U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

Ken Kash 11 Aug 2008 22:59

When the U.S. Mint actively engaged the public with sales I was quite happy they recognized the collector.

Lately though, they are in marketing over-drive saturating the market with special packaging of coins and as a collector I've finally hit my limits. It was bad enough with multiple finishes unc, satin finish, proof, and burnished coins now we are being bombarded with special coin packaging sets. For just the Presidential Dollar series here are your choices of sets:

Presidential $1 Coin Historical Signature Sets
Presidential $1 Coin Uncirculated Sets
Presidential $1 Coin Proof Set
United States Mint Annual Uncirculated Dollar Coin Set
United States Mint Uncirculated Coin Set
United States Mint Proof Set
United States Mint Silver Proof Set

What the..???? If the Mint spent as much time with actually creating attractive coin designs as they do with marketing we'd probably have some beautiful coins in circulation!

Re: U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

GregA 17 Aug 2008 01:08

Seems like the mint never quite learns this lesson… They try to milk the collecting public for as much as they can get until the market cries foul, then they back off for a short while and then start over… It killed the commemortive program in 1950s, then again in the 1995 and now they are starting again with the presidential dollar coins. Will they never learn (or have they learned just how far they can push us before they back off and then start again…?)

Re: U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

Charles J Knowles 30 Aug 2008 18:51

Thanks for sharing my beliefs also. I'm new to (but old in yrs) to collecting and when I stumbled on th US Mint site I was I couldn't understand what I had or bought just last week. It seems like and endless stream of "deals" and items. I have
ended up with several different formats of the same thing, or so it seems. Bravo, good insight.

Re: U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

Charles J Knowles 30 Aug 2008 21:13

What does SMS mean? Is it a type/mint of a coin?

Re: U.S. Mint Marketing Machine Continues

Ken Kash 30 Aug 2008 21:34

Welcome to the site Charles :)

SMS stands for Special Mint Set.

From 1965 to 1967 the U.S. mint did not use mint marks and suspended the issuing of uncirculated mint sets and proof sets to deter collectors. The director of the mint at that time firmly believed that the reason for a coin shortage was that collectors were hoarding coins.

Of course it was a bad opinion as the hoarding was occurring because silver coinage was replaced with copper/nickel coins so naturally people hoarded silver coins because of the intrinsic melt value. This is phenomenon is known as Gresham's Law (see the coin dictionary in the side menu).

Eventually there was enough public demand (complaints) that the mint issued a special mint set to satisfy the many complaints received during that time. SMS were issued from 1965 to 1967 and beginning in 1968 the mint returned to issuing standard mint sets and proof sets.

If you see an individual coin with an SMS designation this implies that it is a coin that was removed from an SMS.

Hope this helps,
Ken

Last edited on 30 Aug 2008 21:49 by Ken Kash Show more