Bullion Baron said:
I think you are right, I often get the idea that the mintage limit plays more part in a collector's strategy than any particular liking for a coin. You only need to look at how quickly the Lunar Series 1oz coins sell compared to the Koalas. Neither design is particularly exciting but I would rather have an Australian coin with an australian animal on it than a domestic or farmyard animal linked to a lunar horoscope from another culture.
I think that it is less than the rarity or the thrill of the chase though. If you were just interested in that there would be no need to buy a roll of them. I think that it is the hope that they will increase dramatically in price because they are limited that is the main push for these coins. I liked the 1oz Dragons and bought a roll, I also bought many of the proofs, coloured, gilts, high reliefs etc. they offered but only one of each as I liked the design and wanted to collect them. I bought a roll of the snakes because I hoped to make some money off them, I bought half a roll of horses because I never got round to making any money on the snakes and I haven't bothered with the goat coin because I can get cheap silver at the moment.
But still, even with 300,000 mintage limit they still sell out and the decent ones (Dragons, Tigers) change hands for a fair amount just after release.
PM are a company out to make money so they will do whatever they can to make that money, and limiting the supply end of the equation is a lot easier than increasing the demand side.
In order to increase the demand side they would have to make better coins, or a wider range of themes, or bring the price point down to where people might decide to throw one in the cart as they are browsing the website. All this takes extra work or attention to detail, or a better knowledge of what your customers' interests are.
In order to decrease the supply side you just make less of them. They dont even have to be well made or attractive.
We are seing lots of new ways of selling coins, buying the license for film and TV tie-ins, selling the whole set in one go rather than drip feeding the market, putting them in fancy boxes (Like the Milinium Falcon Star Wars box), bringing out holographic lenticular selectively guilded and painted coins which are concave, square, only legal tender in Kiribati or Nuie and limiting the number made available.
None of these marketing ploys make the coins themselves any better, they just affect the way we feel about parting with our money for them. If the PM can convince us the coins are worth paying massive premiums for (because they are 'innovative', 'rare' or likely to go up in value) then they don't need to make the coins attractive.
Star Wars did the same for me, I used to collect the figures and the trade cards because they were showing some good gains and it was interesting tracking down hard to find items. However after a while you started to notice that the quality was no longer there there were too many on the market, the sets and figures were no longer being sold for decent returns, the older ones did well but the newer ones didn't hold their value.