San Francisco Mint 2018 Silver Reverse Proof Set

But, in IMHO when it comes to modern commemoratives, there are a few other issues:

1) commemorative half dollars should be silver, not clad, coins. $26/28 bucks for this year's BCA half seems expensive to me. For just a few dollars more, it could have been traditional 90% silver.

2) designs should be different on the different denominations. I'm not a fan of using the same design on all coins, like was done for the Baseball and BCA coins and will be done on next year's Apollo coin.

3) there needs to be a more rigourous vetting process for selecting both what to commemorate and the designs used. IMHO last year's Boys Town coins sold poorly due to a lack of broad interest and uninspiring designs.

4) pairing medals with a commemorative to boost sales of the commemorative is a marketing practice that should be ended. IMHO a number of collectors would have purchased a 5 medal set, but didn't want to purchase 5 coin/medal sets and end up with 5 commemorative dollars.

I'm sure that others could add more "gripes" to this list

My sets arrived today. I was only able to look at one, but it looks great.

The pictures so far are outstanding. Glad I'm getting my two -- at some point I will have to make the decision of breaking one for an album...

I decided to (carefully) open the case containing my suspected damaged Lincoln for a peek at the naked coin. Never opened a proof set before but a post in another thread convinced me it was easy, and it was. I did not realize there was another layer of plastic inside the jewel case covering the top of the coins. It is a softer plastic that had a dimple on an edge, making the coin appear as though it had a ding, too. Good news! The Lincoln is fine. Nothing but an optical illusion. I wanted to clarify this before someone else got "dinged" plastic and thought it was on the coin. Over a 35 year period I've yet had to return a coin to the Mint because of damage, and this set is no exception. Carry on!

Very interesting

I haven't had the need to open up any recent sets. Adding an additional plastic film between the coins and the set lens is something that's new to me.

Anyone know when the Mint started doing this? or is this something special they've done for the reverse set?

Ok, as luck would have it, my set just came in today's mail, so of course I had to open the lens and investigate this additional plastic protection thingy

It looks like instead of just placing the coins in a cardboard insert like used to be the case, that the Mint is now "sealing" the coins in mint set like "blister" packs and then putting the coins into the proof set lens.

Wondering how long this has been going on , I took a closer look at the last few year's sets. I didn't open them all, but based on the type of insert used, it looks to me like the Mint starting doing this in 2009! Like I said, it's been a while since I had a reason to open up a set

So, my comment in the other thread about popping out the upside down cent and rotating it yourself can no longer be done If you want that type of packaging error fixed, then you'll need to get a replacement set.

I'm a little surprised that the folks who take the sets apart and put the coins in albums didn't point out my outdated advice

145,389 as of Sunday

Silver or clad doesn't matter to me, but you are right the half dollar prices are getting very steep for coins with huge mintage limits and quite frankly haven't been that attractive lately.




I'm not a fan of repeating designs but for the baseball coin it made sense. The other's it's just being lazy.




The vetting process is the big problem with the designs. One of the committees is full of people that seem to be clueless or more interested in making statements with what they pick. If you read some of the comments they make in interviews some of them wanted to depict nature and not a memorial for one of the ATBs quarters because it was a war memorial for a site that is literally just a national park for being a war memorial. Thinking like that and never focusing on what would be the most attractive but just the easiest is how we end up with a lot of these designs where people just say meh.