It's warm to the heart that Perth Mint is finally listening to its customers! Falling off a sales cliff can make a grizzly mess on profits! It also makes for a long climb back to the top to where you lost your foot hold....Smoke and mirrors like your disgraceful privy dragon mintage is unacceptable, So much damage you have done.....Get your mintage's right and don't turtle with them.
This doesn't really solve anything for set collections. So your kook set, needs the original 1992 kook and also the same kook dated year 2012, 2013, 2014 and every year they decide to release more of them until the mintage is reached? Either way whatever the mint chooses to do doesn't really matter to me any more. I will focus back on why I am stacking in the first place. My purchase decisions will be made easier with less risk.
Your response still leaves the gapping question of where does your previous advertised mintage limit statments on COA's leave you and us. You previous COA's stated that no more than xxx of theses coins will be minted. Then you go and mint more of them and put them in a differnet package. Now you change the words on the package to cover the fact that you have lied on the previous COA's as to the coin mintage limits. It sounds very much to me that you have come to the sudden relization that you have breached all advertising guide lines and you are back peddingling in an attempt to cover your mistake. I am no lawyer however what you are doing with the change of wording on the COA's stinks of a cover up for what could possible be described as misleading advertising and/or deceptive conduct. Just my humble opinion however as a former perth mint customer.
I like this change because in the future you will always be able to tell what the total mintage was by looking at any certificate for that individual coin or packaged set. I'm not a big coin collector but I appreciate the quality and aesthetics of the Perth Mint bullion and proof coins. IMO 'investing' in coins for numismatic potential is a gamble. I stayed away from dragons completely but I understand that the 'privy' release caused some dissatisfaction. Perhaps part of this mintage policy document would be a policy to announce all limited mintages coming out in the next year at the start of the annual cycle along with their mintage limits.
Unfortunately, the Perth Mint has a monopoly - they know it, and take full advantage of it - at the detriment of their once loyal customers. I'm sure there would be a mass move away from this shonky mint if there was a reasonable Aussie alternative. I have lost all respect - profits before ethics. I like money too, but don't compromise my ethics to achieve it!
Thanks for listening to your customers. There are a few issues which if they hadn't all come at once would just have been an annoyance to a few types of people. But as they all came at once you managed to annoy most of your customers in the space of one short year. You released a supposedly limited 1oz Dragon coin in greater numbers and put a privy on it to get around your own restrictions, this was not a great move but many of us, myself included bought them anyway. You reminted previous years' coins, which many collectors were relying on using as an investment because of their low mintage, but many of us bought them anyway. No one is really sure how many coins have been minted and released in different packaging, this means some collectors missed out on releases because they didn't hear about them until too late, but we buy them on the secondary market anyway. We also find out that a supposedly low mintage coin is being repackaged and sold overseas. You gave preference to overseas customers, releasing products overseas which we then had to try and source at an inflated price, but many of us tried to get them anyway. You did fix the computer ordering system for the release day of the snakes so thanks for that. Most of us realise that you are a business and that it is your job to get every last penny out of us, that it is in your interest to do this with the least amount of expense to yourself, which is why it might be easier to remint a coin than produce a new one and why it is easier to add a privy than it is to come up with a new idea. We also realise that Australians only make up a small fraction of your customers and you need the overseas trade to keep going, even if we feel that it is at our expense. We take into consideration the high costs of production in Australia which is why you can't match prices from overseas mints, even though we feel that we are paying too much for basic bullion. We understand that you have a reputation for producing quality products which is why you don't want to produce a cheap round, even though we could do with a product somewhere in between the high premium 'legal tender' and the poured bars. However as you have seen people are chosing to vote with their wallets, we do have access to overseas markets where we can buy all the things you don't provide at prices you can't match. The few people who are trying to maintain sets will buy what they need to keep going, just be aware that many coin collectors are waiting for the Queen to step down so they can finish collecting all the different series, it might not be the end of the series in your eyes but collectors feeling the pinch would rather say they have a complete collection of the QE2 series rather than struggle to keep up with all the new releases. I enjoyed the Dragon releases last year and bought my first coloured coins and my first ANDA show coins ever. I wanted to get a full set but missed out on a few key coins. Nothing this year has tempted me, in general I am not looking for modern collectables from the Perth Mint, the Dragons were a one off so really the mintages are not what is turning me away from the Mint. The new transparent mintages is a great improvement and will be welcomed by many I am sure, it is the first step in winning back the trust of your past customers. However, I am not sure that it will be enough considering everything else your marketing team has inflicted on us this year. ...at least you are not as bad as the RAM!
I am a silver coin collector and I know that Perth mint re minted the red-back spider coin, they didn't tell anyone about that because it was an order to Germany. This was not declared in the mintage reports, so did they declare it to the tax man? I think that the PM have tarnished there reputation by not being forward with information. I have asked about the red-back spider coin a few years back and the PM just ignored my requests. I even told them of people that were also making replicas of the coin design with a blank backing, DO YOU CARE Also does the PM know that there are copies of dragon bullion being sold too?
Who cares? Collectors and stackers who buy from Perth Mint Distributors and Site Sponsors. Everyone is out to make a dollar. Perth....at the stroke of a pen, can write new policy that provides common sense outcomes for all. Perth can close a mintage when they like. Perth can say to you....buy it now or it's gone forever! Guess what? If they said that, then you and I would buy.
I've been a strong advocate for this ideology since I started stacking. I buy Perth Mint product because it's the best quality product (IMHO) in the world. I am content to pay a small premium for the quality of strike they produce, their exemplary reputation on producing high grade strikes and because it's very well recognised and accepted product domestically and internationally. I'd say a good 75% of my entire stack is Perth Mint product for this reason. That said, I only have bullion grade product. I will occasionally buy 1oz Lunar coins in year of issue because I get the collectable premium for 'free' - but never actively seek to pay premium prices after the fact - that's just robbing me of the opportunity to simply buy more ounces of silver or gold. Numi's always come with a 3rd party counter risk as the collectable premium is tied to scarcity / collectability of the product which you can never control. If you buy straight bullion grade product, that risk is removed. You're trading simply on spot. Something worth remembering when you are considering where to place your precious metal dollars looking ahead. I love the Perth Mint and will continue buying their bullion, but I steer clear of the numi stuff for reasons just like this.
This might be a good strategy! Can you Imagine the outrage that ripple through the Chinese coin collector community if the Chinese mints decided to re-mint many of their key date rare pandas and other coins.
I dont give a stuff about the perth mint limitied edition boxes anymore. Well over half the coloured crap I have has milk spots all over them anyway.... There is no such thing as a collectable Perth Mint coin, just way overpriced dirty looking bullion with limited edition cardboard boxes Never again.
To be fair The Perth mint has produced very well struck coins which is probably a large part of their good reputation , and with their mail order department (once actually ordered) all orders have been shipped within a reasonable time (up to 2 weeks), and very well and consistently packaged. Does Ron or anyone know if there is an different minting process with the proof coins VS. the Bullion other than the different mirrored and frosted fields. Both excellent quality , except for the spots on some of them .
Make reselling illegal and all must buy from perth mint so that all the profit goes to the employees of perth mint.
Have you approached the mint about milk spots? I had a proof coin develop milk spots and took it into the mint. Even though it was unavailable the mint managed to source another one (in perfect condition) and exchanged it. As to the topic at hand I think this a move in the right direction. I will be interested to see the finished policy but at the end of the day, all we (the consumer) really want is honesty, transparency and clarity.
