United States Mint: Frustrating America through Coins

In yet another rapid sellout on a malfunctioning website, the United States Mint tried to sell two versions of a widely anticipated release: the 2021 Morgan silver dollar commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the popular coin design’s previous year of mintage. One version contains a CC privy mark paying homage to the historic Carson City Mint; the O privy mark on the other version represents the historic New Orleans Mint. With a (low) mintage limit of 175,000 each and an arguably high household ordering limit of 10 each, those coins were sold out Monday, May 24th at shortly after 12:30 P.M. Eastern Time. It’s worthwhile to note that both coins were only available via pre-ordering; the coins will not be shipped until October at the earliest.

I (the Wonderful World Money blog author) hoped to buy a single CC-marked coin at about 3 P.M. Not surprisingly, the item was listed as “currently unavailable” on the Mint’s online ordering site at the time — but also up to several hours before that. A myriad of customers on the Mint’s social media platforms commented with their justifiable frustrations and complaints: about the website crashing multiple times as they attempted to place an order at or right after noon and saw the dreaded “unavailable” message thereafter… about the countless eBay listings already selling the pre-ordered coins for a sleazy, shameful, greedy, quick profit (will the customer even receive the coin in October?)… and about dealers taking too much advantage of the 10-coin “household” order limit. Many actual numismatists and coin collectors were therefore unable to pre-order a single coin.

I can understand if there are mintage limits based on the silver supply, but wouldn’t it be nice for the Mint to use their pre-order mechanism to ask for everyone's orders then fulfill all of these orders — matching the supply of coins with the demand? I’ll admit, such a process would likely require the Mint to produce millions of Morgan silver dollars! If that is not feasible, feel free to keep the 175,000 mintage limit (or 200,000 or 300,000) but reduce the order limit to one, two, or three. There would be “more to go around” that way! This way, an actual coin collector would have a better chance of obtaining an item to cherish for years to come.

All I know is that I’m not in the mood to buy the 2021 Morgan silver dollar for more than $85 when the Mint squandered our chance to buy a monumental coin direct from the source. This price tag is already way more than I’ve paid for any coin — hence why I have a worldwide money blog about mostly affordable collectibles. Thanks to the Mint’s lack of online sales prowess, I can save my U.S. money to buy many examples of Wonderful World Money!