ATB Five Ounce Silver Coins

An who is to say the mint will make all of them. They did not for 2012. I think they were 20,000 or 25,000 max.

I think the $200 barrier definitely played into the sells. I know I was avoiding these like the plaque at the previous prices. It is still an $80 premium for these - but they are pretty nice. I actually liked the Chaco issue Bizy...

On a side note I got my White Mountain bullion and was less than impressed. I know it is bullion, but it has a white haze on it as if the wash wasn't dried before it was pressed. If it wasn't $140 I'd buy another, but I'll save that money for the Perry release.

The 2012 coins were meant to be sold in the year of issue, so that is why they didn't make their maximum mintages. There was fairly little demand for them during the calendar year. It wasn't until the sellouts started happening in the first quarter that people started taking notice. As a matter of fact, I bought my Volcanoes 3 days before it sold out, looked at the latest sales report then & thought it's now or never for this coin, they wouldn't have minted more than 15,000 of the 25,000 max. That was Jan 14th. As I thought, there wasn't going to be another batch of Volcanoes because simply time had run out.

The situation with WM is they still have seven months in the year to get the other half out. Barring a breakdown of the press with an irreplaceable part, we should see the other half of the run.

Which is why the 2012 sell out was a surprise to a lot of people. They may have decided they no longer want to hold products for the year like that and have the previous year competing against the new year.

The other thing though is that they didnt get through the first mintage of the others so instead of minting more the following year (which they may not be able to do anyway) they ended them. Had they started 2012 with 9k of those left they probably would have left them up instead of just needed to sell a couple hundred and be able to move on

The Mint learned the hard way about leaving up the 2011 product into 2012 that probably cannibalized in to sales of 2012 offerings. Collectors got complacent with the Mint thinking they had time to order the 2012 coins and sets well into 2013. When the loose Presidential proof set sold out back in Nov. that was the time to take a look at the remainder of the 2012 products. Created an interesting anomaly of having inventory for the prior years available but not the current year's, a situation that currently exists for the circulating and uncirculated quarters. There is some provision that the mint cannot mint PRE dated coins, has to be the year of issue or to be post-dated and stockpiled for next year. This is why those coins fell far short of the maximums. Yes they never promised they would deliver the max, the issue was the calendar's year changed. In 2011 they must have minted much more than they needed for just that year alone, so rather than waste and destroy, they were forced to carry it over for another year's worth of sales. That probably won't happen again in 2013.

I think it actually depends on who is in charge at the mint. Take a close look at last years sales, and you'll see a lot of anomalies... which could portend a change in philosophy or just a year off change in process. There were multiple coins, coin sets that sold out abruptly. I hope that means the mint has decided to start producing and then closing out and moving on to the next production set. I don't need to see 2010 items for sell in 2013... end the sale and move on.

Bullion release dates:
6/24 Great Basin
8/26 Fort McHenry
11/04 Mount Rushmore

Typically the uncirculated have been released three days after the initial sales for the bullion, by that schedule, expect an Aug. 29th release date for Fort McHenry, and Nov. 7th for Mount Rushmore.

I have an extra Gettysburg bullion version, I would trade for a grand canyon or Mt Hood. Those are the two I'm missing from 2010.