Subscriptions Added for 2009 Lincoln Cent Roll Sets
Today, the US Mint announced that they will extend their subscription program to include the remaining 2009 Lincoln Cent Two Roll Set offerings. The subscription would cover the two remaining roll sets for the "Professional Life" and "Presidency" designs. It would not cover the first two releases for the "Birthplace" and "Formative Years" designs.
Under the subscription program, customers enroll in the program for a specified number of sets and the US Mint charges the credit card on file and ships the coins when they become available. The US Mint has offered subscriptions for certain annual or recurring products like Proof Sets, Mint Sets, Coin Covers, Presidential Dollar rolls, and the collectible Silver Eagles.
The main benefit of the subscription program is that products are ordered automatically, and you don't have to worry about fighting through potential bottlenecks on the US Mint's website on product release days.
There has always been discussion about whether products ordered under the subscription program ship earlier than orders placed on the first day. This was recently the subject of an experiment conducted by a member of Coin Network. Orders for the 2009 Proof Set were placed via subscription, within the first few minutes of sales, and later in the day. The result of the experiment was that the set ordered through the subscription was shipped and received more or less within the same time frame as orders placed on the first day.
Shipping for the 2009 Proof Sets in general seems to have been handled much more smoothly than prior 2009 products. For other products, I have seen reports of orders placed through subscriptions being shipped weeks after orders placed on the first day. Whether the results of the experiment are the exception or the rule is unknown.
The US Mint's subscriptions page can be found here.
Labels: 2009 Lincoln Cents
posted by Mint News Blog @ 12:14 PM
17 Comments:
It is interesting that, although it consitutes a series, the First Spouse gold coin program is not one of the Mint's subscription offerings. Do you have any idea why this is the case?
I think it is because of the pricing policy for gold products conflicts with the subscription policy.
Under the subscription program, the US Mint says that they will post price changes with a 30 day notice. The pricing policy for gold products allows prices to change every 7 days based on the average price of gold.
This might make it difficult or confusing to administer.
You mean I won't have to stop everything I'm doing at noon on the day of sale to deal the Mint's server overloads? Progress at
last!! :-)
When did the mint remove the 2009 Proof buffalo from the subscription list?
The option for 2009 Lincoln Cent Two Roll Sets is now on the Mint's website in subscriptions!
"When did the mint remove the 2009 Proof buffalo from the subscription list?"
I seem to recall the US Mint removing all of the gold coins from subscription programs when they adopted the new pricing policy. I haven't followed the subscriptions section too closely.
Could this mean that they are planning to make much more of "LP3's" and "LP4's"??? Based on folks past experience, does all orders have to be fulfilled for subscription or does it mean that its first come first serve???
Since the floodgates opened and the formative cent is still being sold. Wouldn't it have made sense to drop the limit of five per household? I tried to order a second set of five and into about the fourth day my second order was canceled. Do we have an idea how many have been minted/sold todate?
Most recent stat (last week) was 259,618 roll sets. I agree that order limit doesn't make a lot of sense any more. They have either set a very high production limit, or are keeping each design available until the next release.
Personally, I presume I'm in the minority, but here's my 2 cents. I felt charging an outrageous price ($8.95) for the Log Cabins, then making order access generally limited and other shipping issues. not worth my time. The absurdity backwashed and the Mint Director was routinely chastized for the Mint's breakdown and failure. The Formative years issue is still "available" and the quintupling of supply (probably more) has made them further overpriced and useless. This has done little to make things right with the tens of thousands of long-time and faithful collectors (paying customers) with regard to the Log Cabin issue. Now the Mint thinks there will be pacification by flooding the future supply for the final two pennys by subscription? Hardly. They shot themselves in the foot and it's not going to heal anytime soon.
A Coin World editor recently offered a simple solution to rectify the outrage, restore confidence to the collecting public and accomplish fixing the problem without destroying the worth of those who choose to retain the overpriced 2 roll sets. It's a no-brainer.
Offer all 4 penny versions in "workable sized" collector minibags, priced sanely. How about 125 of each 4 issues for a 500 coin collector bag? Mixed coins still work & sell for the Kennedy halves. The Mint must make every effort to polish and restore whatever acceptable image their once had. Easy solution - but are they listening? - Breezy
With reference to the First Spouse program and subscriptions - When the US Mint announced the program in late 2006, they did, in fact, offer a subsciption program for the series. And, for those who got in on the ground floor and completed the program, they also had made references to the eventual availability of a unique, 40+ coin display case for each type. At the time, I had registered for both series.
6-8 weeks prior to the release of the Martha Washington coins, the Mint issued an email announcing the cancellation of the First Spouse subscription programs, and further indicated that the coins would go on sale on a first come, first serve basis.
The rabid sales of the first three coins leads me to believe that the total number of subscription requests far exceeded the legislated quantities of the coins (20K each). So, to give everyone with an interest an equal opportunity to a coin, they cancelled the subscription program and directed the customers to internet and phone sales. The day the MW's went on sale was the day the Mint fully realized the inadequacy of the servers and network supporting their web-based sales.
As Michael has pointed out, sales have continued to decline since year one. While some part of the initial sales was due to speculators and flippers, I also think many of the people who started the program in 2007 didn't consider the depth and breadth of the program, the historic volatility of the gold market, or the long-term investments a collector would need to dedicate to the effort.
When all is said and done (in 2018 or so), I'll be very interested to see how many complete PR and UNC sets exist. So far, I'm 9-9.
(Michael - My thanks to you for your effort and your energy. Your site has become a part of my daily routine!!)
Yeah, I too took part in that subscription program, to the tune of 3 sets of each (Proof and Uncirculated). I was looking forward to the free 40+ wood coin cases to hold the entire series. The cases were to be a free gift to subscribers. Part of me clings to the hope that the Mint retained the list of subscribers who were cancelled out, and those of them who order each coin individually until the end of the series will still receive the free case to store the complete set. But before anyone jumps all over that and gives me the "it will never happen" routine, please know that I am already fully aware of that. I can still dream though, can't I?
So far, I've kept not just one, but TWO complete sets of both the Proof and Uncirculated First Spouse gold coins going. I've been there since day one (June 19, 2007), faithfully placing my orders each time new coins are released. Now though, it appears that I will have to abandon at least one set of each I'm afraid, due to the increasing cost of the coins. It's a shame really, because the previous poster was right: It will be extremely difficult to locate complete sets of the series by the end. I had hoped to have an extra set of each to sell off, to reduce the cost of the sets I keep.
SOMEONE will be glad I was crazy enough to do this some day, as these coins will make one HECK of an inheritance!
What I dont understand about the Lincolns, the Mint clearly states that they will be on sale for a "limited time". But yet, they keep selling them. How is that a "limited time"??? Someone, please clear this up for me.
I think it will most likely play out like other recent offerings: The "Limited Time" they refer to is the time period between when the product first goes on sale and the date of the next product in the series' release. So, my guess is the "Formative Years" rolls will remain on sale until sales for the "Professional Life" rolls begins in mid-August.
It's always possible that the rolls are selling fast enough that the Mint will deplete whatever stock from the overall mintage they held back for roll sets, thus making them sell out prior to the next release. However, it looks like they must have held back quite a few coins.
The "Birthplace" roll sets were an afterthought product, hence the Mint must have had a much smaller remaining inventory of coins to allocate to that cause. To think that at first they weren't even going to produce special roll sets for the special Lincoln cents this year at all. What a chunk of change they would have missed out on! It looks like the failure of the banking system distribution of the new cents has put a LOT of extra money in the Mint's pockets.
Good for the mint on "banking" on consumers sense of capitalism. And good for those capitalists who have unwisely invested in a unregulated market (ebayers)
I bet the LP3's won't sell half of what the LP2's have sold.
I wouldn`t be suprised if the mint offered collectors a second chance on the lincoln birth place rolls. a lot of collectors was caught emty handed with the short order period,the mint most likely got a lot of complaints.
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