2012 Uncirculated Sets

I feel your pain. The parks Canada $2 coins I received from pre ordering looked awful. I managed to salvage 1 keeper from the bunch. My post office has the sets for sale like you got and you can look before you buy.

Last years coins were crappy too. Every once in a while I pull out the 1996 set and admire it.

This is basically the mints way of saying low end collectors don't matter.

In 1953 the Royal Canadian Mint began offering "select uncirculated" (often called proof-like by collectors) year sets to collectors. Between 1953 and 1960 the coins were in a white cardboard holder. From 1954 to 1960 the white cardboard holders was wrapped in cellophane. In 1961, a new system of packaging began where the coins were sealed in plio-flim. These coins were of better quality than the uncirculated coins from bags or rolls. Each set contained one of each coin 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 and dollar up to 1996, in 1997 the two dollar coin was added. Until 2010, these coins were minted in Ottawa and were of a better quality than the regular business strike coins that were intended for circulation. There were a few exceptions where some sets were minted in Winnipeg but in limited quanties and the coins were the same quality as those minted in Ottawa. Beginning in 2011 and again in 2012, the coins in the uncirculated year sets were minted in Winnipeg. Since 2011, the uncirculated year sets contain business strike coins which are the same quality of coins as are put in rolls and issued for circulation. As a result, the coins in the 2011 and 2012 year sets are of lesser quality than in previous years. Now, You have to go to the specimen coins to find the better quality coins.

Per the RCM product description of their uncirculated set:



Maybe they mean that since circulation coins have lots of bag marks and dings, that they are selecting the best representations of these coins to put in the sets.

Maybe it should read - "Each coin has been carefully selected to have nicks and bag marks to ensure that you will receive exactly the type of coin used by Canadians in their everyday monetary transactions."

In 1965 the mint opened a facility in Hull Quebec for the production of collector coins,for a few years most PL sets were minted there.

Some dealers will let you look through boxes to pick the best sets,I'll make the five hour return journey soon to do that.
Where's the RCM rep when we want to vent? Haven't heard from her on this site in a while.

I too am disappointed. Take a tour of the RCM in Winnipeg and you'll see why circulation coins are heavily scratched and nicked during production and why the cents are covered with water marks. The Winnipeg mint does not produce anything higher than MS-63 if you're lucky. So why is everyone surprised? There's no point in venting, this is simply the way things are done now.

The RCM is not pretending these are P/L or BU collectable coins and they do not try to hide the fact that their mandate is to maximize profit for their shareholder, which is the Cdn Gov't, i.e. the Cdn tax payers.

By selling us business strikes taken from regular Winnipeg production they have not only increased their margin on so-called "UNC" sets to around 900% (I paid $30.98 for $3.91 in FV, which costs the mint around $2-3 to produce), but they also have guaranteed themselves higher demand for specimen sets...on which they also make huge profits. I call this good management and brilliant marketing.

Ugly has the solution: get a roll of each denom and pick out a few good ones...and stop buying UNC sets!