United States Mint numismatic American Silver Eagles, America the Beautiful Five Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coins, and several sets may become cheaper as a result of plummeting silver prices. The white precious metal has dived by more than $10 to below $30 an ounce since a week ago, and as a result the Mint on Monday initiated several product suspensions.
Customers visiting the Mint’s online store will see a message of "This product is temporarily unavailable for product repricing" on eight product pages.
[Update: On Wednesday, October 5, the Mint suspensions for its four proof silver sets ended. They returned at the same prices. As of this writing (1:54 p.m. ET October 6), the other products remain suspended.]
[Update 2: On Friday, October 6, the Mint resumed selling the Silver Eagles for $9.50 less and five ounce coins for $50 less.]
| United States Mint Suspended Numismatic Product | Pre-Suspension Price |
| 2011 Uncirculated American Silver Eagles | 60.45 |
| 2011 Proof American Silver Eagles | 68.45 |
| 2011 United States Mint Silver Proof Set | 67.95 |
| 2010 United States Mint Silver Proof Set | 64.95 |
| 2011 United States Mint America the Beautiful Quarters Silver Proof Set | 41.95 |
| 2010 United States Mint America the Beautiful Quarters Silver Proof Set | 39.95 |
| 2011 ATB Gettysburg National Military Park 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin | 279.95 |
| 2010 ATB Mount Hood National Forest 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin | 279.95 |
United States Mint commemorative coins for the 2011 Medal of Honor and the 2011 US Army products were not affected, and neither were the 2011 September 11 National Medals. Each of them is presently available.
As mentioned earlier, the instigator for the suspensions is volatility in the precious metals market. The price of silver on the London Fix was $28.16 an ounce on Monday, $32.90 last Friday, and $40.46 a week ago Monday. The metal had been hanging out around $40 an ounce since mid-July.
Product sales suspensions are nothing new for the Mint. Several occurred in the last few months for both gold and silver-related coins and sets. The last time it affected silver products was toward the beginning of September when the white metal surged to $43.50 an ounce. Only the sets were affected, and the suspension lasted ten days. The United States Mint resumed their sales at unchanged prices when precious metals stabilized.
A similar scenario could take place again. It is not known how long the Mint will halt sales this time, but if it changes its product pricing, then according to previous practice, the new prices will be posted in the Federal Register before they are implemented.
As far as numismatic gold products are concerned, no halts or changes have been made as of this writing, although gold has also plummeted. The Mint does have a published pricing policy for its numismatic gold products. Based on it and current prices, it is likely that collector gold coins will see significant price reductions on Wednesday.
I am glad I waited on the SE’s. I was anticipating this would happen. Now if I buy a hundred of them, I could save some money and apply it to grading fees. Now if the grader’s would just drop they’re prices a bit.
It would also be nice if the US MINT would allow me to cancel MY order from a week ago so I can turn around and RE-ORDER at the new lower prices. But that “CANCEL ORDER” button seems to have mysteriously disappeared.
But with silver rising again this morning, I bet they’ll wait it out and leave their prices as is.
Wow that’s interesting…these guys never lose, no matter if the price is dropping or not. Now that is a great time for customer to buy, they don’t wanna sell. It is the same here in NZ. If you want to order something, the items that you do can, you have to wait up to 3 months to put your hands on the metal.
Oh well…if you have it, hold it…if you are able to buy, buy it…because prices are not likely to keep on these lower levels for so long…
Just got the end of summer catalog in the mail, and the PS4 proof silver eagle is listed at 59.95. Seems they already knew they were going to cut the price several weeks or even months ago.
I had decided to skip buying any Silver Eagles this year due to the price but maybe I’ll be able to get one or two after all.
I wonder if the Mint’s silver repricing policy is to wait until prices go up again…
Silver ATB 5oz’ers from the mint are back at $229.
The US Mint sent out everybodies subsciption Silver Eagles at the higher price, then made them unavailable for 2 weeks (the return policy from the Mint is 7 days) THEN, they made the Eagle available at the lower cost to those that didn’t have subscriptions. All that time, the price of Silver fluxuated a couple of dollars an ounce. And they refuse to refund the difference of the two prices to those that had subscriptions. Considering this is the FIRST year they started to sell the coins after a 2 year suspension, it appears they did this intentionally to make… Read more »