Obviously lots of little stories don’t warrant a full, and often time-consuming post, so hopefully, every Sunday we’ll do a little news nugget round-up of the week with all the bits of news we accumulate. A mix of new coin updates, mint reports and variants, site updates and additions. No doubt the variety will increase in future and we can post a lot of bits we’d normally have missed or not found the time to get around to. Enjoy.
ARCHANGEL BULLION MINTAGE
We’ve updated our guide to the Ukrainian Archangel gold and silver bullion coin with accurate mintage figures up to to end of 2015. A very nice coin, not the easiest to pick up, or the cheapest, we think any self respecting bullion coin collector will want one of these in their collection.
Numbers aren’t huge, which goes a long way to understanding why the coin isn’t cheap or common.
STANISLAW AUGUST COIN BOX
We were quite surprised that the National Bank of Polands excellent Treasures of Stanislaw August series didn’t have a collectors box given the cost of collecting it, but it seems that one is indeed available.
A decent looking and well designed piece, the two trays will hold all 24 coins in this huge 2oz gold or silver series, and is 29 x 25 x 6 cm in size. Each tray has captions for each coin and a place in the lid for the certificates. We’ve added these images to our guide.
DISNEY PRINCESSES TO END
The New Zealand Mints Disney Princesses series is to come to a natural end on the 08 June with the launch of the last coin in this successful series of gold and silver coins.
Available in coloured 1oz and cleanly struck ¼oz gold versions, the presence of the latter is a good indication that sales must have been decent enough to keep the series going. Not one that coin collectors have gone mad for, but Disney fans are where these are aimed, and it seems like the mint hit its target. The mint has plenty of other Disney coins in store.
ROYAL CANADIAN MINT KICKS OFF 2016 ON THE UP
After a pretty good year in 2015 that we reported last week, the first quarter figures for the RCM are even better, showing this prolific mint is on the right track. Strong bullion sales have increased overall revenue by 22% compared to the same quarter in 2015, with gold sales, mostly Maple Leaf coins, up 18.7% to 212,600 ounces, and silver, again mostly Maple Leaf sales, up 19.3% to a very healthy 10.6m ounces (from 8.9m in Q1/2015). Could this be a year the RCM breaks one million ounces of gold bullion coins?
Numismatics are doing even better. Sales of numismatic gold products increased by 73%, although silver numismatics were down slightly from $32.8m in Q1/2015, to $31m last quarter. Sell outs were up, with 14 releases achieving that status.
Most interestingly, overall numismatics revenues fell 8% overall due to a downward adjustment caused by “recent returns of face value coins“, which the mints management is stated to be “taking steps to mitigate sales returns in the future“. Is the face value bandwagon starting to come off the rails?
SCOTTSDALES VIKINGS: GODS, KINGS & WARRIORS
Obviously with a market as full of options as the ancient gods genre, it’s easy to miss out on some fine coins. We saw the Scottsdale Mint’s first three releases in its 15-coin series entitled Vikings: Gods, Kings and Warriors at the Berlin show back in February and took a few pictures through the glass. These new nugget posts make it a lot easier to share items like this and we know collectors like to see coin images taken in the real world. These are great coins, and if you want to know more check out our post on them when they were launched.
Re: the face value coins, this is very interesting to read. People I think were duped with the high value on the coins themselves, whereas most other commemorative or bullion coins have 2-5 dollars or pounds or smaller, of “legal tender” value. So everyone thought this is a win win situation. Now most have realised that they are paying too much for an effectively, slightly more limited in numbers, bullion coin!
You can’t charge £100 for a 2oz silver coin when the Queen’s Beasts 2oz coin can be had for less than £40 for example!
RCM started all this and were prolific every year. RM followed suit, but I think their numbers will fall drastically over the next couple of years too. I got an email survey from the RM asking me why I didn’t buy the last £20 coin, the Queen’s birthday. I duly told them! 🙂
But the fact they asked and also asked how often they should be releasing face value coins etc, makes me think they are worried too. On their eBay account, they are still trying to flog some of the apparently sold out fv coins!
Disappointing developments for RCM, but also a great eye opener I guess , thanks for that piece of info, Mik!
George
No problem George. It just struck me as the most interesting thing in their annual report, fortunately coming just before I’d reached the point of losing the will to live…
Can’t say I’m surprised. What looked initially like a cool concept is beginning to look a bit cynical now. It’s either legal tender or it’s not. It staggers me that something with $50 or £20 on it, can’t just be changed to different value coins or notes up like any other coin for that value. No bank would refuse a request to change a 50p coin into 5 x 10p coins, so why cant a £20 be changed for 20 x £1 coins?