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Stephen Hawking 50p


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I think the main thing that annoys me collector is, I couldn’t get a coin yesterday but lot on here buy 2/4/6/8 coins and sell for double price within a few hours, don’t blame poeole for making a profit but the royal mint should think about the end buyers, they should limit it 1 per house hold and should limit what they sell to dealers.     They seem to have forgotten the man on the street and gone all cooperate 

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29 minutes ago, Cornishfarmer said:

I think the main thing that annoys me collector is, I couldn’t get a coin yesterday but lot on here buy 2/4/6/8 coins and sell for double price within a few hours, don’t blame poeole for making a profit but the royal mint should think about the end buyers, they should limit it 1 per house hold and should limit what they sell to dealers.     They seem to have forgotten the man on the street and gone all cooperate 

This is definitely a problem but it isn't limited to just coins. One of the biggest markets this happens in is concert/event ticket sales where the modern equivalent of ticket scalpers use bots to snatch up massive blocks of tickets to then relist at inflated prices. Ticketmaster in particular has been under fire recently for not only not doing anything about it but helping facilitate this practice by providing a platform where tickets can be resold. It is kind of brilliant in a way because not only do Ticketmaster make profits off of the initial ticket sales but they then get an extra slice when those tickets are resold at higher prices on their "fan exchange" platform. Everyone wins except the fans who face either steep prices or not going at all.

Aside from Ticketmaster it also happens with Lego when new highly anticipated sets are released and sell out. If you had enough storage space you could make a comfortable living buying Lego sets and reselling them when they either sell out or are retired - the spikes are genuinely insane considering we're talking about bits of plastic.

I am sure there are other examples. It is a problem and I understand your frustration. The sad part I think is the false sense of demand it creates. These things sell out in record time so the Royal Mint or Lego or whoever suddenly think they should make more or do more releases, etc because clearly the demand is there. Everything then gets diluted more and more and in the long term value simply gets lost.

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8 minutes ago, Cornishfarmer said:

I think the main thing that annoys me collector is, I couldn’t get a coin yesterday but lot on here buy 2/4/6/8 coins and sell for double price within a few hours, don’t blame poeole for making a profit but the royal mint should think about the end buyers, they should limit it 1 per house hold and should limit what they sell to dealers.     They seem to have forgotten the man on the street and gone all cooperate 

I can see both sides here really. I've praised Coin Connection on here in the past, but did criticise them on their incremental price hiking on the Snowman on the day of that release. It didn't look great imho. But really, what are they to do? They seem to have learned a little bit and were more upfront with their pricing this time. They are dealing with a rapidly changing marketplace and have to react to the Mint's tactics (which I think many would argue have been increasingly underhand, purely aiming at hype and creating a frenzy rather than anything else - that is certainly my view!). Unlike flippers, CC are running a business with many overheads. I think one thing to look at with Coin Connection (as this company has been singled out, unfairly imho) is their stock - they carry hundreds if not thousands of coins, all of which they QC (where the Mint doesn't, or so often seems to fail to) many of which may make them very little or may even not ever sell, but they carry the stock for their customers. I don't see the flippers doing the same!

They are the 'good guys' in this as far as I'm concerned, they really do look after their customers. Compare that to the likes of BNT or Harrington & Byrne, off the top of my head. The former froze my bank account for days by taking payment for coins they promised they would alert me about when stock became available to fulfill my order. Well they didn't, and they put a charge on my bank out of nowhere weeks later, no email notification, nothing - just suddenly my bank account was frozen. When I phoned them to sort it out they denied any knowledge but said they would investigate and let me know, and then finally the money was released back to me (which my bank say could only have been done at BNT end). When I didn't hear anything from them despite their promises I called. They suddenly insisted that I had to provide proof to them that they had left me unable to access cash for three days due to their mistake.

Harrington & Byrne I bought 3 bullion Sovs from, they then phoned me and kept me on the phone for an hour telling me basically how stupid I was for buying bullion and that I should be buying proofs from them, and that e.g. if I bought a Paddington at £1200 I could double my money. A complete 42 QEII coin issue proof Sov set at £27k I could split up and sell for £40k profit 🤣

I digress. Tldr; the Mint are playing silly beggars and leading to most of the ill-will, particularly among numismatists who are scratching their heads at some of these hyped coins, but also among the general public. And yes companies raise their prices, but I don't think £900 is too bad from Coin Connection who carry huge stock of all coins from BUNC 50ps upwards and really care about their customers, when you can go to a company like BNT or H&B and pay double that for a proof if you like!

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17 minutes ago, AppleZippoandMetronome said:

This is definitely a problem but it isn't limited to just coins. One of the biggest markets this happens in is concert/event ticket sales where the modern equivalent of ticket scalpers use bots to snatch up massive blocks of tickets to then relist at inflated prices. Ticketmaster in particular has been under fire recently for not only not doing anything about it but helping facilitate this practice by providing a platform where tickets can be resold. It is kind of brilliant in a way because not only do Ticketmaster make profits off of the initial ticket sales but they then get an extra slice when those tickets are resold at higher prices on their "fan exchange" platform. Everyone wins except the fans who face either steep prices or not going at all.

Aside from Ticketmaster it also happens with Lego when new highly anticipated sets are released and sell out. If you had enough storage space you could make a comfortable living buying Lego sets and reselling them when they either sell out or are retired - the spikes are genuinely insane considering we're talking about bits of plastic.

I am sure there are other examples. It is a problem and I understand your frustration. The sad part I think is the false sense of demand it creates. These things sell out in record time so the Royal Mint or Lego or whoever suddenly think they should make more or do more releases, etc because clearly the demand is there. Everything then gets diluted more and more and in the long term value simply gets lost.

I was limited to two silver and one gold. Unless you had multiple friends in the queue there were limits in place. Unfortunately the mint needs a dealer network (I guess) to sell their coins and puts no price limits on what these "dealers?" sells the coin for. They  suggest the dealers not to screw the customer but obviously that means little.

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Just now, Sal said:

I was limited to two silver and one gold. Unless you had multiple friends in the queue there were limits in place. Unfortunately the mint needs a dealer network (I guess) to sell their coins and puts no price limits on what these "dealers?" sells the coin for. They  suggest the dealers not to screw the customer but obviously that means little.

There are ways around the limits. Lego also imposes a x per household limit on hot items and Ticketmaster makes you tick a box saying you aren't a bot when you buy tickets. It is kind of amusing in a way. Most people could create at least two accounts and go through a couple checkout processes. One shipped home, one to work. If you wanted to you could get around it. I bought two of the silver proofs from Westminster Collection - one for me and one for my partner. They had a limit of 3. Even following the rules I could have bought two from Royal Mint and then three from Westminster Collection.

I don't like that the dealers price gouge on these coins. I was surprised (and happy) to see that Westminster Collection wasn't charging more for the Silver Proofs given what The Coin Connection was charging at the same time that morning. The Royal Mint could prevent the dealers from price gouging but for whatever reason they choose not to. I personally don't think that dealers should price gouge the way I've repeatedly seen The Coin Connection do when a new hot release is out. Perhaps if enough people petition the Royal Mint they could ensure that their partners do not price gouge on new releases. of course we can all just exercise our choice to not support dealers who do this. 

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19 hours ago, Marc said:

This is absolutely correct, why is it that people want to inflict negativity on others just because they want to turn a margin? You have the option of just not buying from them rather than bitching about it. This is what got that idiot Shortstacks banned since he was full of hate against many and went on a rampage (supported by a few of his merry minions) against people he did not agree with. If you do not like the price people are selling things for or if you do not like people offering services for financial gain, just ignore them rather than going on a hate campaign against them.

This sounds horrendous! I have known @shortstack68 for years on here, have not always agreed with him (far from it, we had clashed, and often had very different opinions, though I sometimes was persuaded, quite rightfully I think, to defer to his more comprehensive knowledge and experience). I posted on that thread in his support as a knowledgeable and provocative (in a good way - he made me think rather than follow the herd) member, but I had no idea it descended into such madness and a rampage of hatred before it was locked and he was banned :(

My goodness I do hope his 'merry minions' have also been properly dealt with, it all starts to sound very sinister now that you explain it like that.

 

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2 hours ago, Cornishfarmer said:

I think the main thing that annoys me collector is, I couldn’t get a coin yesterday but lot on here buy 2/4/6/8 coins and sell for double price within a few hours, don’t blame poeole for making a profit but the royal mint should think about the end buyers, they should limit it 1 per house hold and should limit what they sell to dealers.     They seem to have forgotten the man on the street and gone all cooperate 

The main thing that gets me is,All the random release times and having to sit in a fake queue for an hour.Only to see everything is sold out when you get in :)

And a bad website that crashes when it has only 10k traffic,which is most likely done on purpose too 🤣 I can see why people get mad,when best part are sold to shops and the release time is 7am.

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On 11/03/2019 at 14:17, kimchi said:

Just read the Simpsons Mail article, bit weird, but more than a stretch perhaps. I know they 'predicted' Trump as president (never an impossibility seeing as Nixon was his mentor) and the death of Prince (on The Muppets too that one!) etc but the Ebola virus is pretty creepy!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5518033/The-Simpsons-predict-Stephen-Hawkings-fate-19-years-early.html

Having a monkey on a curious george and the ebola virus is hardly predicting anything when they have been around since at least 1976 but probably longer.

Also I thought bats were supposed to be the main candidates for carrying the deadliest ebolaviruses?

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1 hour ago, blackadder said:

The main thing that gets me is,All the random release times and having to sit in a fake queue for an hour.Only to see everything is sold out when you get in :)

And a bad website that crashes when it has only 10k traffic,which is most likely done on purpose too 🤣 I can see why people get mad,when best part are sold to shops and the release time is 7am.

They should have a ballot system I think so everyone gets an equal chance to buy, rather than whoever can get to a computer/phone at the RRT (random release time) that they seem to like. 

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11 minutes ago, Bullionaire said:

They should have a ballot system I think so everyone gets an equal chance to buy, rather than whoever can get to a computer/phone at the RRT (random release time) that they seem to like. 

This is what the do for Wimbledon each year (big match tickets anyway). Works very well, feels very special when you get a centre court finals day ticket!

Visit my website for all my Hand Poured Silver: http://backyardbullion.com

And check out my YouTube channel 

https://www.youtube.com/backyardbullion

 

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Wow I dont read a thread for a day and I come back to a novel anger, hate and justifications 😂

I’m just a small collector that collects for myself and my sons future (please hold judgement on my investment practices). So I get super upset when I’m really really after a coin and I miss out, to then find out that people have managed to buy over the household limits and are flipping for crazy money.

But at the same time I totally get that it’s just life!

Good luck to anyone who manages to beat the system and turn a profit...but just expect to get some ‘negative’ comments 😂

Anyway I was savvy this time and after a lot of work I managed to score a Piedfort through alternative methods, so I’m one happy chap!

Also did anyone else get their Royal Mint post TODAY about the coin???? Bloody muppets!!

Currently building my silver stack so looking for Kooks, Koalas, Eagles & Pandas

Outside of silver I also run a technology YouTube channel http://youtube.com/thenorthernblogger

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21 minutes ago, mustynewb said:

Had a piedfordt in my basket but opted against it. Just wanted 1 of the normal proofs to keep. I will pick up a bu one at some point but no real hurry

I only wanted a proof but only the Piedfort was available.

Currently building my silver stack so looking for Kooks, Koalas, Eagles & Pandas

Outside of silver I also run a technology YouTube channel http://youtube.com/thenorthernblogger

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The mintage numbers of some of the recent RM releases seem to be very low when there is high demand so not sure of their strategy ? Obviously they don't want to over produce and end up with surplus coins that they can't sell but on the other hand they need to satisfy the market considering that the 50p coin appears to now be a very popular choice.

 

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6 minutes ago, Fivepoundfred said:

The mintage numbers of some of the recent releases seem to be very low when there is high demand so not sure of their strategy ? Obviously they don't want to over produce and end up with surplus coins that they can't sell but on the other hand they need to satisfy the market considering that the 50p coin appears to now be a very popular choice.

 

I agree completely here. The mintage of these coins really surprised me. I don't understand it at all.

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1 minute ago, AppleZippoandMetronome said:

I agree completely here. The mintage of these coins really surprised me. I don't understand it at all.

No doubt there will be more "new" coins struck, the same as they did with Paddington bear. You couldn't be up to them.

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9 minutes ago, Fivepoundfred said:

The mintage numbers of some of the recent releases seem to be very low when there is high demand so not sure of their strategy ? Obviously they don't want to over produce and end up with surplus coins that they can't sell but on the other hand they need to satisfy the market considering that the 50p coin appears to now be a very popular choice.

Think you've answered your own question! Apart from Peter Rabbit 2016 and Kew they weren't hot, now they are, making the newspapers and getting a lot of people talking - I will bet that Mint issues across the board are attracting a lot more interest. They make most money on the cupro-nickel like the (scandalous imho) 2018 10ps (A to Z) at £2 a pop which were rubbish quality 'BUNCS', and now the (much better) BUNC 50p packs at a tenner.

Some folk think they are smart with mintages, I don't. They made a huge mess up with the silver Paddingtons at 60k which affected confidence in the first gold proof, taking weeks to sell out. They left an extra 650 mintage possible on the gold, just over double the original 600 offering. Far too many. Luckily for those of us who bought that one the slow sell out meant they didn't do anything with that potential extra mintage. Once folk had seen that, and with a nicer design, the second gold Paddy sold out in a day (the change around in sentiment surprised me, but ofc in a nice way as a buyer). Second Paddy has now been out in a 100 LEP with a book for over a month now and still not sold out (£200 quid more for the book and a bigger box!).

Back to silver and they absolutely knocked it out the park with the Snowman imo, both design and mintage. The hype was huge so that satisfied the Mint, premiums were crazy initially but came down - judged about right all round, and I expect to see prices creep back up. Next Christmas will be interesting there, especially if there is a second coin! This is the one of recent issues in silver imo and the gold is lovely, with a cautious and very attractive mintage of 400. Wish I had one!

The Gruff - little bit high on the silver imo, but everyone could get one which really is as it should be. Back to 600 on the gold but this time that's the mintage as well as the LEP. So they were clearly still playing around/no clear strategy imo, but overall about right.

Hawking - I thought they could/would/should do 400/600 in the gold, probably a wise decision to go low (keep that hype up!). In certain circles this was extremely desirable and exciting but I didn't see it across the general public (folk asking for it in the post office, chatting about it in the pub, etc) like the Snowman and Gruff, though those no doubt played into the excitement around this 'next one'. Silver I thought they would do 10k, 15k absolute max, so that was a big surprise. Better for the hype train to continue picking up speed at any cost for the Mint imo and Hawking of all topics couldn't see less of a frenzy than other recent issues, but I think they were too cautious. 10k overall was achievable and not much difference made, and more folk would have been able to get a coin they wanted - the Mint have let folk down a bit here (not for the first time).

TLDR - they are getting the gold largely right and these have finally taken off. Newton owners are sitting pretty imo. Paddington might be a dark horse and a bit of a surprise, it's already creeping up with dealers, but at least doesn't look like losing now. On silver they keep messing around and are getting a bit wiser but still fluffing it. If they insist on having some arrogant sod sitting in a pub tossing random mintage and LEP numbers about while he enjoys a pint of ale and a gourmet burger I reckon I could do a better job and am available :) Oh, and no merry minions were employed in the writing of this novel! 🤣

 

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3 hours ago, Fivepoundfred said:

The mintage numbers of some of the recent RM releases seem to be very low when there is high demand so not sure of their strategy ? Obviously they don't want to over produce and end up with surplus coins that they can't sell but on the other hand they need to satisfy the market considering that the 50p coin appears to now be a very popular choice.

 

I think that @Oldun had the answer to this in his post at the bottom of page 1 of this topic. The Mint can bring out more box sets comprising of a hit coin from the past (Peter Rabbit 2016 silver proof for example with a new issue year), along with much less popular coins (just about everything else then).  Basically exactly what's just happened with the Kew Gardens rerelease. The Stephen Hawking 50p would fit the bill. Keep selling one coin like hotcakes and throw in some more. Ever increasing sales targets in my opinion.

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8 hours ago, creative said:

Also did anyone else get their Royal Mint post TODAY about the coin???? Bloody muppets!!

Yep. Got in from work and it was waiting for me. Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I did wonder whether this was a reserve but decided not. Has anyone sent it off as an order? I was tempted to do so...

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38 minutes ago, Mike said:

A new release every week? It will be like releasing a ‘special’ sovereign every year. They are at risk of burning collectors out 

Agreed. I think they should be done with Peter Rabbit and should have just stuck to 2016.

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Well mine arrived... its on the verge of being sent back as the quality isnt what it should be. Spec in the middle of the queens face and the lines around the black whole are all patchy. Maybe they struggle with this design. I'll try and post some pics;

image.thumb.png.13936b5bed2de743587a07a5ee202690.png

image.thumb.png.055da152548784b668c0c7cc8ed8d420.png

image.thumb.png.970c6d534c6895b325f110144a7d4e19.png

image.png.ba9f7eea8310889fbea7bf6e46a0fef8.png

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