Blind eye for a reason? The dumbing down of good delivery gold bars into acceptable US coin blanks for West Point's mint to "double dog die'em" is a JUST ONE documented bottleneck in the US American Eagle Bullion coin program "tale."
Below is one of my famous Paul Harvey "resssssssst of the story" behind the scenes "contributing factors" in the A/E gold coin tale!
Gary North started pounding the table for folks to start sopping up the 1/10 oz gold supply AUGUST 1998.
Seems to me like those responsible for monitoring production reports and scheduling and furnishing them to their superiors are NOT in charge of interpreting said reports on a year over year, month over month production unit basis.
BUT,
the ordinary coin collector, aka numismatist, without a Y2K bone in their body, has been receiving their bi-monthly pub reports. These report have been incessantly printed, front and center, on the front page of their favorite rag, COIN WORLD or its sister pub, NUMISMATIC NEWS for months and months now about.
Laity were able to interpret the increasing curve and project bottlenecks. Why the bloated US Mint staff couldn't (WOULDN'T?) do the same, is just another case of our despicable "pass the buck" gov't bureaucrats in living color.
Just out of curiousity, I'd like to know just how many mints the Asians, PER BULLION COIN PROGRAM ISSUING NATION, has working to satisfy their gold guzzling consumers for the last so many years.
The Rand Corp's Krug program was the grand-daddy. That was a wonderful example of a mining company figuring out how to reach the RETAIL CONSUMER. We could have learned a great deal by learning from them. But, no, we were more interested in political pressure, aka breaking apartheid. Not that apartheid didn't need to be broken, but we couldn't see the golden forest for the apartheid trees!
China was the SECOND one to pick up on Rand's lessons and fill the gap brought about by our embargo upon importing gold Krugs in any size during those years. They responded to increased demand: ala the PANDA program, which was NOT an instant hit, but sure can churn them out now.
GUESS WHO WERE THE SMART ONES TO OBSERVE AND DUPLICATE So Africa's RAND CORP SUCCESS....aYup. our smarty neighbors north of the 49th parallel. They started their program in 1979! INSTANT HIT!!!
Chinese observed all this, and since THEY aren't dummies, created their fractional and full oz gold bullion coin program in 1982
Great Britian then woke up and smelled the burning tea...in 1987 with their program.
And let's not leave out the Austrians! They came out with that absolutely GOOOOOORGEOUS Philharmonic bullion series, and the world started sopping up that production with gusto.
HOWEVER, here in the USA...we had Al Dimato at the throat of any gold enthusiasm.
Now, it's, 1999, 20 years after CANADA LED THE WAY, and world-wide citizens are buying every fractional they can crank out, regardless of where it is made.
Australia, another proud gold resource country was a relatively johnny come lately. Their story is nearly as interested as ours<g> Their first bullion entry was their Koala gold bullion coinage, which failed miserably. They replaced it with an ugly series of famous Australian "nuggets"-- which also bombed. But, slap a Kangaroo on that sucker, and VOILA...they started flying out the door. Guess they just hadn't met Crocidile Dundee yet<g>
In the meantime, Demented Senator from NY, Alfonse "DumbDumb" Dimato approved a US gold bullion program, TO BE SOLD ONLY THROUGH our POST OFFICES NO LESS, the durned idiot! That series of 1 oz artist coins FIZZLED like a wet 4th of July sparkler!
I can remember those days...as I was living in a rural farm town at that time. I remember being reluctant to order any of those things, because Postmaster John already knew everyone's business because he had sorted the mail for 20 years by the time WE came along, and his pappy for 45 years before that. If you think we were going to place a gold "medallion" order thru Postmaster John, you'd be crazy.
Dimato swore he'd not let another/replacement US bullion program get out of committee until every last one of those damned artist pieces were sold. The govt couldn't GIVE THEM AWAY. So, we never geared up.
Even the US coin collecting community turned their backs on the artist series. WHY? Because Demented Al courted them heavily for design and advice during the "hearing in committee" process, and then rejected their plea to make it a COIN and not a damned medallion. There was NO denomination stamped on the artist series...just a picture and a purity. The coin collecting professional associations put the word out to boycott the one ounce only series, and it fell on its flat face.
FINALLY, someone else hit demented Dimato with a 2x4 and got the stubborn mule's attention. The balance of the series of 10 coins, (of which only the first 3 were put into the Post Office's distribution's system handler's hands,) were finally authorized to be melted--since they didn't present a seniorage problem seeings as how they were NOT coins in the first place. Dimato got outshouted, and the new American
Eagle Bullion Gold COIN was born.
Now, ole demented Dimato didn't get booted out of office until recently (November of 98?)...but his legacy is alive and well. I thoroughly suspect that pork barrel peddling pompous EX-senator's grimy mitts are still hampering the US eagle minting processes, from
journeyman press operator all the way down to marketing and distribution.
Besides, a successful USA BULLION gold coin program would be diametrically opposite of the Rubin/KingDong/and GreenExpand's massaged public opinion campaign that gold is dead, now wouldn't it.
oh, well...enough for bullion buffs for one evening...
BTW, enjoying the e*mailed inquiries to the particulars on the 15,000 units remaing of the 1/10 oz .999 foreign govt issued gold bullion coin hoard that is for sale--
Say, Eric Parde...
I'm predicting said hoard within my reach will be sold out in 10days! WILL BE an interesting Monday morning around here, (grin) Teletype bids/asks for ANYTHING fractional gold were steadily ratcheting northward today, by the time I signed off. I was selling them today for $40.25 per, based on FRIDAY's COMEX CLOSE. By this time next week, I fully expect to be able to price them at $46-48 per 1/10th and still be on the low end of the 1/10th dealer's "bollinger band" pricing curve...and that $48 per may be conservative.
FWIW, 1/4 oz A/E bullion I was buying for $87.50 on the 30th of Jan,
now have moved to to $153 per 1/4...and are climbing!
O/49r |
