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Is today sellout day?

The Mint begins offering on its website the American Eagle 25th Anniversary Silver Coin Set at noon Eastern Time.

I will say, yes, the set will sell out, but it will take longer than a day to achieve that goal.

I declare this with all the confidence of someone who last week attempted to guess the issue price.

The Mint might tend to agree with me, though. There is a limit of five sets per household, but this applies only for the first week. Perhaps this is an indication that the Mint thinks sales will be wrapped up in a week.

If there were a danger of the coins disappearing in a single day, the order limit probably would have been one set per household.

Now about that issue price. My guess of $289.95 was $10 below the actual $299.95. Must be that darn reverse proof that adds the extra 10 spot to the price.

With its $4.95 postage and handling charge, the Mint will take in a cool $30 million and a little change if it sells all 100,000 sets. That’s no small potatoes, but eminently doable when collectors are gung-ho for something.

The five coins in the set include the reverse proof from Philadelphia that I mentioned, plus a regular West Point proof and a “W” uncirculated Eagle. San Francisco kicks in two coins, but only one carries the “S” mintmark. The other will simply be a bullion coin that looks like the 36 million other 2011 Eagles that have already been sold this year in the investor market.

A lacquered hardwood box houses the five coins.

Will the box turn into an investment in its own right as the cherrywood box that housed the six-coin 1986 Statue of Liberty coins did?

No. I think that would be pushing it.

Paying $100 for a box on the secondary market 25 years ago is just one of those crazy, inexplicable things we collectors did when we were younger.