Would a mint melt down any unsold stock?

[MickB]

Seeing that the Royal Mint has withdrawn the £20 Churchill coin after 60% sales of a 200,000 mintage, would they melt them down if there was no interest from the public for them?

Would they disclose that they disposed of them in this way or say nothing at all? If they were disposed of this way then it would mean the remaining ones around would now go for a higher premium. This would be a bonus for those who own them.

Has anyone any knowledge of a mint recycling a slow selling range of coins in this way?

My guess is that they will probably just sell them on their ebay shop or pass them over to other dealers, unless someone knows different.

[HighlandTiger]

I do know there are a couple of big wholesale coin dealers, who do buy all the remainders of RM stock, and then ship it all out to the retail dealers. I was speaking to a coin dealer a few months back who told me of the last time he visited one of these wholesale dealers a few years back and their warehouse had pallets upon pallets of RM coins of various types

 

With regards to the £20 coin, I dont think it could be moved on this way, because of the £20 face value. There is no way they could discount this coin below its face value.

 

I wouldnt be surprised if in this case that the coins will be melted down and reused.  

[silversword]

The Churchill coin was plug-ugly, but I bought it anyway because I thought the £20 series would be something nice and affordable to collect and didn't want to have one "missing" from the series. But that doesn't mean I like it. Melting them down would be the kindest thing. I doubt premiums would rise though - there could still be over 100,000 of them out there and almost all in perfect condition with original packaging.

[Pipers]

I am surprised that a coin remembering our finest leader of our country ever sold so badly.  I bought one for all my children (4) so they know a bit about him.    

[HighlandTiger]

stick a pic of one direction on the coin and it will sell millions in a few hours. That is the state of our country today

[HelpingHands]

There's only one direction silver seems to go in.

[Pete]

When a coin has a face value of £20 I very much doubt it would be offered for sale at a discount.

Containing half an ounce of silver currently worth less than £5 it would be scrapped and melted down as a precious metal.