ATB Five Ounce Silver Coins

Well, last year had 20k for HI and Denali, right?

Yeah, I would really like to, but can't at the moment. If White Mountain sells out before I'm able to put the money together for it, then I will buy a 2010 instead. There were some very nice designs that year, it will be hard to choose which one to get!

My goal is to start collecting these, starting with the Chaco that just sold out. I just completely forgot about these and didn't pay attention this past years :/

I wonder what the mintage will be? As the first of this year's designs, the Mint will make a batch of Wht Mtn., gauge how they're selling, and if there is enough demand AND months left in the year, mint and vapor blast a 2nd batch. With that scenario, the 3rd, 4th & 5th releases of the year are the ones to watch. Hawaii and Denali ended up 15/20K, and the Hawaii design was a popular one accounting for the higher post-sell out prices than for any of the others in '12. Both McHenry and Rushmore could have short sales, and both designs are of interest to the casual collector and the serious completist, so I wouldn't wait on those if the pricing is good at the time of release. A few more thous. per design than '12 is a likely thing in either format. Only time will tell, but '13 is gearing up to be a similar repeat of '12 in some respects with the 5 oz pucks.

Sort of. Hawaii was a bit of an anomaly but the biggest interest driver of all 2012 products was them unexpectedly being pulled from the shelves. The 2011 were basically on sale for all of 2012 then all of a sudden 2012 was gone almost immediately

@basebal: as you know the Mint made a serious miscalculation with the 2011 pucks based on the short sales/anomalies of the 2010 pucks. Demand for the 2010 products was solely because they were in a completely new format and just as quickly the cheers turned into jeers and the Mint was left holding the bag when the interest in them disappeared overnight in the early summer of '11 and for the next 18 months most everybody gave up on the pucks as a lost cause. Meanwhile the Mint scaled back so dramatically in a really quiet way on '12's releases and people who were interested kept quoting the official mintage line of 25/35K max to justify delaying purchasing the pucks. Then early January '13 happened with its spate of sellouts one right after the other. Earlier in this thread last year, I believe I had commented that the 5 oz'rs were going the way of the gold spouses, that is the Mint WASN'T even coming close to any of the stated official maximums from 2009 and onwards, and quietly ending sales at certain percentage levels even though there a few months left in the year. That is why both series are coming out later in the calendar than earlier, they just need to get to Dec. 31st with sufficient quantities, once they are into the new year the sellouts can occur anytime. The stated maximums are just what's authorized by the acting director to place planchet orders, they are smarter than that now due to the 2011 debacle. As a smart collector watch the calendar in the last quarter of the year and plan accordingly. This is how you game their system

You are correct that the mintages for quite a few products hit new lows in '12 and generally have been trending downwards for the last few years especially since the onset of the recession in '08. Whether or not a reversal in '13 for increased mintages due to pent up demand remains to be seen. It may be just a temporary effect from the unexpected sellouts and continue the trend towards lower and lower mintages.

Meanwhile, the product page for NQ5 the White Mountain puck got put up on the website;
http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wc...ory_rn=10111

Interestingly the maximum is the same as 2012 at 25,000. Will also be a first for the series that the collector coin is released before the bullion version.

Are you talking Bullion or Collector? From the numbers I have been able to find I show that the collector version was 14,863 for Hawaii and 15,225 for Denali.