Your last paragraph is like the tubes ...sometimes the first incarnation isnt the way to go & needs to be revised :lol:
Do you run a business? Average retail markup in Australia on consumer products runs from 30 to 200% - try operating a business where your average gross markup is around 2%. Staff in Australia won't work for $12-15/hour for starters (and that's just the beginning of our higher costs here in Australia), and the market here is tiny compared to the US or Europe. Businesses like Provident or APMEX are literally doing many dozens or a hundred times the turnover of your average Aussie bullion dealer, and that's not an exaggeration. APMEX alone is probably doing the same retail turnover as *every* privately owned Australian bullion dealer combined, and they are just one of many businesses in that market. We get *lots* of orders for single coins, which is why you see volume breaks on most products - the volume of single ounce orders is simply too great to loss lead them and expect the markup from higher volume orders to cover them without price tiers in place. Margins on Crocodiles are lower than Kooks or Koalas too by the way. If we're supposed to be able to market products, reconcile payments, raise invoices, pick stock, encapsulate it, pack it, ship it, and notify customers within a gross markup of $1, and somehow still draw a wage at the end of it, I'm all ears.
And rent for retail space in Melbourne and Sydney is some of the most expensive in the world. For low markup businesses it has to be a serious problem if you've got a retail presence in the city.
So what I've read. 1) It's the dealers that are charging the extra hike on "low premium" coins 2) There lots of dealers in Australia 3) Large US dealers are more competitive 4) There's room in the market in Australia for more competition on volume orders 5) Australian market doesn't do much volume At the end of the day, we are getting overcharging, you can hang the salami anyway you want to. If you import the coins from the US it can still be cheaper. So you are claiming to lose money on single coins. Either charge more on them or don't sell singles, simple. BUT you then say you are losing money and thus hike the price for larger orders too. But there are volume breaks but you need to charge more to cover costs. HUH? Anyone else see this as nonsensical. In summary "we charge you less when you buy more but charge you more when you buy more to cover the cost of those who buy less, so you get it cheaper but pay more". (I could break this down formally but I'm too tired now, if you want a blow by blow lingusitic analysis of the contradiction if it's not clear already, I go for it when I have time. Cause I'm sick of the rip off). Hmmm... I think there's enough room for another dealer to actually compete properly and none of this ripping off the Aussie. We are getting slugged and getting charged more. Sure we hear the reasons. One dealer to rule them ALL.
People from the Perth Mint, if you are reading this these coins are fine, WE WANT QUANTITY! there are plenty of options out there for coin collectors to cry about without imperfections and an Australian equivalent competitor to ASE and maples was overdue Think of it this way they are super rare mint error coins..... oooooohhhhh wow thats want you want isn't it? go sell them on ebay for one hundred time spot...
Miloman From Cheap Silver Land is heading to the USA along with Mr Crocs Dundee keep it going DURACELL
That's not at all what I said. It's pretty simple - buy more, they get cheaper. In the US the market has evolved into one where it's becoming common to see flat rate prices charged by some dealers, whether you buy 1oz or 1000oz. My view on this is that it is a competition driven approach - because of the sheer number of dealers, some dealers are willing to loss-lead on the 1oz orders to gain new customers for future marketshare because there's plenty of people making the 1000oz orders to subsidise them. It's becoming like the PC parts market where only the incumbents thrive and the annual turnover required to be viable is so high that it's incredibly difficult for new entrants to survive on the razor thin margins. In Australia, buying dynamics are different - average order sizes are much smaller than in the US (some dealers I have dealt with in the US report that their average retail sale size is a 500oz monster box), so trying to loss-lead by introducing flat rate "$1 over spot" type markups is not a viable business model in this Australia. So here you pay $5 over spot for singles, $3 over spot in bulk. Simples. I did check though, and noted that on launch, you could buy monster boxes of Crocodiles in Australia at the same price over spot as in the US. The crocodiles had a *huge* minimum order quantity (you could buy houses in some parts of the world for less money) to get the best volume breaks from the mint, and they were aggressively priced by dealers in Australia to move the volume required to unwind the stock. Dealers are now running out of mint-sourced stock and scrambling to buy from other dealers, and it's almost at the point where Crocs will be reimported back to Australia from the US to keep local supplies available. Actually I'm aware of one dealer doing just that in the past week.
I may be missing something here but if you are not happy with the quality or price do not buy them? This forum just seems to be full of people who just continually whinge. If you did buy them with the current price and the demand for them I can not see you loosing money on them.
I grew up as a kid in a small business run by my mum and dad. A milk bar in Thornbury, Melbourne in the 1950's and 1960's. Unfortunately a certain amount of "gouging" is necessary ... or there's no breakfast
trew: Perhaps the Perth Mint has outsourced their production to Canada ? Me: lol ... good call trew's one liners are as good as it gets. Maybe we should start a new thread called "whose one liners are the best" ?
The problem was that the quality was unexpectably low. For ex, I've seen dealers in my EU region offering coins like described here as a separate shop item, that mentions scratches/dents/milk spots, at reduced prices. In this topics case, they're sold as new, while they appear like above. That is, a difference, that you may indeed have missed. One has to know first, before being able to use it in a buy/not buy decision, no? Alot of the posts here are spreading the blames over the A-Z. Instead, the focus should be to be sure where the coin quality was screwed up. At the Perth Mint? At a dealer? Some here report that they did receive coins with nothing to mark. Others here report whole tubes of screwed coins. Everything has a specific reason, so here too. The focus should be locating that specific reason. Only then the blame can be correctly directed. That 8 mm empty space in a tube, is mentioned as a possible reason. While 8 mm is indeed alot, it's still far less than the radius of a coin, meaning that I can't see how coins can touch eachother except for the border. The picture of iluvbeanz, post #45, clearly shows scratches in the middle (Queens face). That is impossible to be due to rattling in a tube, even with 8 mm room. These coins were handled in a quite rude fashion, thrown on a pile, other coins dropped on them, whatever that reforms the metal surface like that. While silver is relatively soft, it's not -that- soft. It requires more force than cheese. The milk spots / blemishes can be due to just handling the coins, alike when putting them in capsules without clean gloves from a nonharmcausing material, which is much easier to occur than aboves handling, so a separate issue. So maybe let's focus on iluvbeanz case, where did you order these coins? The next question then is for who sits on that 'where'.
One explanation could be that they started to fill up that 8 mm with a baby crocodile, that during shipping dented and scratched the tubed coins. Did any receiver see a green flash when opening a tube?
You know what's truly amazing, I don't recall anybody being forced to buy the crocs and live with the poor quality. Unless the business practices of Aussie bullion dealers are to hold a gun to the customers head and give them a buy item X at Y price, I just don't get it. Last I checked, profit has 6 letters in it, not 4, and if you don't like it, don't buy and shut it...my god what crybabies.. (not all, they know who they are)
I don't understand why people don't get the problem here. It may be cheap bullion prices, but surely it's not wrong to expect a coin without scratches / dents / spots on it. If I bought a Skoda instead of a BMW, I know I could have paid extra to get the BMW but I wouldn't expect the Skoda to be covered in scratches and dents. It's a new product, it should look "new". It has nothing to do with being forced to buy something, you don't know it's going to be rubbish until you buy it, so people have good cause for complaint. If somebody bought one and thought it was rubbish, and then bought more then fair cop. Stupid. You can't complain about quality until you have pushed the button and bought it. Let's be adult about this.
Yes, that's what I said in an earlier post, people weren't told before pushing the buy button. That's a should-be-obvious and important element that some goodfellas here just continue to ignore. As I also said: in my region I see now and then dealers offering 'circulated' coins at a reduced price. There you DO know before pushing the buy button. And that's obviously why Provident put that bold disclaimer in their article description, that started this topic. They offer them for sale, but provide this information before you click the buy button, instead of letting you 'discover' it after buying and receiving. Those "MS70 expectation" and "you're not forced to" are just silly replacements for real arguments.
