" shenanigans that go on at these times skyrocket the coin valuation to levels that are untenable thereby stunting the medium to long term numismatic growth of the products. The 2014 Kennedy 1/2 Dollar coin is an appropriate example.
How does the scalping happen. Can you provide details (in depth article on it perhaps)? As for your ideas on the US Mint developing interesting series, I think that is only a small (though important) part of the problem. The US Mint, in my view, must find ways to market coins to younger audiences....otherwise they will continue to see waning interest in their numismatic coins as the years pass....eventually, there will be only a handful of people who are buying collector coins if they continue on the path they are on (which is the path of complete failure to market to younger audiences). The US Mint needs to invest in focus groups with young people....teens or younger to understand how the dynamics and logistics of implementing such marketing could work. .
But market forces are in play all the time for virtually all collectible coins and medals, not just for one or two coins....wouldn't you agree? It's simply par for the course. Market forces are the consequence of normal human behavior in regards to items that are collectible and in demand. .
LOL, American Liberty 2016 Proof Silver Medals (West Point) (San Francisco) released August 23, 2016 by 12 noon @$34.95. Sold out in less than 60 seconds. LMAO!!! Back to my Pandas!
And they are already available on eBay at multiples of launch price: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...w=American+Liberty+2016+Silver+Medal&_sacat=0
Oh, that's nothing, go look now, they are hitting the 700.00 range, and a person asking 2000 for 2 of the medals. This is going to end badly, IMHO. Did anyone notice that there is no mintage limit? Does this mean they can mint more? It has a product limit of 12,500...but no limit on mintage. Interesting. Yeah, back to my Chinese medals, and Panda coins...
