Kennedy set falls short

There has been no sellout for the John F. Kennedy Coin and Chronicles sets.

Buyers could still order the $57.95 set on the U.S. Mint website Sept. 23, one full week after the set first went on sale Sept. 16.

In fact, sales numbers dropped from the high water mark of 48,462 achieved Sept. 20. As of midnight Sept. 23, the figure was 48,117.

What a comedown for something that sold to the tune of 40,000 in the first hour of sales.

As of Sept. 23 it was still too soon to fully evaluate any possible returns of physical sets by buyers looking for any excuse to get out of a losing speculation.

Motivating many buyers to acquire the Kennedy set was the rapid sellout June 30 and then again on Aug. 11 of the Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower sets, respectively, and the hope that the Kennedy set also could be sold for triple issue price or more as these sets were on the secondary market.

The Kennedy set had a much higher hurdle to clear to reach sellout status. The maximum available is 50,000. This compares to just 17,000 for the two prior sets.

When the Lyndon Johnson set is offered Oct. 27, the maximum will be 25,000 sets.

While it is still possible, even likely, that the Kennedy set will sell out, a cautionary tale is provided by the gold $100 High Relief, which also failed to reach its 50,000 maximum after soaring past the 40,000 mark soon after its July 30 release. Then its sales numbers also went backwards.

It is still struggling. See Mint Statistics for the latest sales figure.

See Connor Falk’s story about the impact of the lack of a sellout has had on secondary market pricing.

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