Presidential Silver Medals

Don't confuse the bullion sales that have to go to 5 or 6 entities from the mint who buy in 6 and 7 figures with a medal. They make money off the bullion coins as well which is why they only sell them to a couple of big buyers and let them worry about spot

I think the modern US mint is a joke world wide, but brother you're chasing ghosts on this no profit allowed misread

I feel that the part that says "plus the cost of minting, marketing, and distributing such coins (including labor, materials, dyes, use of machinery, and overhead expenses)" allows for generous interpretation.

Well, I seem to be on my own on this one. Since you all feel the Mint is allowed to make a profit, what profit are they allowed to make? 5%? 10%? 100%?

It just doesn't work that way. When coins are authorized by specific legislation, the intent of the legislation is to provide the coins to the collecting public at no cost to the government. The legislation indicates what some of those costs may be. If there are others that aren't specifically identified then the Mint is allowed to recoup those as well, but it is not allowed to charge prices with the expectation of making a profit.

The price it does charge is of course an estimate that is designed to cover the cradle to grave cost of the product. I totally agree that it is prudent to charge a price that ensures the costs are recovered, with a SMALL margin. If you look at the Mint's annual reports, you'll see that the Mint is pretty good at this and typically makes a net margin (you'll notice they never call it a profit) of only a few percent.

My point with the Presidential medals is that it is rare for the Mint to produce essentially the same product in two different metal contents. Because they are doing this, it allows you to pretty much directly compare the prices of the two products.

When I do this, I think that the costs of producing, marketing, distributing, etc of the two products should be fairly similar with the exception of the cost of the silver. The two products don't appear to be priced this way. Commems believes that the costs associated with the silver version of the medal are significantly greater than the costs associated with the bronze version. It is this dichotomy that I have difficulty believing/understanding.

Commems wanted to compare the ASE prices to the medal prices to justify the price of the medals. I believe a better comparison to look at is the regular proof set versus the silver proof set. Here once again the mint is producing the same product, just in different metal content. The prices are $27.95 for the proof set and $49.95 for the silver proof set, or a difference of $22. The silver proof set contains about 1 1/3 ozt of silver or about $22 of silver. The reverse silver proof set was priced at $5 more than the regular silver proof set. A reasonable increase to cover reasonable additional costs.

BTW, here is the Mint's policy on how they determine pricing. IMO the key quotes are:

and

Whatever they want, but their products aren't good enough to get the premium percentages other countries can get.

I do agree with you that aside from materials there isn't likely to be a significant cost difference aside from the material for the silver and bronze medals. That said though, aside from circulation coinage they are a business and have no obligation to operate entirely at cost

It's literally impossible to plan that out and achieve that without coming back in time with a future balance sheet.




Honestly I think they're fairly spot on. I don't see those selling well which means they need to charge more for what they do sell, but I do get the point you're making that if they could sell more they should be cheaper

They will make a silver version of the existing bronze Reagan medal. Which is what they should have done for the C&C set.

They at least had the Ron and Nancy medal in there, which was nice, but I would have preferred a silver medal to the ASE just to be consistent with most the other sets... I said most, since Lincoln had a commemorative dollar which is less silver!