Mint bullion bars the next collectible?

With Canada’s newest 10-ounce silver bullion bar design about to go on sale, collectors wonder if the bars themselves might have a value to them beyond their bullion content.

“We are one of the largest sellers of Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) bullion bars. We’ve had pretty good success selling them,” said Michael Haynes, President of American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX) headquartered in Oklahoma City, Okla.

Haynes’ company was taking pre-orders on the new silver bar before its Aug. 5 release date.

He said a big selling point for the new bar was the customers knew about them and trust them.

“The RCM is a familiar bar producer,” he said.

When asked about the latest anti-counterfeiting measures the RCM took with the new bars, he pointed out the reeded edge, the finish and the packaging as being attractive to both collectors and investors worried about security.

“The best thing to do is to make the bar different and the packaging different to run up the counterfeiting costs,” he said.

He then pointed out that the new design does exactly that.

“The Canadians are doing a good job. We will probably sell a lot,” he said.

He pointed out that the bars have a high degree of desirability by being from a widely respected official mint from which collectors can expect quality, new security devices and the opportunity to collect a new product.

Lee Crane, owner of L & C Coins, a rare coin business in Los Alamitos, Calif., evaluated the new bar from the collectible aspect.

“If you go back to the ’70s, there was an art bar collecting craze but that was for private minted bars,” he said.

Government minted bars, on the other hand, could be a different story, he said.

“A lot of collectors are buying modern coins, grading them right away and going after the best ones,” he said.

He said that it wouldn’t be a stretch to expand collector grading to bullion bars, though he questioned whether grading companies would create a slab for them.

“I don’t see them grading them, but they could. Could it catch on? It could,” he said.