New Silver Eagle SF Mint Two-Coin Set

This was copied from US Mint Web Site

Looks like a long wait to receive this set

How so? Dealers and websites cannot order from the mint before anyone else can.

From the US Mint Website:

As I said in a previous post:




Key words in the Mint statement"
Dealers are NOT members of the public...that would be you and I not them

They WILL have these in their hands (graded) WAY before we get to see a single coin

As long as you send the coins in for grading before 30 days after the first shipment you can get ER or FS & set labels with opened packages. Past that date you can't get ER labels no matter what but you can still get FS labels with unopened boxes that have an early postmark. You will be able to get 2012 SAE set labels one these coins forever with opened boxes. There will be no penalty for opening the box(es) and examining your coins before sending them.

The note that shipment won't begin until late July is good news. It bangs on the pre-order ebay guys that are claiming they will have coins mid-June and may allow all sets to ship in less than one month (again messing with the TPGs). It looks certain that no set will ship until all orders are in. I think it is totally appropriate for the mint to wait to ship until after sales conclude and "late July" is only a couple weeks after July 5th, which is the mint's standard dribble as to how long it takes them to ship from stock. The mint has NOT accepted any pre-orders from dealers or anyone else but hopefully, the volume buyers will get their orders in by the end of the first week so we can see how many sets they are ordering. There may well be a surge in the last few days if the flippers see profit potential but they need to be careful, even if the total number of sets sold is low, if the order pace has died down demand may already be satisfied and there may not be anyone left to sell to. I will gather sales data (if the mint really posts it in a timely fashion) and report on any trends I can extract from it.

The mint does not treat dealers different from the general public! They do not make special pricing deals or allow them to order before anyone else. For the annual products, the larger dealers use the subscription process, just like me with my small orders, which does put us at the head of the line, before orders placed on the first day of sales and subscriptions get the first orders shipped (and subscription fulfillment order is set by when the subscription itself was placed). This product, like all other one off issues, does not have a subscription ability so no one will get in line ahead of the first order after noon ET on Thursday. Since this set has no household limits, the dealers are free to place a single order for all of the sets they think they can sell which should happen in the first few days since many of the volume buyers want the first shipments so they can take advantage of the special agreements they do have with TPGs to get bulk pricing and fast turn on grading and slabbing. I too plan to order all of the sets I want as soon as possible after noon Thursday because I also like to get the first shipments. Of course now that PBGS is cheaping out on shipping, changing expedited to two day UPS instead of overnight and no longer upgrading any orders under $300 I may have to order three sets at once to get free fast shipping (or at least two sets and a small item). I'll place my bet now that PBGS will not upgrade a two set order ($299.90) to two day shipping unless you pay for it. Interestingly, you still get next day UPS if you pony up the extra $12.95, complementary upgrades now get 2nd day air UPS but supposedly still get quicker shipping from stock. It must really burn PBGS when someone orders 1,000 of these and only pays $4.95 for 2nd day air UPS.



This product is not as much mint to demand as the nay-sayers are complaining about. It is mint to orders placed in 28 days and 5 hours. Even with massive dealer (and collector) subscriptions, the 2012-W proof SAE only sold 300,000 units in its first week and only another 100,000 in the eight weeks since so with this set costing 2.5 times as much as a single proof SAE (which to me is right where it ought to be, the RP should be 1.5X of normal, $60+$90=$150) I expect that dealers will order fewer of these sets even if they are planning to split some open and sell individual coins. My best guess of four week sales is around 250,000, same as the 2006 set sold in total over a longer time period.

Even though there is no great need to do so, I might do like I did with the 2011 set and submit five single orders. I will open one set to enjoy and stash the others to open in the future. With single packs, they can be sold individually and still get PCGS FS lables if those still exist when my kids go to sell dad's collection. Whether I do that or not depends on how much I want to scrimp on shipping and when I want to get my first set to open.

Just some comments:

...I think that the Mint will start shipping around 2 weeks after orders are first taken. They always give a date in the future way past the actual planned shipping date so it will be a plus when they are shipped earlier.

...dealers ALWAYS have their coins before Joe Public. If they don't have a "deal" then it is just simply magic. I can accept magic...

...As was said, even the routine, yearly, order-for-6-months-or-more proof ASE sold 300,000 in the 1st week. It does not make sense at all to predict that the sales of this set which includes an RP will sell less than that over a 4 week period. This should sell no less and maybe more than the yearly proofs (over 800,000). Collectors know that the yearly proofs will be minted at 800k a year but that doesn't discourage them from ordering them. I will give some credit to the 4 week thing and decrease my sales prediction to 650k...(656,481 )...which would still be less than the proof....but my brain says a higher number

I do wonder how the TPGS will treat this set for two reasons.

The first is if you go off the 30 day period the public wont have the coins before the 30 days is up so you wont be able to open it before sending it in if you want FS. But more importantly literally every coin is technically first strike and in the 30 day period so they may wave it.




The proof is the fact that graded coins are often in stock the first day the product goes on sale from the mint website.

Dealers may not get special prices, but there is about a 0 percent chance that they place their orders for thousands of dollars the same way the public does and have to wait inline behind someone with a subscription that ordered a set or two.

It may be official policy that they are treated the same, but the reality is they do get their sets faster and their orders are filled first. Its just simple business, they need theirs first so that people will be tempted to order from them and can sell when the product is hot, and often times it means some of them have to already be graded.

They would lose out on to many sales just waiting and would in turn order less in the future costing the mint millions in future sales. The mint isn't going to allow that to happen

FoxwoodsMan, it doesn't look like the mint said that they would ship any orders before the end of sales, just that that the first orders would get the coins already minted. Of course we will have to wait and see but I plan to place at least one order as close to noon Thursday as possible so I should be able to let you know when shipping actually begins. The website currently says that shipping is expected to begin in late July, which even if we shave off the semi-standard 15 days from today claim has shipping starting once sales stop. They may not have minting and packaging completed before they start shipping, in which case they may not get all product shipped within a 30 day window. Even on the 2011 set, which were all minted before sales began, they did not quite complete all shipments in a 30 day window. They came close but because of a number of factors shipments trickled well into December.

basebal21, the 30 day period starts when the first orders are shipped, not when the product is offered for sale. Thus if all orders are shipped within a 30 day window, all qualify for FS/ER. NGC's ER requires that coins are shipped to them within ~30 days of the first product shipment whereas PCGS will take opened product in that time frame and sealed, dated mint packaging anytime after that. You can in fact still get FS labels for unopened 2006 SAE sets.

Claiming to have graded coins for sale (and taking orders for them) and actually being able to ship them are two very different things. A large dealer can probably get a pretty decent amount of coins graded and slabbed in no more than a few days if they have a standing relationship with a TPG. The mint is not in the business of ensuring that anyone who buys from makes a decent profit (or even a profit at all). It is a long standing policy of the mint itself to make as close to zero profit on individual products as possible without ever going into the red on a product. They come very close to achieving that with their bullion sales, which because of their much larger volume and much smaller product line is far easier to do. In fact they normally make less net dollar profit on bullion sales than they do on numismatic products, even though bullion sales are a much larger percentage of gross income.

If a new volume dealer comes along and places a subscription order for a thousand proof SAEs, it will fall in behind my one and four piece subscriptions and if it places an online order it will be fulfilled behind small orders placed before it. There is simply no special treatment being doled out.