Mint achieves good and bad sales results

Good news this week is the two-day sellout of the three-coin American Eagle 20th Anniversary Set. The 10,000 maximum sales point was reached on Sept. 1, following an Aug. 30 sales opening. A second sales option, the two-coin gold and silver set is almost three-quarters gone, while the three-coin silver set, with a much higher mintage maximum is about 40 percent sold.

Buyers most assuredly jumped on these new sets and already the sold-out gold sets are being offered for high prices on eBay (See Class of ?63 on Page 6). That is to be expected.

The bad news for the Mint this week is that sales of these new anniversary Eagle sets seems to be stepping on sales of the proof Buffalo one-ounce coins and sales of the new San Francisco Mint commemoratives. Only 3,000 additional proof Buffaloes were taken by buyers. This slow rate of increase adds emphasis to the opinion of those who believe it will not sell out its 300,000 maximum.

For San Francisco Mint commemoratives, sales have been respectable, but not spectacular considering how critical the first 30 days of sales are for any commemorative program.

If you add the proof and uncirculated totals together, you can see that almost half of the 100,000 gold $5s have been sold. This is quite good by past gold commemorative standards, but those hoping for a sellout might ultimately be disappointed. Totaling the silver dollar sales finds us approaching the 40 percent mark, which is a bit unusual in that less expensive silver coins normally tend to outperform higher priced gold coins.

Sales of the Legacy set are on pace to sell out the maximum 50,000. Perhaps this milestone will help reinvigorate total San Francisco sales.