Stopped at the border

I have long believed that telling people they cannot have something is a sure way to make them want it.

Perhaps we will see this demonstrated with the new Royal Canadian Mint $20 coin marking the 40th anniversary of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.

It has a maximum mintage of 40,000.

It is available only to Canadians.

I did not know that three weeks ago when the issue caught my eye. In fact, I was so impressed with it, upon reading the press release and seeing a photograph of it I put it on Page 4 of Numismatic News.

Baseball is a popular sport. Our cupped coin issues for the National Baseball Hall of Fame proved that in 2014.

So why not baseball team coins? A sure hit, I thought.

After the story was published, a reader called me late last week to tell me he was interested in the coin, too.

Great. How could there be problem? But there was.

The Royal Canadian Mint would not sell him any.

Why?

He is an American.

To be fair, and more specifically, he is not a Canadian.

The issue has been designated a Canada only issue.

That surprised me.

I did not remember such a label in the press release that I had read.

There was no indication of that on the website when I checked it out before publication.

But there it is.

After the reader telephone call, I delved further into the website. You had to go into the checkout process before the Canadian requirement popped up.

I thought that was odd. I contacted the RCM.

I cannot report that the offer was opened up to those of us who are not Canadian, but now the website clearly notes the restriction when you get to the first page of the offer.

Does that make you want it all the more?

Those darned clever Canadian marketers.

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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