What Mintage Number Is Consider Low In Bullion?

Or, if you are buying it as bullion, the mintage number is meaningless. You are buying it as silver and the reason to buy one form versus a different one boils down to cost versus ability to resell / trade. A silver eagle or maple leaf is more recognized as standard weight and purity by more people than a Dale Earnhard 1 oz. by Redneck Mountain Mint.
If you are buying numismatic silver, the mintage number may be meaningful, but again it depends on the demand for the item. More people want / collect Proof Silver Eagles than Nuie Fluffy Kitties, hence the silver eagles have a higher premium.

I am no expert on coins, but 8 mil for the Pandas is a ton.

The Pandas going forward wont be the desired coins that they once were. Their best days are in the rear view mirror for them.

I think 1 million, while thats not a small number either, is much better than 8 mil.

I have come to the conclusion that I will allow the market place decide for me what is low mintage. I do that by watching bid prices on ebay and the demand. By following that closely, we come to understand that various coin series and their mintage numbers vary.

For bullion under a million seems to be on the "lower" side and a couple hundred thousand or less being low. Anything in the millions can't be considered low to me. The pandas are really a great example of this. They used to have massive premiums in the early years, now you can get the graded 70s for basically the same price as a graded 70 ASE with how the mintage has been allowed to grow.

I don't have a maximum mintage things can have for me to buy. If I like it I'll get it. If it's something like the 2011 special ASE set with a set low mintage that you know will be popular I'll get more than one. Other than that though it's just whether or not I like it that determines if I buy it or not.

The only time the mintage comes into play at all for me would be for the price. If it's a high mintage I'll sometimes wait and see what they do on ebay before buying. Sometimes I can get it cheaper from a secondary seller other times it's cheaper from the mint. If several million or more have been made I won't get caught up in the high initial prices of people trying to have it first and will wait for those people to get theirs and move on and with the idea I'll get a better price later.

Comparing to ASE the Panda is low, but I think the public demand for silver bullion are down. Demand is what drives the prices, and I would think 100 thousand is too much if there's little demand for it.

it all depends on the coin, on the series, on the quality
8 mil for chinese coins is deserved to be placed in semi-numismatics
1 mil for canadian/us - just a bullion

let's compare 2012 panda (mintage 6 mil) average ebay sale at $33
to moose/cougar (mintage 1 mil) average ebay sale at $27

of course pandas will not rise that fast as previous years (though it took time for them to grow too), but if you compare 2013 panda in 10 years it might surprise you.

please, don't compare how much these coins were worth during last silver run up ($50) as in this case you should compare how much ase/maple were worth and where they are now compared to the pandas.

In Canada's Silver Maples the 1991 sticks out but the reason that mintages was so low was due to a strike at The Royal Mint. 1992 is also a little bit better date due to a low mintage although 1992 is not as low as 1991.

there was some cool info posted on a different forum about low mintage bullion....here the link

http://www.stacksbowers.com/NewsMed...y-Scale.aspx