Native American Dollar Rolls Sold Out
The United States Mint has sold out of the individual 2009 Native American Dollar Rolls. The Denver rolls sold out yesterday, followed by the Philadelphia rolls today.
The rolls first went on sale on the US Mint's website on January 15, 2009, priced at $35.95 for the 25-coin rolls. As of the last weekly sales report, the US Mint sold 59,000 of the Philadelphia rolls and 53,732 of the Denver rolls.
For much of the year, the premium priced individual rolls have been on sale along side the Native American Dollar rolls offered through the US Mint's Direct Ship Program. This program allows individuals or businesses to order $250 boxes of coins at face value with no charges for shipping and insurance. The Direct Ship Boxes for the Native American Dollar finally went off sale in late October.
On the topic of the US Mint's Direct Ship Program, I have wanted to mention an article published this week in the Wall Street Journal. It describes how enthusiasts of frequent-flier mileage programs have used the US Mint's program to rack up huge amounts of rewards with zero net cost.
The article provides accounts of a few people who purchased $10,000 or $15,000 worth of coins and immediately cashed them in at the bank. They paid their credit card bill with the proceeds and earned rewards in the process. One man claimed to have purchased $800,000 in coins through the program.
The US Mint has since added this statement to the Direct Ship Dollar pages:
The purchase of $1 coins under the Circulating $1 Coin Direct Ship Program is a cash equivalent or cash-like transaction. Ordinarily, such purchases are not eligible for credit card rewards, cash-back, cash rebate, and similar programs. Check with your card issuer for its terms and conditions.The article also states that the US Mint sold a total of $130 million in coins through the program since it began in June 2008. This is frankly an astonishing number and represents a sizable proportion of the overall production. The total dollar coin production for the year to date is $423 million. How much of this production was prompted by the huge demand for dollar coins coming from the Direct Ship Program?
Coin Update News Articles:
2009 Presidential Dollar Mintages
2009 DC & US Territories Quarters Mintages
Labels: Other Coins
posted by Mint News Blog @ 12:31 PM
13 Comments:
Does anyone know how the 2009 mint sales numbers for the native american dollars stack up against previous years?
2008 Sacagawea Dollar sales:
250-coin bag P: 458
250-coin bag D: 501
25-coin roll P: 35,342
25-coin roll D: 34,257
The fractional Eagles have shipped from Apmex today.
Interesting article, originally in Wall Street Journal:
http://www.gadling.com/2009/12/09/frequent-fliers-turn-dollar-coins-into-easy-miles/
"According to the article, people were using credit cards with mileage awards to purchase thousands of Native American and presidential $1 coins for face value from the U.S. Mint, then depositing the coins directly into their banks when they were delivered..."
No doubt this boosted sales!
yawn.
I wonder if this abuse of the direct ship program will cause the end of direct ship?
Speaking of the direct ship program, I have noticed that the "Product will be available for shipping" date for the remaining direct ship products has advanced daily by 1 day in the future over the last 3 weeks or more. What's up with that? I'd really like to know.
I doubt if the miles program abuse will kill the direct ship. They have corrected that problem. If anything kils it, it will be the mounting shipping/handling cost that the Mint is absorbing.
The way the Mint never raises the s/h charge regardless of the size of the order, it always made me wonder if the Mint actually has to PAY the postage at all? I can see one governmental agency helping out another one. It seemed unlikely the Mint would be willing to ship a 40 pound package and only charge $4.95, but if you order the right stuff in one order, they seem to do just that!
By the way, did anyone notice that the UHR is now in the "Last Opportunity" section, with 21 days left to purchase?
Last minute buyers can keep their fingers crossed that the gold spot price decline will hold long enough to trigger a price decrease next week. Both fixes came in today in the $1,120's, so it's off to a good start for this week's average!
The volume shipping charges for all carriers, even at the overnight express level is very significantly lower than the rate for one-off single customer rates. (I have a business and deal with this all the time). The mint probably pays less than 25% of these published rates for their shipments because of the sheer volume of their business and the guaranteed shipment volumes.
That makes sense.
What I was getting at was the direct ship coins cost the Mint money. Even if it is only $1 per box, this would come out to $520,000 that they had to come up with to cover the cost to ship $130 million worth of coins. Eventually some bean counter will find this number his calculator, and say "What the heck are we doing?". Bye bye free shipping or the program.
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