Collectors didn’t have a lot of time on Thursday to order the new 2016-W Mercury Dime Centennial Gold Coin. The 24-karat gold coin went on back order after about 20 minutes and then became unavailable by the 40-minute mark.
"The status of the Mercury Dime 2016 Centennial Gold Coin will remain as currently unavailable until all order reconciliations and order cancellations have been processed," U.S. Mint spokesman Michael White said in a brief statement.
The U.S. Mint set the mintage of the highly-anticipated collectible to 125,000 and it imposed a household ordering limit of 10 pieces.
Many who ordered or tried needed patience. A number of buyers described their difficulties in ordering online because of the volume of traffic, saying they experienced website sluggishness and connection timeouts — especially within the first 10 to 15 minutes.
Curiously, Mint officials didn’t have significant stats available for CoinNews at this writing, such as how many coins sold in the very early going or how many were at its fulfillment warehouse for shipping. We’ll offer more information here as it becomes available.
At $205 per coin, excluding shipping and if they all sold out, the United States Mint would take in orders totaling more than $25.6 million. The collector coins are already selling in the secondary market at significant premiums. Those in original packing have prices from around $295 to $350 while early release MS70s are listed from around $400 to $600.
The gold Mercury dime is one of three .9999 fine gold coins the U.S. Mint will release in 2016 to celebrate popular designs introduced 100 year ago. Launching later in the year are the gold Standing Liberty quarter and the gold Walking Liberty half-dollar. (See mock-ups of these gold coins.)
The centennial issues are struck to weights of 1/10 oz. gold for the dime, 1/4 oz. gold for the quarter, and 1/2 oz. gold for the half-dollar. The 1916-dated coins bearing the original designs have a composition of 90% silver and 10% copper.
Christopher Williams –
I guess he pays others to buy the household limit for him like MCM in Sarasota, Florida does, but Mezack actually brags about it with his orange fake tan & arrogant attitude on live cable television shows on HSN & then rips off the uneducated buyers he has hooked on his HSN Coin Collector shows. How shameless!
-NumisDudeTX
Mike “Sold Out Limited Edition” Mezack was hawking the “2016 Mercury Gold Dime” on HSN Saturday night (I DVr’d it) and it was stating how he (paraphrasing) “Logged on on 12PM, got kicked off and finally got his coins at 12:11.”
And yet on HSN alone, he had 1,789 coins in SP70 to sell.
Christopher Williams – I set my cable tv for his show at 1am this morning here in Austin, Texas & laid down earlier & woke up hearing his arrogant voice coming from my living room where the tv is. I thought I was having a nightmare! LMAO. The sad thing is he only has third-rate grading service ANACS graded coins & is asking top $ for them ($499.95) when I know a full-time reputable dealer in California who has top grading service PCGS SP-70 coins for only $350 & the PCGS 69 coins at $295 & coins in OGP/OMP for… Read more »
Seth-
Here is one that sold for $405.00 from PCGS.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2016-W-PCGS-MS-70-Mercury-Dime-2016-Centennial-Gold-Coin-16XB-PRESALE-Mint-Sold-/252365695498?hash=item3ac22aea0a%3Ag%3AZlQAAOSw-YBXGm9J&nma=true&si=XpMKZODhQJnSCTsGJgwuylG8IBA%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
I don’t know how he sleeps at night either.
I say the same thing about major sellers of autograph forgeries.
What is really interesting, Seth, is that Mike “Sold Out, Limited Edition” Mezack has only sold 300 of the 1,789 available as of 8:15 PM tonight (04/30/2016).
Christopher Williams –
Very interesting for sure! Mezack allso has 1,916 coins with another exclusive ANACS label for his Cable Shopping Network collector catalog & infomercials customers. Maybe he has oversaturated the market on these gold dimes. Plus, many viewers not familiar with these dimes or the nunumismatic hobby might be surprised when they see how small they are (smaller than a Lincoln cent & even a bit smaller than the original silver “Mercury” dime) on tv & decide not to buy them at $499.95 each. Hopefully he will be stuck with alot of them!
-NumisDudeTX
Seth-
Eventually Mezack will have to lower the price on them, which will infuriate those who purchased them at the $499.95 price.
I just bought one on eBay for $275 (free sh) minus $50 from using one of my credit cards that I remembered had a $50 cash bonus on it. So I actually paid a total of “$225” for it! So I guess it worked out well after all once I realized I had that $50 credit bonus on my cc.
To tell the truth, I was not impressed with the gold dime. Yeah, it’s small and the placement of the coin in the packaging gives a good view of the obverse but not of the reverse. I suppose one can pop the coin out of the packaging but I’d rather not risk it. Sometimes the machine packaging puts the coin in so tightly that I have to take the packaging apart and bend it to work the coin out. I still would prefer a proof version. Don’t get me wrong about the packaging – I was impressed with the layers… Read more »
Mike “Sold Out, Limited Edition” Mezack.
OK, so here is my take on this Mezack guy you all are talking about. I have not been familiar with this guy or his shows until this ongoing blog about him. Thanks for including the you tube video of his show. I never watch so I am not in the know of him. To me this is a guy who buys and sells coins, not unlike any other coin dealer. He’s merely in the retail coin business. There are thousands of retail coin businesses around the world. EBay is full of them. I cannot fault the guy for selling… Read more »
Mike “Sold Out, Limited Edition” Mezack “Expects a complete and total sellout.”
In my opinion, he’ll never sell all 1,789.
JP- There’s no “nuking” here. We all have an opinion. In the future though, please “space” your paragraphs to make it easier for all of us to read your comments. I’m mainly an autograph hobbyist, but I have always loved coins. I joined here to learn, but I’ve been watching Mike “Sold Out, Limited Edition” Mezack for a long time…. I remember a long time ago buying MS70 coins from HSN. I was very excited to own them. I opened them up and low and behold, all five coins had dings on them. Obvious dings. HSN has always been great… Read more »
Christopher Williams- Forgive the spacing. I wrote that comment in a Word doc and cut and paste it. I guess it didn’t convert well. You know all kinds of retail people embellish. I watched that you tube video again and Mezack stretches the truth but I didn’t hear any out and out lies. Unlike our politicians now a days. One possible good thing about this guy is that by having him keep his price high that may also help drive the market for anyone else who sells coins or for those of us that just collect it can help to… Read more »
JP- What makes me mad at Mezack – who apparently bought 3,600 coins – is that the people working for him to buy the coins is jamming up the website and then buying coins that have a 5-per-household limit which prevents regular everyday collectors from being able to buy from the mint at the regular un-inflated mint price. This doesn’t compare at all to jewelry stores that mark up their items 600% because they buy from wholesale places and not from the US Mint that has limits in place to stop this type of thing from happening. It does make… Read more »
Rodney Moore- Point well taken. I have been frustrated when I have had difficulty ordering a coin from the Mint. The last one I remember most vividly was the Baseball coin fiasco. Part of the problem was the US Mint’s site though. If this Mezack guy obtained that many coins you would think the Mint would look into it, but, if he has bought them thru other purchasers I don’t think there is much the Mint can do about it. It sounds like he has been in business for a long time and no doubt has a circuit of regular… Read more »
Rodney-
The number is much higher than the 3,600 you mentioned. Those are just the ones graded ANACS SP70.
The actual number is 3,705.
How many did he have to purchase just to get those 3,705 graded ANACS SP70.
Think about that.
Anybody know the dates of release of the gold centennial quarter and half dollar?
The U.S. Mint hasn’t provided release dates yet for the half-dollar and quarter centennial gold coins.
BTW, here’s a video of one of the gold Mercury dimes. Tomorrow, May 16, we’ll publish some photos of the dime along with this video.
Hilary –
The mint knows, they’re just not telling. Or, more likely, whoever’s responsible for updating the product schedule is too lazy to update the schedule. Providing a schedule that’s only 3 weeks out after almost 5 months into the year is ridiculous – another example of poor management by seat-warmer Jeppson. And still having 12 TBD’s at this time of the year shows an incredible lack of control over what’s going on at the mint.
Interesting comments here about the Gold Mercury Dime. If the mint wanted to give the collector a chance with coins like the Gold Mercury Dime they would not set the limit at 10 per household but rather set the limit at 1 for the first four weeks or so and then raise the limit. I see that the Mint has done some work with addresses that the coins were to be shipped to and stopped orders that exceeded the 10 limit per household. It looks like the mint has about 6000 of the Dimes left. I sure wish they would… Read more »
Bilelle –
where did you see that the Mint did work with the addresses and stopped shipment on orders that exceeded the ten coin limit?
Thanks!
Bilelle –
Considering that 6,000 remain after being available almost 4 weeks I think that all collectors, dealers, flippers, etc. have bought all they want and reducing the limit won’t make any difference. The market for this little coin is sated. But your suggestion is not bad. Remember Jeppson who has no interest in supporting collectors is “in charge” so that won’t change any time soon.
Hi Jim, thanks for your comments. Besides the 1 coin limit for four weeks the other feature I think would help is that anyone who bought on the first day could not buy again until the 4 weeks is up. Jim I am sure the market at this point may well be satisfied with product. However GREED seems to never go away so that is why I think the restriction of anyone who has received the Gold Mercury should not be allowed to buy in this 4 week period. I think the fokes at the mint are looking for ways… Read more »
Rodney Moore – My comments were based on Bilelle’s original comment. I assumed Bilelle had some way of knowing or calculating the number 6000 and from his comment that these were available for sale at the mint’s web site. If in fact there are 6000 available at the mint and the mint is just sitting on them then this is another example of Jeppson’s laissez-faire or in other words hands off management style. Jeppson is more and more demonstrating his total lack of competence and needs to be reprimanded and/or removed from his position of dep dir of the mint.… Read more »
Jim,
Do you mean the 6,000 that remain that are marked up hundreds of dollars? You mentioned that collectors, dealers, flippers have bought all they want – which may be so at the inflated rates.
However I,other collectors and even flippers, are probably interested in getting some from the mint at the original un-inflated, mint price.
I do hope the mint releases the remainder at a one per household limit because that would be somewhat fair.
There’s no way to go back and edit , so I’ll add:
Jim, initially I thought you mint the 6,000 available was the ones being offered by flippers, but looking back it seems you mint the ones at the mint?
So your comment doesn’t make sense to me if you meant the ones left at the mint. The 6,000 at the mint haven’t been available for people to buy, so that’s why the mint still has them.
To answer the question about where I got the number just under 6000 coins it was from the mints on data that is always on the mint web site. You have to dig a little to find it but it is there. The Actual number is 5080′ but I think the min it maybe still be checking out orders for violations of the 10 per household. I really believe the team working on the 2016 Gold Mercury Dime project is waiting until they know that they have satisfied the original set of legitment orders and after that the possible sale… Read more »
Purchased only one coin. Was told that it was “damaged in transit”. The mint did not contact me on this at all. If I was not constantly checking the web site I never would have known. O.K., damaged in transit and returned to the U.S. Mint. So my question to them was when would it be re-sent, or a substitute sent. The mint told me, several times, that I could not get my a coin, or another, period. They never could say why though. If I bought a coin, damaged in transit (not my fault) why could I not get… Read more »
I was watching Mike “Sold Out, Limited Edition” Mezak on Sunday (07/24/2016) night and he was still hawking his inventory of “2016 Mercury Dimes.”
Does anyone have any info from the mint on the status of the 2016 Gold Mercury Dimes that are left over from the 20
Minute Sale? 7-26-16
Bilelle
I complained to Sec Lew about mint management, product schedule, etc. who then passed the buck to somebody at the mint and the response I got was the following: “The Mercury Dime Centennial gold Coins proved to be extremely popular, with orders for coins reaching the maximum production limit very quickly once they were placed on sale at noon Eastern Time on April 21. The Mint continues to explore alternatives to ensure a wider distribution of its products. The Mercury Dime Centennial Gold Coin is currently unavailable. You may register for a ‘REMIND ME’ message [I’ve done so for a… Read more »