How Many Set Of 2013 ASE Westpoint Mint Have You Bought?

Well, yes that is the last info that PCGS put on their site but....

That would mean ALL coins submitted for FS had to be shipped without looking at them...this has since been changed per some phone calls but never changed on their site.

Also the FS cutoff date is also not on their site but has been reported as July 19th per some more phone calls...pretty lame but it is what it is.

One more thing, when you said no one would be denied FS as long as it was a sealed box that was submitted...that would only apply to sets shipped before July 19th and then submitted after that date..Sets shipped on July 20th would not be elligible even if sealed.

So in other words only the large dealers will have sets that were FS eligible with that cut off date and the mints slow shipping it seems. Kind of a shame too since PCGS was doing special labels for the FS ones and the labels looked nice to me.

Thats why I'm a firm believer they should just make these sets 200 or 250k maxes which is more than enough for everyone to get them while drumming up some extra interest but not low enough to lock people out like the 2011 set. If you did that you could just ship them as theyre ordered just like with everything else. Unless they ran into some production problems we dont know about it looks like they just minted the large seller orders and waited till the end of ordering to work on the rest. I'm pretty sure the large sellers actually got to order early or through some other method and werent logging onto the site like everyone else to order which is fine by me. The mint to demand has been a debacle both years though and they clearly learned nothing from last year other than maybe they needed some more quality controls

If they ship large orders in stages those orders will shrink. Aside from providing circulating coins the most important job at the mint is to make money. They shouldnt be punished for ordering more and making the mint more money. If you put in an order of that size I'm sure you would get the special treatment too. As a business its not a good practice to say sorry you ordered to many were going to take care of the much smaller orders before we finish yours.

Really the only way to ship them all out immediately is to have them already made which isn't possible with mint to demand. If they arent going to cap the mintage this is how its going to be every year.

The one thing they could actually do is let the large orders order early so they know how many they need off the bat and can get those orders cleared faster or even have them done and shipped by the time ordering ends so everything after that is for individual orders.

Probably 1/3 of the orders were bulk order, just look at the huge first day numbers that account for almost half of sales then the slow crawl the rest of the month. The mint loses much bigger lose a bulk buyer than if they lost a customer. Its a numbers game, the person who orders 10k sets its much more important to you and your long term than the person ordering 1 or 2 every year. They should try and appease all customers, but all customers are not equal money speaks in that regard. The mints already tried to appease people with the mint to demand because of the 2011 set. This is what happens with minting to demand you have long waits as an individual who ordered which the mint never made any claim wouldnt happen.

Yes the mint loses sort of when an orders canceled because they bought it elsewhere, either way it was a set sold for the mint. The risk of having 1 thousand people cancel 1 set is far less than the risk of having even one bulk buyer cancel a larger order. Overall theres probably 100k individuals who ordered this set maximum. Most people ordered more than 1 and a very significant percentage went to stores to resell. Letting bulk sellers sink would be the fastest way to watch the mint offer less products though since they wouldnt have the built in demand for everything to assure they recoup their costs and can make money.

The bulk sellers arent causing any problem, the mints the one working slow. Delays are good for bulk sellers anyway, they arent hurting themselves by having their sets and everyone else waiting.

I like the idea of limiting orders to 5 the first week, then opening it up to no limit after that. Didn't the mint do this before for other offerings, limiting orders to 5 (or something) for a certain period? I think they did this with the 2009 UHR gold piece, didn't they?

basebal - we'll just have to disagree. The bulk buyers IMO aren't going away - even if it is harder to order 20,000 sets. The individual buyer is going away though - and losing 20,000 of them has the same result for the mint - might even be worse in the long run as they turn off potential collectors.

I recorded HSN for the 1st time ever last night to see the supper special offer they had on these sets. $399.95 - included a certificate to ANACs for 4 more coins to be graded and the OGP! The price was a special offering - since they listed them as $479.95. It appeared that somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25% of the coins were coming back 70's.