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Mystery and intrigue are infusing the Royal Canadian Mint's circulation and collector coin programs. There are many questions arising from their 2003/2004 coin offerings. There are four different 2003 pennies circulating, featuring old and new portrait styles, and P and No P designations. If the Mint has switched to plating pennies since 1999, then why are we still producing no P pennies today? Penny profusion may produce confusion among collectors. The extra cents can be promoted to non-collectors in the same way Millennium quarters have proved interesting to the general public. The Mint has done little to promote the changes in the change to the people who actually use the coins. Longtime collectors are left wondering just how many coins it takes to complete a year set. |
 The third Natural Wonders coin, originally scheduled as a $5 Holographic Silver Maple Leaf, has now been released as a 2004 $20 pure silver piece bearing the new Susanna Blunt portrait of the Queen. The hologram is well suited to the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, theme of the late, or early, coin. Can anyone explain why the second coin in the Natural Wonders series bore no hologram and came out more or less as scheduled?
Presumably someone did not like the way the hologram looked. Remember that the holograms also disappeared from the $20 Historic Transportation Series in 2003. I am beginning to wonder if the portrait change was also a problem because, oddly, the seventh Lunar New Year coin, just released, early, and dated 2004, bears the old Dora de Pedery-Hunt portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. |
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Is this an oversight or does the Mint intend to use the outmoded portrait on the balance of the Lunar New Year Series? |
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 The 2004 $15 Silver and Gold Cameo Year of the Monkey coin carries a new retail price of $88.88. Eights are considered lucky but fours are not. Are four eights still okay? If some 2004 coins are available for Christmas, especially when the Lunar New Year is not until February, might it also make sense to have 2004 coin sets available? Some of our retail clients consider 2003 coins old news by now and would prefer 2004 sets for gift giving. Would not the turn of a calendar year be the best time to launch a new portrait, price increases, or new products for a new year?
Instead, our Mint has been monkeying around with portraits, prices, mintages, and formats throughout 2003, which may well be remembered as the year of the monkey, or at least the year the Mint went bananas. Is it fair of the Mint to raise prices, change formats, or increase mintages over the course of sometimes short duration coin series? |
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Worse yet, after floating the idea of selling some, or all of their products on eBay, to cut out distributors and take advantage of occasional speculative markets, the Royal Canadian Mint created two unique pieces and sold them for charity in the online auction. Apparently, the two gold Coronation and Jubilee style souvenir dollars, featuring the new portraits, brought a combined total of $117,700.00 for the Humane Society and Save the Children's Fund. While it is laudable that the Mint raises some money for charity, do we really want the Mint striking coins for any purposes other than circulation or collectibles trials and eventual distribution? Will deliberate errors be made next? Can the Mint see the error of their ways? Perhaps I am wrong and will learn to see my mistakes in judgement. Clearly the Mint thinks if one coin is good, then two coins are better. There are two prooflike sets, two silver dollars, two proof sets, two portraits, and two minting processes. Somebody build us an ark here so we can get all these coins on. What if the coins are the flood? If two heads are better than one, you get more than your two cents worth, but are we in double jeopardy? Fewer coins and more consistency might make better sense.
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Newsletter #49 |
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