THE COST OF COLLECTING ALL 2015 U.S. MINT ISSUES

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 9, February 28, 2016, Article 26

In the it's-too-crowded-nobody-goes-there-anymore department comes this question: so who really buys all the special coins the U.S. Mint produces? Well, I don't know of anyone who buys them all (but please prove me wrong if you know anyone who does). Why not? Well, the days of ordering the annual proof and uncirculated sets are long gone. The Congress and Mint have been milking the collector money cow for years, and the number of annual issues (and the resulting cost) has skyrocketed. Even an Eliasberg would throw up his hands today and drop the pursuit of a complete collection of all U.S. coin issues.

Harvey Stack pointed out an article by Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez published February 23, 2016 on CoinWeek. Thanks. The author enumerates and totals up the purchase price of all 2015 Mint issues. Here's an excerpt. -Editor

Have you ever wondered what it would cost to collect all the different coins that the United States Mint released each year? I’m not talking about the various coin sets and products, but rather one specimen of each available coin. For example, if you wanted to acquire the 2015 March of Dimes proof silver dollar and the two special 2015 proof dimes, you wouldn’t need to buy the March of Dimes proof dollar on top of the 2015 March of Dimes Special Silver Proof Set, since all three coins come in the latter.

You would, however, have to buy the individual 2015 March of Dimes uncirculated silver dollar, as that piece was sold separately.

But it goes without saying that building an entire set of coins from the U.S. Mint is much more complicated now than it was in the late 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s, or very early ‘80s, when the Mint struck relatively small numbers of different coins and offered a quaint (and manageable) variety of products (basically just proof sets and uncirculated sets of regular-issue coinage).

Coin collectors today certainly may have more options than our predecessors had only a few decades ago. However, the large yearly selection of new coin products from the U.S. Mint today means that more and more hobbyists are becoming more and more selective about what they buy–unless they can afford shelling out thousands of dollars each year to order virtually everything in the Mint’s catalog.

And THAT’S assuming collectors can even keep track of what the Mint is offering!

Anyway, back to my question: have you ever considered how much it would cost to collect one of each of the individual coins that the United States Mint produces in a year? What follows is an attempt to answer that question for a specific year: namely, 2015. Here is a list of the minimum number of products one would have to buy in order to assemble a collection of all the different 2015 U.S. Coins.

Total Coins Purchased: 292
Total Issue Price: $14,915.30
Face Value: $422.09
Numismatic Coins + Bullion Coins Purchase Price: $18,714.30
Total Face Value: $563.09

I believe the excessive differently made and packaged issues with the profit that is made, is ludicrous and a bad action by our Mint.

I'm less inclined to complain, but neither do I attempt to keep up with the modern Mint's output. I'm more laissez-faire; let the market decide. When people stop buying the stuff, the Mint will stop producing it. Meanwhile, what they're producing is generally high quality and wouldn't exist if there weren't a market for it. Even if you believe that the "90% of everything is crap" rule applies, those 10% are gems that will stand the test of time among collectors and investors. -Editor

I know that there are sceptics as how to deal with this problem, but the unrealistic premiums that are be extracted by the Mint are unbelievable.

I needed last year two rolls of 2015 Quarters or Half Dollars for "dinner plate gifts" and was unable to locate them at the banks for face value and none of my friends stocked them. It was not the beginning of the year, but in June and July

I did, at a cost of $17.50 per roll purchase them from the Mint (face value of $10.00 a roll) and these where intended for circulation. (I ask where, only from the Mint?)

I believe that the Mint practice is getting out of hand once more, as they did from 1982 to 1995 when they issued commemoratives at PREMIUM VALUES, sold out of a few, over produced others, and if one who bought one of each of these products starting in 1982 lost over half their money by 1993. I believe the premium practices and multitude of coins issued, in various forms of packaging are excessive and should be investigated.