US Mint Updates Gold and Platinum Numismatic Pricing Grid

The United States Mint recently added another page to their pricing grid for numismatic gold and platinum coins. This follows a recent situation where prices for gold coins were not reduced, even though they apparently should have been. Questions posed to the US Mint had revealed a separate internal policy, which included additional pricing criteria.

The published policy states that potential price changes are determined based primarily on the average London Fix prices from the prior Thursday AM to the current Wednesday AM. The recently revealed additional criteria take into account the Wednesday PM price to "determine the trend" and potentially overrule changes otherwise suggested by the weekly average price.

For the previous instance when the additional criteria came into play, the weekly average price was outside the current price range (suggesting a price decrease), however the Wednesday PM was still within the current range. This resulted in no change to prices.

This and six other possible permutations are now laid out in a table included as the first page of the US Mint's gold and platinum numismatic coin pricing grid.

The grid also now includes a note: "The United States Mint reserves the right to discontinue sale of gold numismatic products in the event that the selling price of United States Mint gold bullion products begin approaching the sale price of gold numismatic products."

Note the use of the word "discontinue" rather than "suspend".

Today on Coin Update News: June 2010 US Mint Bullion Sales