Waiting for Eagles no fun

Readers are getting anxious already about delivery of the two-coin West Point American Eagle sets.

Deliveries have only just started.

That’s both good and bad.

It is good because that would seem to indicate that there will be some exciting action on the secondary market.

The Mint said deliveries began June 21 and will be finished by Sept. 30.

Buyers snapped up 281,310 sets in the four-week order period that ended June 6.

In the first two and a half hours of sales back on May 9, the Mint sold 88,000 sets.

That’s quite a large number.

Ordinarily, someone who succeeds in placing an order after the program has hardly started will feel entitled to be at the head of the line.

While that is still essentially true, those 88,000 sets represent 31 percent of all of the sets ordered.

If a buyer happened to order toward the end of that first two and a half hours, that means there are tens of thousands of sets that will be delivered ahead of this buyer’s sets.

Little gets collectors’ competitive juices flowing more quickly than seeing others getting something that they are waiting for.

Feeling anxious about delivery is not a good thing. It is corrosive, especially if secondary market profits of the set buyer are perceived as being in jeopardy.

That sends blood pressure through the roof and I get a fiery email from someone who just can’t stand the wait any longer.

We’ll see how my email goes in the next few days. If its just one complaint in 11 days, that’s not too bad, because I know what it is like to wait and to wait and to wait.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."