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There is a new US Mint coin deal dropping this Thursday, March 11th that will offer the potential for over $6,000 in spending plus a potential to lock in advance profit with a buyers club (or shoot for the moon on your own). I’ve written about buyers club deals in the past and why you may or may not want to consider them, but there is no doubt that this could be attractive for those looking for ways to meet spending requirements. Just beware that Amex could code these as a cash advance.
The Deal
The US Mint will be releasing two deals at noon Eastern time on Thursday, March 11th, 2021.
- Limited Edition American Gold Eagle Proof Coin
- This coin will cost north of $2300 (the price is set on Wednesday based on the spot price of gold). Shipping is an additional $4.95.
- Limit 1 coin per household.
- Limited Edition Four-Coin American Gold Eagle Set
- The cost of each set should be between $4300 and $4400 (again, the price is usually set on Wednesday based on the spot price of Gold). Shipping is an additional $4.95.
- Limit 1 set per household.
Buyers clubs are offering commissions on each coin. The deal Miles to Memories has reported is for about $100 over cost on the single Gold Eagle proof or about $200 over cost on the 4-coin set.
PFS Buyers Club
PFS Buyers Club is one of several clubs that offer an easy way to get a fixed profit from coin deals. We’re listing details for PFS Buyers Club here because it is the one club that we have direct experience with.
For the deal listed above, PFS Buyers Club is offering the following commissions (in other words, they’ll cover the amount you paid plus this much more):
- One Ounce Gold Eagle: $100.05 per coin
- Four-Coin Set: $200.05 per set
If you’re interested in giving PFS Buyers Club a try, please consider signing up with our referral link, with our thanks: Sign up here for PFS Buyers Club
Once you’ve signed up, PFS Buyers club offers full details online about how the deal works. If you then decide to go forward with the deal, you’ll have an option to click “Opt In” for each deal. Important Note: While it can’t hurt to sign up for PFS Buyers Club, please don’t opt in for these deals unless you are fully committed to purchasing the coins.
Quick Thoughts
I’ve written about these deals many times in the past. The club with which I’ve done business many times is PFS Buyers Club and I have always been paid promptly and haven’t had any issue (and in fact quite the opposite – I’ve had positive customer service experiences when I’ve made inquiries). In past deals, some members have commented to say that they’ve seen buyers clubs offering higher commissions and/or to share their concerns about the PFS contract. If you’re interested in participating in this kind of thing, it may be worth shopping around and it’s always worth reading the fine print. I urge some caution and consideration of the risk no matter where you choose to sell. See: Is a buyers club a good idea for you?. All it takes is a single total loss to wipe out your profits for a long time.
Still, this can be an easy way to meet spending requirements – whether new card bonuses or big spend bonuses. On the flip side, Amex changed terms earlier this year that seem like they could classify Mint coin purchases as cash advances. Personally, I will find it surprising if they they are looking to pick a fight with every Amex cardholder who is also a numismatist, but that’s just an opinion and the wording is certainly such that a Mint purchase may not earn rewards or get hit with cash advance fees.
Obviously if a buyers club is offering a commission of $100 or $200, they anticipate selling the coin for greater profit yet, so you may be able to chase after more profit on the private market. That comes with its own risks and time commitments, so you’ll have to run the numbers and decide what works best for you.
H/T: Miles to Memories
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[…] 3/9/21: Re-publishing this post for those considering the Mint coin deal this Thursday. See the section about coins and bullion potentially not earning rewards and incurring cash advance […]
CRASH. what a bust this turned out to be. People are now selling these on Ebay for a loss. See many going for $2500. With Ebay and paypal fees this equates to big loss.
Are you looking at the right coin? I just searched the 1oz Gold proof in the $2900-$3700 range. I think you’re looking at auction listings with 5-6 days left with starting bids set at $2500. Those will go up before they close.
I only see 164 of them for sale on Ebay. In past sales on these coins with low mintages, I’ve found prices to increase substantially a week or two after folks rush to move theirs for a small profit margin. The market certainly could tank, but with a product limit of 4,500 on that 1oz Gold proof, I don’t see it decreasing in price any time soon. Based on my past experiences with these sales. I find that prices tend to increase substantially 1-2 weeks after the Mint sells them and the first wave of people are done rushing to sell theirs for a small profit. Things could obviously be different here, but with a product limit of 4,500 I would bet that we won’t see prices much lower than $3K on that coin for completed listings.
Also worth noting that the last page or so of completed listings on eBay for the last 2020 proof (20EH) have been in the $3,000-$3,100 range and that one had a product limit of 7,000.
Nick, looking in the completed listings. So far only one coin has sold for today march 13 for $2750. With that sale that guy broke even (minus 13% ebay/paypal fees). And you cant always rely on past practices. You may indeed be right. But anybody looking to make a killing on this might be worried. And once a product is sold, and lets say $2750, most consumers will be looking for that price or lower.
You’re right that someone who set their Buy It Now price at $2750 sold today. That’s exactly what I mean when I say that prices rise after a week or two — because you get the newbies who panic and undersell out of the way. The cheapest Buy It Now listing right now is one listing for $2800, then the second cheapest is one for $2900 and it goes up from there. So after that one more listing at $2800, everyone else who has it listed with a Buy It Now price would earn more than they would have selling it for $100 profit.
I’m not sure if you’ve sold coins before. Your claim that “once a product is sold, most consumers will be looking for that price or lower” is totally off base here — that concept applies only when supply is higher than demand. When supply is limited like this, sales have the exact opposite effect. There were 166 listings for this coin when I woke up this morning. Now there are 163. As supply dwindles, price tends to increase as there are simply more collectors than there is supply. On a coin deal last year (that one silver one that originally cost like $70 and skyrocketed) I was trying to help a family member sell one locally for $450. By that evening, I sold it on eBay for ~$800. Four days later, when another family member got theirs, we sold it on eBay for $1250. A few days later, the eBay listings were even higher. As supply ran down, prices ran up, which is a basic economic principle.
The same phenomenon happens every year at Christmastime with the hot video game set of the year — they originally sell for $250-$350 in the store and consumers don’t head to eBay expecting to pay that price or less. Quite the opposite — they expect to pay more because supply is scarce. If you’re talking about a Toyota Camry, which is available everywhere you look, you’re right that the next consumer doesn’t want to pay more than the previous consumer. But with such low production, this just isn’t the same thing.
Obviously demand may dwindle – I don’t have a crystal ball – but I don’t think it’s time for anyone who bought this to panic at all. The Mint does have a 7-day return policy, so you do have a chance to return it if you want — but I think that would be shortsighted. These things haven’t even shipped yet, so the people selling them are selling a confirmed order, not even a physical coin yet. I doubt these things will go to $15K or anything, but I think they are likely to still be easily profitable.
For the record, that’s not my wishful thinking — I didn’t get the single coin — but it is my opinion. It could obviously be wrong. We’ll see!
OK we will see. There seems to be a lot “supply” right now. But it appears little “demand”. And as for Christmas, there is a love factor involved. A lot of parents don’t want to disappoint a child who wants his favorite toy Christmas morning. So that effect drives up the price. That same toy in July wouldn’t sell at Christmas prices.
Also worth noting. If we are talking about the same $70 silver one once proof coin. End of WW2. Your sellers did good. But the buyers no so much. As these coins can easily be had now on ebay for the mid $350- $400 range. So buyers maybe a little wary of jumping on this coin right now until the market settles out.
I used Christmas as an example of time when supply is low and so people don’t expect to pay less than the person before them. The Nintendo Switch market continued well beyond Christmas. Here’s an example post from Miles Per Day when he was selling them in March of 2017.
https://milesperday.com/2017/03/reselling-nintendo-switches/
My greater point was that when supply is limited, people don’t expect to pay less than the person before them. Conversely, they expect to pay more since there is now one fewer left to buy. More importantly, I don’t think there has been any “crash”. Your original comment about “many going for $2500” isn’t the case on eBay. That one person sold for $2750 — the lowest price of any “sold” listing on eBay, nobody at all has sold for $2500 from what I’ve seen. That one person may not have profited (or not much) after shipping and fees, but anyone selling for ~$2850 or more would stand to profit as much or more than the buyers clubs were offering if they are paying standard eBay fees (10% to eBay plus 3% to PayPal). However, if you pay $8 for a basic monthly store subscription, your fee for selling in coins & paper money drops to 6.15% (plus ~3% for PayPal), so that person who sold at $2750 would get about $2490 after eBay and PayPal fees, so after shipping they’ll likely get the same $100 profit or more even at that price.
I just don’t see any truth reflected in the marketplace yet for your original comment:
“CRASH. what a bust this turned out to be. People are now selling these on Ebay for a loss.”
Maybe it will come true, but it hasn’t yet from what I’ve seen.
” I would bet that we won’t see prices much lower than $3K on that coin for completed listings”. Hope you didn’t bet. Because the only 4 that sold today all went for under 3k
lol. Just let me know when you see a single one go for the $2500 you claimed they were going for above 😀
I will lol
I didn’t b/c I didn’t want to risk issues, but what would happen if you used the same credit card number under 2 mint accounts? Do you think they would notice?
Wasn’t able to get one. God that Mint website is so frustrating. It’s like Ticketmaster for coins.
Success on both coins!!!! Aron’s going to be happy.
I got one of the 1 oz coins !! Took many retries, 6 I think over 9 minutes. But I am keeping it. Decided to not go with PFS. Didn’t even use it for new card bonus requirements (between bonuses right now) and used my 1.5x unlimited card.
Anybody know if multiple cards can be used to checkout on the US mint website? Wondering if I could use this to liquidate $500 visa or mc gift cards.
No you can’t
LOL. This must be your first time ordering from the Mint site. Even if that were theoretically possible, the site will be so crashy at noon that if you can get *one card entered successfully using Google autofill* you will high five someone nearby as though you just hit a small lottery. You would never in a million years get to enter more than one payment method before these sell out. The site glitches repeatedly while trying to enter just one card.
I got a reminder from the Mint today. When I click on the link in the email for more information on the one ounce coin it says no mintage or product limit and no household limit. If I browse to the same coin from the Mint site using the 2021 Product schedule it shows Mintage limit of 12,700 and Product Limit of 4,500 and Household limit of 1. This makes me leery to purchase. Thoughts?
thx for the AMEX headsup, gonna use DoubleCash
Any idea if any other card issuers presently code as cash advance for coins?
I also want to know. Is using a Chase card ok? Citi?
I’ve never heard of any issuer actually coding a Mint purchase as a cash advance before. Amex added terms that suggest that they might, but to this point I’ve never heard a data point of a cash advance on a Mint purchase (and I’ve personally used cards from a number of issuers – I’ve not had any issues with Chase to answer @knuff’s question.
According to a data point at Doctor of Credit, a past US Bank Mint coin purchase did not earn points or count toward a minimum spending requirement and one other data point indicated not receiving cash back on the Elan-Fidelity Visa. Neither person reported cash advance fees, just no rewards.
I’ve had no problem in the past with Chase / Citi / Capital One / Bank of America / Alliant / Amex (prior to the change in terms). Can’t recall whether or not I’ve used a Barclays card at the US Mint.
I did barclay last year for the 60K promo and it worked on for mint
Any article from Nick I need to go double check what he left out like brex
sorry I haven’t done this before but stupid question: Can I skip the buyers club if I don’t want to deal with it and take the coins to the bank and cash them out?
You could but you would lose a ton. These coins are going to sell for 4K with a face value of $1. These are not currency to spend but rather a collectors item.
Ah, thank you, glad I asked LOL. So I have to rely on “buyer’s club” or something similar to sell them to. Any idea how risky that is? Are we talking above 90% probability success in the ball park? If they’re willing to pay $100 more, then why don’t they just directly buy them from the Mint? Cause of “household limitations”?
I did about 10k worth of transactions with them last year without a hitch. Can’t speak for other clubs but PFS has always paid. There is always a risk that they don’t pay out on a deal and your out the money for the coin. That’s the risk you run.
All these coins are limited to one per household so to get around that they set up a buyers club. They likely already have a buyer set up to buy from them at a larger profit.
You could try to sell yourself but then you take on the risk.
Buyers clubs make deals with professional dealers wanting to secure large quality which they can’t do them selves due to house hold limitations. Buyer’s club is middleman in between groups of buyers like us and those dealers. The hardest part is placing the order… some popular coins are extremely hard to secure. I have done about $11000 worth of deals with PFS buyers club in particular. No issues what so ever nor I heard any one getting burned by any buyers club not honoring their contract.
Yes. In this case there is a limit of one per household. The way these buyers clubs work is that they get around these limits by getting people to buy the products for them. They guarantee you a small profit on products that they think will sell for more on the resale market than they are paying you. But they take the risk. If the resale market is not robust, they lose. On the other hand you take the risk that you might be sending them a product that you could resell for much more. Plus you get the credit card spend. I’ve done several deals with PFS. In almost every case, but not every one, they have been correct and they have made a good profit looking at resales on ebay. But there have been a few busts where they kept their word.
thanks for the education, folks
has there been a data point that these were coded as cash advance? I have done many coin deals and used amex many times as recent as last December and earned points. One time (Dec 2020) I used my new US Bank Korean Air VISA and although it didn’t code as cash advance but purchase didn’t earn any miles and didn’t count toward minimum spending for sign bonus.
In this case, the change was quite recent, so I’m not aware of DPs one way or the other yet.
crap… my plan was to meet the spending requirement on Delta Amex to earn MQD waver. I did not pay much attention to this.
Effective January 15, 2021, we are updating this sub-section to add precious metal coins and bullion to the definition of Cash Advance in your Cardmember Agreement.