San Fran ASE Great Idea To Produce Based On Demand

I don't think you need to order a set during the 4 week period to get one at or below the mints issue price. The vast majority of modern sets that are issued with no limit seem to drop in price relatively quickly.

Mint to demard is great for little known, ignored products that suddenly take off a few years after release or when collectors discover an unexpected rarity factor in the perception of a common product.

yep it is a great idea specially since so many people lost out on the 25th set due to flippers and such, now everyone specially the true collector can easily obtain one

Basebal21 I can respect that and understand your point of view completely but try to keep in mind demand may increase once they become unavailable to buy directly from the mint. Maybe not as dramatically as we would like however collecting coins has been around as long as coins themselves and there are still plenty of valuable hard to obtain coins. I think that the lack of surplus coins being available directly from the mint will insure that the set is a smart acquisition. Additionally the marketing model may prove profitable enough to the mint to allow them to make products they have never considered before.

While this may be "technically" true for US Mint NCLT issues, I think we might be able to learn something about the potential for this set (and possibly others using the same model) from the Mint's modern commemorative series.

I remember a time when collector demand for some of the Mint's commemorative issues resulted in sales of millions of coins and the release of a coin with a maximum authorized mintage of "just" 500,000 caused a quick sell-out (1992 White House silver dollar). Over time, however, many collectors turned away from commemoratives because they felt there were too many issues and too many coins being minted. By the early- to mid-1990s, commemoratives were on the "black list" for many in the hobby.

So, in many cases, collector purchases of commemoratives of the mid- to late-1990s did not equal the authorized maximum mintage for the issue. The result? Several low mintage modern silver and gold commems that carry a nice premium in the secondary market as current demand outpaces supply.

I think the "mint to demand" model can still produce some coins that are sought after by future collectors as they come to understand the relative scarcity of them. While I understand the allure and attraction of having hard-to-find coins in one's collection, I don't believe it's the Mint's job to create modern "rarities" whose rarity is driven by collector-speculators looking to quickly flip coins for a fast profit. Coin collecting has traditionally been about acquiring nice specimens, holding them for years -- not days/weeks -- and enjoying the value appreciation that comes over time for collections of quality.

I have a complete set of the Mint's modern silver and gold commemoratives coins in mint state. Some are worth essentially the same as the price I paid to acquire them, some are worth more because of an increase in the value of their precious metal content and some are worth multiples of their purchase price because of numismatic factors such as scarcity.

I don't know which of these three categories this new SF ASE set will ultimately fall into, but I do believe that if the Mint continues to use a mint-to-demand model for more coins, some of them will be overlooked by current collectors and be sought after by tomorrow's.

Just my thoughts...

And then lose out when the aftermarket price drops below issue price because everyone that wants one has one and then some.

I think that there are only two ways that the aftermarket price for this set will ever drop below the issue price. The first, and least likely, way is if the mint issues SF proof and/or RP coins next year (I just don't think they are going to do that). The second way, most likely but still not all that likely, is if flippers buy way too many sets to get rid of and they lower prices below what they paid just to minimize losses. I think that $60 is just about the rock bottom mint price for a proof SAE today and if they ever sell an RP standalone it would be $90, so I don't see the mint offering a similar set for a lower price in the future, which might erode the prices of this set. I don't think that the volume sold, no matter how high, will cause the after market price to fall below issue price unless, again, the flippers dump.