The 25th Anniversary Silver Eagle Set that will be released on October 27 is expected to be by far the hottest U.S. Mint numismatic product of the year.
Like many silver eagle collectors, I have been dreaming of this set since not long after the release of the 20th anniversary set.
Some people feel that meaningful anniversaries must be divisible by ten, but I don’t think it’s the number of years being commemorated that matters to most people.
American Silver eagles are by far the most widely collected modern U.S. Mint coin and the most widely bought and sold bullion coin in the world. It is, in many ways, the successor of the Morgan dollar, although such a statement might be heresy to die-hard Morgan collectors.
Its classic Adolph Weinman-designed obverse and patriotic reverse, coupled with its establishment as the leading modern American coin, have created a large following within the numismatic community.
The five-ounce America the Beautiful (ATB) coins have also elicited substantial interest among collectors of modern U.S. coins in the past two years, but those coins simply lack the track record and widespread appeal of silver eagles. That may help explain why premiums on bullion silver eagles currently run higher than those on the ATB coins.
The fact that this year’s anniversary set will have a mintage of “up to 100,000″ compared to the 250,000 mintage of the 2006 sets plus the fact that it will have five coins, including the first-ever “S” Mint burnished silver eagle, have helped produce a major buzz in coin circles.
From the day the set was first announced, collectors began speculating about the price the set would be offered at. Most seem to be pleased with the Mint’s announcement on October 20 that based on current silver prices the set will be priced at $299.95.
There are some who think that a major drop in silver prices will put a damper of sales of the sets, but I think that is unlikely.
Collectors of silver eagles need this set to keep their collections current, and they are not buying it for silver content. Otherwise, they would put their money in the lowest-cost bullion silver eagles they can find.
In fact, when silver dropped to just a little above $30 on October 20, I considered purchasing a few bullion eagles for $34 each, which is barely above what a dealer will pay for the coins. Then I reminded myself that I have to husband my resources for the upcoming anniversary sets.
Now that the date, price, and household limit of five have been set, the discussion has moved on to expected secondary market values.
Apparently there are sellers on e-Bay offering the sets for about twice the Mint’s price, and one well-known modern coin dealer who advertises often in the print media has already started taking orders for raw sets as well as graded MS/PF-70 sets at prices that I personally think are unreasonable since no market has yet been established for these sets.
I think some collectors believe that a dealer’s or e-Bay seller’s pre-order price helps determine the future value of a coin, but the reality is that coin values take time to be established, as the process of supply and demand works itself out.
Of course, only time will tell what value the new sets ultimately reach, and like the values of most modern Mint products, those values will not ascend in a straight line.
One factor to keep in mind is that even though dealers will be able to buy five sets and will undoubtedly ask their friends and relatives to order five sets each as well, many larger dealers will be interested in larger quantities of sets.
One reason is because this type of product is always heavily promoted by larger dealers, and that is something that happened with the 2006 sets.
In fact, the 2006 sets, which were initially sold for $100 with a household limit of 10, at one point sold for over $700 each because of all those promotions. Just the 2006 reverse proof at one point went for about $600.
Today the 2006 sets are about $400, but for much of the past couple of years, they were available for closer to $300.
Many 2011 sets will be sent in for third-party grading in hopes of getting MS and PF-70 coins, and many will be broken up for the unique coins in the set: the reverse proof and the burnished “S” coin.
I suspect that the new sets, once they quickly sell-out at the Mint, will sell on the secondary market for approximately twice the original $300 price. But I would not be surprised to see prices reach close to $1,000 in the coming months, as dealers promote the sets to collectors who either were unable to get one from the Mint, who just learned of them, or who want additional sets as an investment.
Over time, as new people start collecting silver eagles, they will also want one for their collections, which should help support future demand.
But as with most modern Mint products, I would suggest caution when it comes to paying several multiples of the original price for these sets.
It is certainly possible that long-term demand will be sufficient to push prices to even higher levels at some point, but it will all depend on whether sets are in the hands of real collectors who plan to keep them for years, or e-Bay flippers and others looking for a quick profit.
A coin or set that sells out at the Mint but which is readily available from coin dealers and e-Bay sellers is not a truly scarce item, and serious buyers eventually discover that, which can cause prices to drop.
But this case could be different because there are so many silver eagle collectors and not just in the U.S. since silver eagles have global demand.
Whatever happens to future values, this will be a great product for collectors of silver eagles.
The 25th Anniversary Silver Eagle Set will go on sale at the US Mint on October 27, 2011 at 12:00 Noon ET. Orders may be placed online at http://catalog.usmint.gov or by phone at 1-800-USA-MINT.
Louis Golino is a coin collector and numismatic writer. His articles have been published in Coin World, Numismatic News, and other publications. He also writes a regular column called “The Coin Analyst” for www.CoinWeek.com about U.S. and world coins and precious metals and has written widely about international politics for newspapers and web sites.
Louis,
I definitely agree on your point about the initial pricing for the silver eagle set. I frankly regard $300 as a low price for this offering – they could easily have offered the product for $400 at a silver melt value of $20 and I still think there would be a huge collector stampede to acquire this product. The potential for premium growth as you pointed out is just too high with the rare issues, and the silver eagle is one of the most well-loved and collectable coins in the world as you pointed out above.
Next Thursday is going to be a crazy day. I’m betting on a stampede equal to or greater than the one to acquire the silver dragon typeset. I’ll be amazed if there are any of sets left after a day or two.
Thanks, Captain. I agree and hope the Mint’s site works better than Perth’s did.
I too will be picking this up. I started collecting the Eagles when I bought the 20th Anniversary Set and have been buying proofs and unc’s from West Point. One of my favorite coins to date.
Louis,
Thank you for another great article. I always enjoy reading them. They are very informative. I agree with most that the 25th anniversary ASE set is a sure winner and priced accordingly. My concern is with the US Mint ordering systems when they go on sale. It never fails: the website will crash, the phone lines will be busy. I am not sure why the Mint is taking so long to fix these issues. They should learn from the electronic trading system in Wall Street.
As far as I can tell, the mint has not done anything to improve their system since the UHRDE went on sale in January of 2009. Order fulfillment is handled by PBGS and they probably aren’t going to do anything that in any reduces profit. They don’t appear to ever add even temporary staff to handle huge order bursts. This set will take far longer to ship out than it will take to sell out. It appears that PBGS has actually reduced staffing this year because they are taking far longer to process orders than in the past. They have taken to fibbing about when items come in stock to make it look like they are still doing a good job but according to my records, the average time from order to receipt of product has slipped from 15.6 days last year to 27.5 days this year. Average times from ship to receipt and from claimed in stock to ship have both declined. They have taken to stating that items that are actually in stock will be ready to ship in two weeks (and the expected ship date increments every morning) and then an order suddenly goes from two weeks to in stock and ready to ship. They only seem to be doing this on popular products and as far as I can tell it is just fancy book keeping. Its pretty clear that all of the 2010 uncirculated ATB 5oz coins were in stock when they were offered for sale but the site routinely claimed that they were back ordered and wouldn’t be available to ship for two weeks. I guess I don’t blame them for using the smallest possible staff, after all mint order fulfillment isn’t supposed to be a high margin business, I just wish they would stop lying to us about what is going on.
Ikaika,
Thanks for your kind words. I agree about the ordering process. I know they have plans to implement a better system, but it is hard to understand why it has not been done yet. I think those who have the fastest internet speeds will be in the best position. The need to place multiple orders if you want to have a set or more graded further complicates things.
Clair,
I guess I have been lucky but I would say (without hard numbers) my orders this year have averaged about two weeks until receipt. Considering the Mint is the largest dealer in the world with more orders to fill than anyone else (which means they probably should have more staff, as you say), I still think it does a decent job on that side of things. What I have a harder time understanding is why they are trying to save money by delaying a major upgrade of the ordering process when that would clearly pay for itself and create goodwill for long-time Mint customers.
Louis,
I am concerned about the mint saying that there is a possibility of increasing the production in the future. If they start minting more sets then the 100K original mint amount, I am wondering what it may do to the future value and collectability of the set. I am concerned because of what they just finished doing to the price of the 2011 W uncirculated a few weeks ago. Any opinions would be appreciated.
I believe these sets will be the greatest investment I make this year! I currently have 2 of every proof silver Eagle ever made and will get the 5 set limit if the mint accepts my order. I’m keeping 3 sets and at some point in the future will sell 2 sets. Great profit potential here!
Am I missing something or did you remove the link to the USMINT site for the 25th Anniversary Silver Eagles?
I don’t believe there was a direct link to the product page in this article. If you are looking for it on the US Mint’s website go here:
http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&productId=16626&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=10111
Well, the day of sale has arrived and just as I expected, the Mint’s website is knocked-out to place an order for these sets. The stampede of the major dealers in slabbed bullion coins and their customers participating in a cash profit flip to those dealers IS ON! Look for these to get snapped up in groups of 5 and sold to the dealers to make the artificial proof and mint state rarities to sell at incredible premiums and profits. The rest of the five set sealed boxes will go a-flipping on Ebay.
With a mintage of 100,000 these will NOT ever be RARE. There will always be an available supply.
Look for this set to take a fast price crash, much like the even more limited supply of 2010 5oz bullion ATBs took!
Considering the 2006 sets are still selling on eBay for above $300, I do not suspect a fast price crash on these 2011’s. The 2006 set has a melt value around $100 right now for those 3 coins, they were limited to 200,000, which is double, this 2011 set is. They’ve sold for as high as $600 and are still above $300, that’s 3 to 6 times the value of the US Mint pricing.
Get it while you can for this pricing. This release will be on par with the 1995 West Point Proof and the 2006 20th Anniversary Set.
Pricing will increase permanantly.
a complete sell out i was on phone and pc for 5 hours 12-5 before i got my order in and i am on wait list looks like they sold out in 4 hours
WOW J pay I never thought to call which i should have done too!! It took me almost 2 hours to get.Luckily i had asked to get off work for a few hours weeks ago thinking ok i’ll get off at 11:30 get home log in and get my order in for 5 and then get back to work maybe all in an hour or so.It took until about 1:45 for one of my webpages to finally finish as they timed out at all stages of the game.. =( Why dos the mint make you have to go through that many steps when they know the site goes down so much and if you had less steps they would be able to complete more orders!! My first attempt and where i got to shipping addy and then was clicking to verify payment addy was within 30 minutes but of course timed out and couldn;t do anything to get it to go back and start back from that shipping page as sometimes you can go back a page. NOPE everytime i had to start over but so happy i got mine and sad i told friends and co workers to order at least one..The one guy laughed at me because i went home and he was just going to wait until he got home like he did with the 2010 ATB’s and another asked me if she could have one of my sets and pay me in a few weeks when it comes in.I said i would try and get a prepaid card and order her a set but alas they sold out too soon so BLANK HER!!! She ain’t getting one of my sets LOL
As far as I can remember, the 20th anniversary sets had a total mintage of 250,000 and there was a time period that you could have ordered as many sets as your wallet would allow at the tune of only $100.00 per set. It took several weeks for that lot to sell off entirely even with the fact that the first ever reverse proof was offered up in the deal. Now we have another reverse proof eagle which is two and one half times more rare and also a unique type of minting process which has so far only been done twice in the mint’s history and only for the eagle series. I figure that by numbers alone this would put this reverse eagle in the price range of at least the same as it’s counterpart of $300.00+ but remember we have another 1st for this set which is the “S” mint marked burnished uncirculated eagle!
Again, absolutely unique to this 25th anniversary set. Don’t see any reason that this one would not at least reach the value of a $300.00 mark as well. This is not to mention the remaining 3 eagles of the set that should be worth around $180.00 at a minimum! I think that the $800.00 marker is in line for this elite set and would not be surprised to so it reach higher numbers especially since we now know that this set had indeed {sold out} within the first 6 hours of being offered and this was accomplished without the mint’s web ordering capabilities in place!! Quite a trick when only having the phone as the mint’s primary selling medium for this 100,000 set sell out don’t you agree?
How do you know that you are on the wait list? I got my order in just before 5 pm. The confirmatioin says backordered for 11/11/11. When checking status it says expected ship date of 11/11/11. Thanks
Gil: The 20th anniv. set had a 10 per household limit and took about two and a half months to sell out. I agree on prices for the 25th set. By Jan. it could reach 1K per set and of course much more for 70 sets. It will be very hard to have a set with every coin a 70 since there are five coins. This is why there was such a fever to buy today. It was really rough going but after almost 4 hours, I finally got through. I am glad I stuck with it. For storage purposes it is best to put the fancy boxes aside and keep the capsules in as inert an environment as possible (you can buy silica gel and put it in your safe or safety deposit box), and the graded ones are easy to store.
Louis… Did you get your set?
– Troy
Troy,
Yes, I was able to put an order in, but I doubt anyone will get one until about three weeks from now or later.
How about you?
These sets by far, have been a great investment opportunity. At present a single set is selling for over $750. Single sets packaged by the mint unopened are going for over $1300. Sets graded 69 are going for over $1300. Sets graded 70 are going for over $2,000. The difference between this set and the 2006 set, is that there are only 100K Sets. This set has not only a reverse proof coin, but an uncirculated burnished Silver Eagle with an “S” mint mark. This S mint marked coin will be the the second scarcest silver eagle ever made. There are most certainly over 100,000 serious collectors who will want this coin as part of their set. The 1995 W is selling for $3000 in PF69 and has sold for over $20,000 in PF70. I see the 2011 S mint marked Silver Eagle going for $1000 in MS69 and over $5000 in MS70 soon! This coin will be KEY to all uncirculated collections. They are 5 to 6 times scarcer than the rest of the uncirculated silver eagles.
Has anyone seen any mint errors on the presentation cases, I got one on one of my sets and I an wondering if its one of a kind and what it might make that set worth. On the laquer presentation case the word United States is embossed “nited States” The U is totally missing.
I definately agree with Jim on the supply/demand and rarity side of the arguement. The S mint will be the key but there are still 100K out there. Rare by todays 13-30million minted standards but they aren’t a 10-50K offering either. I think at this point in December things are already taking it down a notch as I got mine after market for just over $600. My thinking is the 600-700 range is where the sets will settle long term. Especially if the 2006 sets were double the mintage and have settled at about three times the price so then just about triple the mint price on these as well. I see three things having a big effect on the future prices though. 1) How many collectors will there be down the line that didn’t have the money because of the economy that will be buyers in 5,10 or 20 years driving demand sky high? 2) How many sets will stay OGP or intact? I know many sets are secondary market with the reverse proof and S mint burnished removed. That will affect how many sets end up being out there for sale in years to come versus just individual coins. Look at mint and proof sets. Yeah millions made but millions also melted in three melt in the last 30-40 years, dealers selling individual coins if they don’t have em they cut em or break em out of sets. Also collectors, it’s easier to get that PDSS set of cents, nickels, dimes, etc. by breaking or cutting the annual sets apart. 3)How many will be dumb and break the coins out of the set for Eagle Dansco albums? They mean nothing outside of graded or OGP to collectors or dealers. I know some fools that did that to 2006 sets for the burnished W coins and low and behold the grading the companies need them OGP or already certified that they were from that set otherwise no anniversary set label. Just a plain brown label that says W. This also puts them just out there and could be melted down as bullion because they would become just another silver eagle. Just my thoughts on the topic.