Royal Mint stuff - too expensive?

Without really thinking about value, I ordered a Beatrice Potter 50p folder to do something nice for my granddaughter. For those who don't know, RM produced a set of 5 X 50p coins for circulation. The folder is nice as far as a folded bit of card can be - but cost a fiver plus £3 postage (around $12). Uncirculated 50p coins cost £10 each.

Now I know that this is not a huge amount of money, but when you think we have taken £2.50 out of circulation and put it in an £8 bit of card you'd imagine RM are raking in a tidy sum on these deals, especially those who opt for the UNC versions.

 

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The RCM and RAM do the same with their premiums. At least with those two the currency exchange rates right now soften the blow. They all have some lovely gold products but really hard to justify with the premiums they tack on. They certainly don't leave any meat on the bone for anyone else but I guess it works for them. Unless dealers get substantial discounts I have a hard time seeing how they make any money on a lot of the products

 

These are not gold - or silver coins, they are circulation cupronickel with a value of 50p each. To be fair, my granddaughters set was from circulation but £5 for a folded piece of card intended to withdraw £2.50 from circulation means RM are up quite a bit.

 

Yea I know the one's you're talking about, 9.99 seems to be the standard pricing across the royal mints for those card type sets. They just all seem to operate off high premiums in general. To be honest though I would rather pay a little more for their quality of work and variety then what has been coming out of the US mint lately

 

Both the RCM and BRM issue $20 and ₤20 coins at face value, but they have a nominal amount of silver and nobody will take them in commerce. People in Britain were buying them up on their charge cards to get points and then trying to cash the coins out in banks - which the banks balked at. As bad as it is to pay ta much for a 50p, a ₤20 coin that is not cashed out is a lot worse. At least in a pinch you can spend the 50p.

 

I believe the RM actually told banks to stop accepting the 20 for 20 ones in Britain

 

That's correct.

 

I seem to remember that the US Mint gets paid by the US Treasury for the value of each coin it produces, I assume the Royal Mint is the same. Every penny that is held from circulation in sets or collectables presumably is profit less negligible cost. Even better if you can sell an expensive card for the coins to live in also.

 

The banks started getting too many and they were the ones that contacted the BRM who told them to stop taking them.

It is the same with the BEP and the Federal Reserve. With coins the net result is a profit for the mint/government called seignorage. With paper money it is 1:1. I'm not sure how it works with the BRM and the Bank of England. Bank of England was a private corporation until it was nationalised in 1946 - but it has acted as the central bank in England from it's formation in 1694. The Bank of England prints it's own notes, so within England it is a 1:1 thing. But Scots and N. Ireland banks still issue their own paper/polymer money and they have to have the amount of issue on account with the Bank of England as a guarantee.

Both Canada and Britain really blew it with those higher value, low melt value coins that cannot be redeemed now. I still get the RCM emails about these coins so obviously they are still selling them to fools, but probably nowhere near as many as they used to.

 

Pretty much all the world mints are the same in regards to the cost of any coin you buy directly from them. It will always cost more than the face value of the coin. In my opinion we buy direct because we're impatient. Also because we don't want to get left out on those special releases. Rather not pay super high flipper prices.

 

Here is the folder.

 

If you're a collector of such, the (affordable?) price means nothing. Especially if it gets some young folks into the mix of collecting. Thanks Gramps.........

 

When the US Mint was trying to get people to use the presidential dollars they would ship $250 bags for free. I bought a lot of them over time and got 2% back on my credit card. I then picked them through for high quality coins (found very few) and spent the rest. Made $5 a bag profit.

 

If you ask me, pretty much every mint in the world is overpriced and over saturating the market.

 

Well, you're a heck of a lot better than the folks who bought these, got the 'miles' and then dumped them all at the bank.

 

Most of the word mints try to justify the higher prices with lower mintages. And it is true that there are less proof Britannia coins compared to proof Eagles. However, the collector base is much smaller. Sometimes one can get lucky. The 2014 Silver Proof Britannia coins (1 oz, and especially the 5 oz) had high initial premiums, but the design was really popular. So they still sold out and the aftermarket prices are multiples of issue price.

 

There was an article about how some British dealers stopped dealing in Royal Mint products around the time of the 2012 Olympic issues.

"After 38 years as a Royal Mint agent, a leading numismatic dealer with 57 years in the business, is now refusing to trade in any more of its coins because he believes the market has been devalued by the vast numbers of issues and exorbitant prices.

Richard Lobel – the UK's biggest dealer in the secondary market for Royal Mint coins – condemns what he sees as the exploitation of people who pay up to four-figure sums for what they assume are valuable keepsakes."

More here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...t-from-overpriced-souvenir-coins-6294131.html

 

Wow. The Royal Mint issued 68 commemoratives for the 2012 Olympics alone. Super saturation.

 

@tulipone I think you're right about the Royal Mint making some money of these intentionally collectible coins and cardboard holders (the US State Quarter Program had a map where you could place the quarters on plucked out of circulation and was popular with kids), but the RM actually has a money making secret. Their production of circulated coinage is mostly for other countries. I've read literature from their website that says 2/3 of the coins struck there intended for circulation are for one of the 60 countries it produces coins for. Everyplace from Egypt to Costa Rica.

 

The Canadian Mint also produces coins for numerous countries, though I can't remember exactly how many. When I first drove into the Winnipeg mint's entrance, I saw a swath of non-Canadian flags next to the parking lot. The collection of countries didn't make any sense at a glance, but the tour guide explained that they post a flag for every country for which they have produced currency. Then everything came together.

Many mints, including the Royal Mint, may feel immense pressure to diversify in the face of impending electronic currency and polymer bills. The collectables market probably seems like the most obvious way to branch out. After all, if circulating coins ever disappear, and, assuming that they gradually do, these mints still want to justify their existence. They are wise to plant this foundation now and find their market demographics. Nonetheless, flooding the market won't help them either now or later. They run the risk of burning out the very collectors that they might depend on. Still, the Canadian mint claims that many of their commemorative issues sell out. Even their "Big Coin" series, at $500 per coin for 2oz of silver, showed as "sold out" in the same year of issue (and yes, I actually purchased the "Big Beaver Nickel," but I'm not sure that it was a wise move). So perhaps these markets have more strength than many numismatically-oriented collectors realize?

If I buy any special mint issues, I stick to bullion. I might buy an occasional commemorative, but the markups typically turn me away. I did have trouble resisting the "Dragon of Wales" in the "Queen's Beasts" series, though, partially because a section of my family comes from Wales. And, of course, Dragons are cool.