Well that seems contradictory considering the recent PM feedback on this subject : http://forums.silverstackers.com/post.php?tid=6020&qid=78015 ??
I think he is saying that the 300k mintage for some years hasn't been reached, so they are currently looking at whether they go back and do it for these years, do get it up to 300k retrospectively.
OH! Fair enough then. Seems I was mistaken on the assumption. Still, I ask the question on whether PM has to produce only certain coins each year, or whether they can a broad cap and have the option of mixing and matching? ie Say they get permission to strike 1 million $1 coins per year. They decide how many will be lunars, kooks and koalas. Could they possibly say '300k of each' and the last 100k will be restrikes from previous years to meet market demand? Or is it fixed in that they must strike X number of X coins only? I don't know the ins and outs of how the mint operates at that level so it's hard to comment.
The Perth Mint has to get permission from the Commonwealth Department of the Treasurer to mint anything and they have to state to the Treasury how many they want to make out of what material and with what design on it. The Treasury then approves (or denies) their application to mint legal tender coins with those stated specifications. In the case of the 1oz silver Lunars, the Perth Mint gets an allowance to make 300k coins of each design and year date. When they mint the coins is up to them, but they can't make more than 300k coins of each design and year date. Obviously they release them in line with the lunar cycle, but if they don't make 300k in any particular year they can use up their allowance on it later (up to a maximum of 300k coins). Just assume that they'll hit the maximum 300k coin mintage on all the 1oz coins. If you think demand for silver is going to increase and prices will rise, it follows that the Perth Mint will be able to make and sell 300k coins of each design and year date. 300k coins is still a tiny amount - for comparison, they'll release 3.6 million 1oz Lunar coins over the 12 year cycle which is about what the U.S. mint is churning out every 20 days in ASEs.
I think the idea is, they will mint upto a max of 300k lunars for each year or less if they don't have the demand. They can mint any year lunar untill the end of the series in 2019 upto that limit, but no more. In other words they will be minting the mouse again because the demand is there and the haven't minted 300k yet, but not the rabbit as this has already reached it's limit of 300k. You beat me to it BigAD! Umm, yeah what he said!!
Okay, thanks for the info gents. Certainly clarifies things for me (and others I'm sure). I think it's safe to say that from this point on, unless they ramp up the mintage limits on coins, there's virtually no possibility limits won't be hit. Here we are in the 2nd month of the year and they're already hit their limit. How many silver investors are there in Australia right now? HA!
Only those with PM inventory in their SMSFs. The rest of us are just here reminiscing the days before the boating accident.
There's a similar discussion running on the Perth Mint blog. Here's my response to a post over there about whether these are bullion or numismatic.
The 2011 Wildlife Series starting with the Timberwolf has a mintage of 1 million as is being marketed by the Royal Canadian Mint as a collectors series even though they are silver bullion coins. Put simply any coin can have numismatic appeal. It all depends on market forces. Clearly the market has determined a high collectors value on the Lunar coins as opposed to the Maple, ASE which year to year have very limited collectors appeal. Then theres the coins with some collectors appeal like the Kookaburra but it has less of a collectors premium than the Lunars.
True GP, the numismatic demand for Series 1 in order of prices probably goes like: 1. Dragon 2. Horse 3. Snake 4. Rabbit 5. Tiger 6. Rat 7. Rooster 8. Goat 9. Monkey 10. Dog 11. Ox 12. Pig You can argue a move up or down of a few but thats basically the prioritized list !
