Second chance for gold and platinum?

Second chances occur from time to time in life. The same is true for sold-out U.S. Mint coin offers in recent years.

At the end of 2014 I was able to buy one of the cupped Baseball Hall of Fame silver dollars when they went back on sale approximately eight months after they had sold out.

It was a pleasant surprise.

I had missed getting one the first time around.

So what might become available for a second time this year?

Two coins come immediately to mind.

When I did the "Mint Statistics" pages yesterday for Numismatic News, I learned that the number of gold Centennial Mercury dimes reported as sold dipped another 10 coins to 116,100.

A sellout occurred April 21 with the mintage of 125,000. That figure is 8,900 more than what has currently been declared sold. Surely the Mint does not want to be stuck with them.

Surely, too, not all the coins are of inferior quality.

What we know is that in any second release process they cannot gain an early release label from third-party grading services. Buyers on the secondary market currently pay premiums for such a designation.

The leftover coins might not even get an SP-70 designation. They might be, horrors, SP-69.

Also what they likely won’t be is cheaper than the original $205 issue price.

Gold is higher by more than $100 an ounce since the gold dime was offered.

Any Mint re-offer will price the coins appropriately to reflect the current bullion market at the time the offer is made.

The second piece with a growing number of remainders at the Mint is the 2016-W proof platinum $100 one-ounce coins.

This coin sold out in less than an hour June 30. Maximum mintage was 10,000.

The current sales figure stands at 9,285. This is down two pieces in the most recent week.

If it follows the gold dime pattern, the Mint will have more remainders in the coming weeks. However, the lively platinum bullion market might have blunted the urge to return them. The metal is up by more than $150 since the proof was made available.

However, with the Mint currently holding 715 pieces that are unspoken for, it would be worthwhile financially for the coins to be offered a second time.

The same secondary market factors that affect the gold dime will also affect the proof platinum Eagle.

Early release designation would be out of the question, but I expect there are collectors out there who would simply want the platinum coins for their collections.

A Mint factory seconds sale could occur at any time between now and the end of the year, as I discovered with the Baseball Hall of Fame coin. So be watchful and sign up for the "Remind Me" function on the Mint website for the two coins.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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