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Huffin' and Puffin' about the Royal Canadian Mint's new Stylin' |
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Is anyone else miffed by the Mint's new packaging? The Royal Canadian Mint has gone to one size fits all red plastic fold-out stand packages for the Brilliant Uncirculated and Proof Silver Dollars and the $100 and $200 Gold Coins. This is bound to create shipping mixups for the Mint and their dealer distributors. While I was never a fan of the U.F.O. landing style gold coin boxes, the coins are cheapened by their new containers, and it is tough to see why you should pay more money for the Proof Dollar than you do for the B.U. Dollar, never mind the gold, in their new packaging. |
 As a dealer, I routinely discard excess packaging. Both the Mint and the Post Office warn that their holders may not be archival. I often say to customers who ask about a missing cardboard container, or certificate, that they are buying the coin and not the holder. Perhaps many of us two by two Mint products for our own collections anyway. I was kind of used to the boxed Proof Dollars the way they were. It is heavy handed of the Mint to change the packaging of a series without a reason. The last time the Mint changed the packaging widely was to accomodate the new $2 coin. The new look looks tacky to me. Maybe I am just an old fuddy duddy, or afraid of change. After all, I have to put up with mostly self-adhesive stamps from Canada Post now. |
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| What's with the funereal black boxes anyway? | ||
 Does the Mint know that the end of the world is nigh or did focus groups tell them that basic black is best? The red boxes look like early plastic, not futuristic materials. The new packaging is in a way a throwback--and not in a good way either. The Mint has a monopoly, it can do what it wants. They sold out 21 products last year and had a massive turn around to profitability. Are they cutting costs with their new packaging to further improve the bottom line? |
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| Does the packaging matter to you? I imagine my clients arraying their cased dollars in a display case, not unlike ours at the shop. Does the new Proof Set or Dollar look right next to the others? It seems out of place to me, but maybe I will get used to it. The Mint changed the tombstone-shaped, plastic housed sets back to card framed sets last year. This was safer and cheaper for shipping, so why use a similar plastic-held format for the gold and dollars now? | ||
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What about the different bird aureate dollars in the Specimen Set? After all, the Loon dollar itself was created on a contingency basis when the Voyageur Dollar die was inexplicably lost. Some might say modern Mint Products are for the birds, or that any change in our non-circulating change is an improvement over our workhorse coins nicknamed loons and toons, as if sponsored by Warner Brothers cartoons.
The proof is in the pudding. I personally thought the Santa Claus Quarter was hideous and a cynical come on to make gift buyers acquire yet another set. It sold like gangbusters. But what if the new Proof gets its just desserts? Will Mint product buyers shun or embrace the Mint's apparently arbitrary packaging changes? |
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Newsletter #63 |
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