How The Mint Made America Beautiful
Posted: Wednesday, January 12, 2011
by Joshua Abramson
Vault Wholesale
Minting an Unmintable Coin
The U.S. Mint has released a brand new form factor, 5 ounce, silver bullion coin depicting national parks and other national sites called, “America the Beautiful”. The coin is three inches in diameter, it weighs five ounces, has reeded edge (which are those little lines around the edge of coins), and has a motto in letters around the edge of the coin. As a result of these rare design specifications, the mint has found it nearly impossible to produce the coin in significant numbers and has thus far only minted 33,000 pieces of the current five designs. This has made for a total of only 165,000 coins in all, and one of the greatest rarities in the U.S. numismatic history.
Since the U.S. Mint doesn't sell their bullion products directly to retail consumers, they initially allowed only 11 authorized purchasers to purchase, and sell the “America the Beautiful” Quarter Series. The weekend prior to Dec. 6, APMEX (American Precious Metal Exchange), the only authorized purchaser that is also a direct retailer, put up 1,000 sets on the Internet. They were sold out in 19 hours at $1395 per set, which represented about a 75% mark-up.
As a result, the following Monday, Dec.6, the authorized purchasers were faxed a surprising notice from the U.S. Mint stating: You've been warned of price gouging. If you do, your agreement to be an authorized purchaser can be revoked. Still, by the end of that same day, the sets were going for up to $2,500 on eBay for pre-sales (a mark-up of almost 300%). The U.S. Mint then issued a press release that was strongly worded in defense of itself, generally stating that they have told their authorized purchasers that the production numbers of these coins were extremely limited, and that they have warned about outrageous pricing.
The U.S. Mint's Solution to Protect Small Collectors
The U.S. Mint then took further steps postponing the delivery of the coins for one week, and during that time made the following changes to the “America the Beautiful” Program:
1. The max. mark-up will be 10% over what the authorized purchasers pay for their coins (which is the spot value of silver and that coin plus nine dollars and seventy-five cents).
2. The limit is one per household of each design, for a maximum of five coins per household.
The Fall Out Benefits the American Consumer
Many of the authorized purchasers were unable to sell the coins based on the new terms because most are not set up to act as retailers. This resulted in 6, out of the 11 authorized purchasers changing their decisions to sell the coins at all, and of those that did participate only 75,000 of the 165,000 coins were purchased during that first week.
On December 20th, 2010, the U.S. Mint announced that it had made a decision to add selected companies that would be able to comply with the rules and guidelines it had created. The result - Greed lost and the American public won.
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