Are the mints over producing designs?

[DarkChameleon]

Is the rate the mints, government and private producing more designs then ever before?.

 

They are charging silly amount for so e designs over spot and with some mints having the ability to produce smaller mintage without the massive costs of the past to take a design through to the delivery making it easier for private mints to produce what seems like an unlimited amount of 10,000 or less versions of coins in silver, gold, platinum or whatever add on like ruthenium, proof, reverse proofs, colored, etc.

 

Are we being even more milked then usual?.

[AppleZippoandMetronome]

Some mints more than others. The Royal Canadian Mint has been guilty of this for a long time. You can see clear proof of overproduction in official publications which have stopped printing mintage figures but amount sold instead. The RCM pumps out release after release most of which never sell out (thus amount sold vs stated mintage). These coins do not hold their value and are either kept until they are sold at a loss due to being tarnished, out of fashion, etc or sold at a loss because they were never worth the RRP in the first place.

I don't think we as a group on this forum are being milked as most of us stay far away from these coins. I don't even necessarily think the general public is being milked. I think the increase in releases is just the mints version of casting a wider net. They are a business and a way to increase profits is to sell more of these coins. The more they produce the greater chance a design will appeal which will lead to a sale. Serious collectors and stackers avoid them but I suspect those two groups are not the target audience for all these releases. The targets are the casual, impulse buyers and those buying a gift for someone.

Edit - just wanted to add that my above post is in reference to silver proof coins that are sold at a price most could achieve. The RCM in particular produces some very high end products that do seem to appreciate well and are worth having if you can afford them.

[DarkChameleon]

1 hour ago, AppleZippoandMetronome said:

Some mints more than others. The Royal Canadian Mint has been guilty of this for a long time. You can see clear proof of overproduction in official publications which have stopped printing mintage figures but amount sold instead. The RCM pumps out release after release most of which never sell out (thus amount sold vs stated mintage). These coins do not hold their value and are either kept until they are sold at a loss due to being tarnished, out of fashion, etc or sold at a loss because they were never worth the RRP in the first place.

I don't think we as a group on this forum are being milked as most of us stay far away from these coins. I don't even necessarily think the general public is being milked. I think the increase in releases is just the mints version of casting a wider net. They are a business and a way to increase profits is to sell more of these coins. The more they produce the greater chance a design will appeal which will lead to a sale. Serious collectors and stackers avoid them but I suspect those two groups are not the target audience for all these releases. The targets are the casual, impulse buyers and those buying a gift for someone.

Edit - just wanted to add that my above post is in reference to silver proof coins that are sold at a price most could achieve. The RCM in particular produces some very high end products that do seem to appreciate well and are worth having if you can afford them.

It seems to me that there are a lot more limited mintage coins being released now, which must be due to costs to produce being less or are we a world of willing over payers sufficient to keep these 10,000 or smaller mintage coins going...I know some mints, especially the private ones sell a certain amount of their coins and then hold back some to release as sets or if the prices increase then to sell them at the inflated prices later.

[HighlandTiger]

YES!

[Murph]

They are certainly getting worse and are milking it for all they are worth.

A lot of proofs sometimes increase in price at first but once the novelty wears off the prices start to drop.  I've picked up a number of proofs at a lower price after a couple of years or more.