Video: ATB Five Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin Saratoga National Historical Park Available 12/3

Well to put it in perspective, the proof ASE is $49, a 250% premium, yet it still sells and no one is complaining about the cost of that product. Gotta remember that the Mint makes what Congress tells it to, and sold to the public at a "reasonable" mark up. Of course your definition of reasonable will probably be different from mine. If the premiums are so objectionable, simply don't buy, simple as that. For the premiums to come down, customers have to stop buying, and realistically, that has a small chance of happening because how this hobby now works.

I won't hold my breath either. I don't wanna pay $150 and I know there's been talk that you can get these cheaper on the Bay but honestly, if I don't buy when they're issued, I'm worried that the ones I'm missing will just stack up and I'll never catch up.

Max mintage on the Saratoga P will be 20k

I believe around 15k are a given with subscriptions...the rest just leak out slowly....(P puck)

They can't strike more 2015 stuff after 12/31 so I would guess the 20k P's will be (or have been) struck and go from there. The Kisatchie has been hanging around for 8 months and is still below 19k

Edited to add: these bullion pucks have become THE more affordable collectible even as they are billed as just bullion. 35k is not way out there for a mintage and better than the gazillion million mintage of the ASE for a bullion product... and around $50 cheaper than the P.

My first roll of bullion pucks was Gettysburg which had just under FOUR TIMES the present mintage...nice choice on my part After that I held off for quite a while but started again at the beginning of this year...

$30? Try $48/oz. at the time Gettysburg and Glacier were released was also the release of the first P-puck around the end of April 2011. It also was at the tail end of the 2010 bullion puck distribution fiasco, which led APs to buy all 126,500 bullion pucks on the first day they were released of both new designs. The puck market in short order collapsed thereafter as there was no interest from investors apart from the initial frenzy. The APs that bought these at the height of the market guessed wrong and lost their shirts on the 2011 bullion big time. They've only decided to cut their losses and have discounted those coins of late, but the bulk is still in the hands of the APs. The APs and the Mint should've have understood that new mint items always grab attention and fleeting interest, but will dissapate for the next new shiny thing to come along. It takes years for a long series of coins to gain traction and acceptance among collectors and the resale market and this we are seeing now. The numbers are still nowhere close to the 2011s though.

As for BRP-P selling out early, the Mint probably felt they had sufficient quantities of the other three designs, with one other one that still had to be scheduled and produced, so they did their duty by BRP. 20,000 doesn't seem to be a huge number, but it is for the press they use. I've read somewhere that the Grabener is capable of optimally stamping 22 coins a minute, having seen it in action at the Philly mint, it's probably a lot slower. 20,000 coins might take a week to produce, with at least a 100 die changes, so the overhead to produce this bullion is probably way higher than the ASE or the gold coins, which have better profit margin and easier to handle.

1) No clue what the number of P pucks the Mint will decide to strike which is obvious by this year's issues with one at 20k and another OOS at under 18k....no figuring out the Mint.

2) Re: 15k subs....I agree a bit up there and meant 1st week sales...no clue how many are pre-ordered subs

3)





You had me curious so I went and found my Provident Metals receipt:




...and that was the CC price.

I'm to blame for that one