The U.S. Mint’s Dec. 1 announcement that the new 2010 America the Beautiful 5-ounce .999 fine silver bullion quarter dollars were to go on sale December 6th was canceled earlier this week over Mint concerns and complaints that the much anticipated coins were being overpriced.

The US mint does not distribute its bullion products directly to the public, but rather uses a network of 11 “Primary Distributors” who purchase the coins from the US Mint at $9.75 over the spot price of silver, and then in turn mostly wholesale these out to retail dealers. Few of these Primary Distributors have retail facilities.

Here is a list of the Primary Distributors:

• A-Mark Precious Metals
• Coins ‘N Things Inc.
• MTB
• Scotia Mocatta
• Dillon Gage of Dallas
• Prudential Securities Inc.
• The Gold Center
• American Precious Metals Exchange, Inc. (APMEX)
• Commerzbank International (Luxembourg)
• Deutsche Bank A.G. (Germany)
• Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K. (Japan)

As part of the December 1st announcement, the Mint surprisingly drastically reduced the mintage’s for the much anticipated 5 oz  America the Beautiful Bullion coins from an anticipated 100,000 coin  (for each of the 5 designs this year), to a mere 33,000.

After the announcement, APMEX decided to offer the 2010 5 coin set to customers and allow them to pre-order the coins from their website. Apmex is one of the few Primary Distributors that maintains a retail presence  through their website (which is excellent by the way). The 5 coin set was being offered at $1,395.

Obviously with such limited supplies, the large (3 inches in diameter) bullion coins were expected to be in hot demand .

However within hours of this pre-launch offering, complaints started to be registered with the US Mint because Apmex, responding to the anticipated demand and low mintages, had placed a $130.00 premium per coin on the set.

Apmex customers didn’t seem to mind the hefty premiums too much because within 19 hours after the posted  pre-launch offer, they had sold 1000 sets. But the US Mint did mind. In fact they halted the release of the new 5 oz coins to review the situation. (more…)

Pinoy’s design chosen for 2012 Olympic coin
ABS-CBN News
A Filipino graphic designer based in London has brought a rare and distinct honor for the Philippines. Roderick Enriquez could not believe to this day that his coin design would become one of the treasured mementos for the 2012 London Olympics. His sporting design was chosen to be printed on millions of 50-pence, the biggest coin circulating in Great Britain. Enriquez submitted four entries, but his design for the wrestling sport got the nod of the International Olympic Committee.
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Commentary requires discerning eye
Numismatic News
Early this morning I was reading some overseas commentaries on precious metals and one presented what appeared on the surface to be a very logical argument for the price of gold to approach infinity. Is this plausible? Well yeah, if you believe in the tooth fairy. The problem with 98 percent of those who write about precious metals is that they are in the business of selling it. They use fear and greed to promote their business. So one must sift through articles for the real and credible information. Now don’t misunderstand me.
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Coins Depict Controversial Shroud of Turin
Numismaster
The remarkable Sindone di Torino, aka Suaire de Turin, aka Shroud of Turin is on of the more controversial artifacts of Christendom. It is certainly one of the most studied. Many dismiss it as a hoax created in the Middle Ages, but millions of Christians venerate it as the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, believing it to bear the imprint of his crucified body. All four Gospels refer to Joseph of Arimathea wrapping the body of Jesus in a linen cloth before placing it in the tomb. Several pieces of cloth have been claimed to have been used in the burial, but none has gathered the religious following of the Shroud of Turin.
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2010 Proof Silver Eagles at 707,704
Mint News Blog
The total reported sales for the 2010 Proof Silver Eagle have now reached 707,704. After less than three weeks of sales, this amount has already exceeded the final mintage of the last available issue of the series. The US Mint did not provide sales data last week, so the latest report available on Coin Update News reflects two weeks worth of new sales data. The Proof Silver Eagle had debuted with sales of 273,212, so the latest total represents an increase of 434,492.
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The Story of the Truman Library Collection
The E-Sylum
In the late 1940’s Joseph B. Stack, my uncle, became friends with John W. Snyder, Truman’s Secretary of the Treasury. John W. Snyder was a coin collector and we at Stack’s assisted him in forming a collection, different than others we had help develop. The collection was in honor of all the Presidents’ and featured one coin of each denomination that might have been issued during his Presidency. For example, for George Washington, you would need a Half Cent, large Cent , Half Dime, Dime, Quarter , Half Dollar, Silver Dollar, a Quarter Eagle, Half Eagle and Eagle.
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The US government said it is still trying to identify the source of the production glitch that forced it to postpone introducing the new $100 bill and could force it to shred hundreds of millions of error-ridden bills. The issue stems from what officials called a “problem with sporadic creasing of the paper during printing” that resulted in blanks spots on some of the newly redesigned bills.

Officials at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are working with Crane & Co., the Massachusetts company which has supplied the government with paper for currency for more than 130 years, to identify what caused the errors, but it’s unclear if the problem was caused by Crane’s paper or some other element of the printing process.

A person familiar with the situation said that at the height of the printing process, as many as 30 percent of the bills rolling off the printing press included the flaw, leading to the production shut down.

The government said it believes most of the 1.1 billion bills already printed can be salvaged, but any of the bills that were misprinted will have to be shredded.

According to a source familiar with the matter, the bills are the most costly ever produced, with a per-note cost of about 12 cents—twice the cost of a conventional bill. That means the government spent about $120 million to produce bills it can’t use. On top of that, it is not yet clear how much more it will cost to sort the existing horde of hundred dollar bills.

Sorting such a huge quantity of bills by hand, the officials estimate, could take between 20 and 30 years. Using a mechanized system, they think they could sort the massive pile of bills in about one year. (more…)