June 2009
BULLION COIN PREMIUMS RETURN TO
HISTORIC LEVELS
During the last year or so, we've
occasionally reported that precious metal bullion coins were being
bought and sold at unusually high premiums to values indicated by
commodities markets. (As a reminder, our articles about precious metals
markets are for
informational purposes only; Telesphere Numismatics does not sell
bullion coins, with the exception of smaller quantities of silver
American Eagles.) Economic conditions and the general poor performance
of equities since late 2007 led to increased demand for precious
metals, such as gold and silver American Eagles. The United States Mint
and many of its counterparts around the world struggled to meet the
higher demand, and prices rose substantially.
Since early May 2009, the higher premiums have largely disappeared. For
example, one local coin shop had buy and sell prices for one ounce gold
eagles at $40 and $80, respectively, over the spot price of gold. In
early June they had reverted to a more typical structure of buying the
coins at spot and selling them at $40 over.
The relatively small number of distributors authorized to purchase
bullion versions of gold and silver eagles directly from the U.S. Mint
are once again offering the coins "live" which means they can be
shipped immediately. For more than a year, delays of several weeks were
common, due to demand exceeding the rate at which new coins were being
produced and rationing of their availability. These shortages have
finally alleviated during the last month or two.
In late 2008 the U.S. Mint announced that it was dramatically scaling
back the number of numismatic products it would offer, including the
elimination of fractional sizes of platinum American Eagles and gold
American Buffalo coins. A few months later it announced that numismatic
versions of American Eagles would be postponed, with all available
blanks being diverted to bullion coin production. While an announcement
has yet to be made, we expect the Mint will
soon schedule release dates for numismatic versions of 2009 gold,
silver and platinum eagles. Unlike their bullion counterparts, these
individually packaged uncirculated and proof coins can be ordered by
anyone directly from the Mint (at a
considerably higher premium over the value of the precious metal they
contain).
TERRITORIAL QUARTERS IN SHORT
SUPPLY
Mintage figures through May for 2009 District of Columbia and U.S.
Territory quarters are sharply lower than any for any of the state
quarters issued during the preceding 10 years and have so far declined
with each successive issue. The
Mint reports combined totals at its Philadelphia and Denver
facilities of 172.4 million District of Columbia, 139.2 million Puerto
Rico and 87.6 million Guam quarters. These numbers are for coins
struck for circulation and do not include any struck for uncirculated
or proof coin sets. If the Guam figure proves to be final, it
will be just 21% of the Oklahoma quarter, which had the lowest mintage
of the five state quarters struck during 2008. Commemorative quarters
for American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana
Islands are to be issued later in 2009.
Because of the lower mintages, collectors and dealers are reporting
more difficulty finding the coins and higher premiums over face value
when they can be located. We recently purchased more District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico 'P' mintmark quarters for the same cost per
roll that we had sold them for previously. One of our better sources
for newly issued 'D' mintmark coins has yet to receive any Puerto Rico
or Guam quarters.
CURRENT SPECIAL
Our previous special on slabbed coins has been extended to June 19.
We've added more coins to replace those already sold
to bring the total number
of collector coins in the sale back to 80. Prices on the "holdover"
coins have been reduced even further, in most cases by about 5%.
The new prices are as low as they're going to get, and this sale will
not be re-extended, so be sure to check our Current
Special page soon for some great possible additions to your
collection at bargain prices. We've also recently shot new
digital
photographs of several of the coins to better capture their
appearance. Photographs can be
viewed online by clicking the coin descriptions.
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Telesphere Numismatics
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