OK, I've been busy. The coins are being sold in some quantities on
ebay by various sellers, and I couldn't help but notice Asyn had multiple copies of all of them, including a few with the box. I decided to try bidding on the Asyn listings and put a $35.00 limit on all but two of the coins, since the list price at the Mint was 39.95, and most of the coins were selling between 27 and 35 dollars on auction completions. The first exception was the colored coin, originally listed at 54.95 and for it I allowed my bid ceiling to be 45.00. The second exception was the coin that came with the box and for it, I allowed 45 dollars for the box and 35 for the coin, for a limit of 80.00. I won all but one auction (had to start a second auction for the hockey coin), and for most of them I got them for well under my maximum bid.
Inukshuk__________26.88
Beaver____________29.09
RCMP____________28.88
Polar Bear________34.50
Summer Fun________28.27
Wolf_____________32.22
Niagara Falls______27.85
Caribou__________31.25
Hockey__________31.00
Orca (with box)___61.66
Maple Leaf______44.99
Holiday_________28.00
Subtotal_______404.59
Shipping and taxes brought it to just under 450 dollars.
I'm not posting this because I think I got an awesome deal. On the contrary! Had I been more patient, I could probably have got most of them for a good bit cheaper than I did, but I wanted to be able to combine them to reduce the shipping as much as possible and I'm fairly happy with the price I paid on almost all of them. I did think I got pushed higher than I'd have liked on the colored maple leaf coin and was actually hoping someone would make one more bid so I could try again for a chance getting one cheaper!
What I think this *does* demonstrate is how poor an investment these coins would have been. The animals held their value better than the others, but I still averaged 7 dollars cheaper than the list prices even on them. Fortunately, I'm buying them because I like them so it isn't an issue if they lose value.
The really sad thing is, based on what people are willing to pay, the only thing that really would have been an investment was the box! And even it was not enough to outweigh the loss in value of the coins. Compare this total with the $517 (including taxes & shipping) I would have had to pay if I'd bought from Gatewest, the next cheapest alternative.
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Posted 01/23/2014 1:56 pm
