I know how you feel. Back around ~2015, I used to buy the Royal Mint's commemorative proof sets. Were about £50-£70, and all the coins (other than the £5) would enter circulation too.
Now even the BU on cardboard annual sets are £75, and none of the commemoratives even enter circulation...🙄
I think it’s everywhere. The latest mint coin from the Bombay Mint costs Rs20.2k ( USD220). It contains 40g of silver. I bought this coin back in August when it was released by a private organization for Rs11.5k ($115).
A year before. a similar coin cost about Rs10k (USD 95).
Ive decided to vote with my wallet and call it quits after coins dated /released in 2025 for Indian mint sets. US collectors would I imagine be faced with a similar decision
I could understand it if it were a silver proof set ($245 for 2026) but for non-silver is the Mint's cost 2.7 what it was just last year for non-silver coins? Of course not. They went from promoting coin collecting to a for profit organization.
The U.S. Mint's Annual Core sets have lost a tremendous amount of money over the years. The term "Annual Core Sets" is the wording that the U.S. Mint uses to describe their Clad Proof, Uncirculated Mint, and Silver Proof sets all together.
Notice that in every single year the U.S. Mint never turned a profit even once on these annual sets. I went back as far as 2012 and then got tired of reading the U.S. Mint's Annual Reports to pull this data. In fact, some years were greater than a 50% loss.
I usually buy the clad annual sets each year. I don't like seeing the price go up either. But the U.S. Mint will need to do something different. Having said all of that, I think they over-corrected this year by a lot. In fact, the Uncirculated Mint Set was adjusted up from $33.25 to a whopping $124.50 just a few days ago.
I know how you feel. Back around ~2015, I used to buy the Royal Mint's commemorative proof sets. Were about £50-£70, and all the coins (other than the £5) would enter circulation too.
Now even the BU on cardboard annual sets are £75, and none of the commemoratives even enter circulation...🙄
The times, they are a-changing. 😔
I agree, which is a shame as there's been no £2 commemorative minted for circulation since 2016, and I do like the RAF planes, Orwell and the ships.
Sadly I think in the last 10 or so years, especially since 2019-20ish the Royal Mint have been maximising the profit they get from Numismatic coin sales which has pushed away the vast majority of decimal UK coin type collectors. For me it was the Olympics and Beatrix Potter coins that inspired me and probably many young “Gen Z” to start collecting.
In 2022 for example from my purchase history, 50p coins were £11, £2 coins were £12 and £5 coins were £14.50. Now in 2026, 50p's are £15, £2 and £5 coins are now £17.50!
Thus I've stopped buying from the Royal Mint apart from the annual sets though I did buy the Concorde 50p as I like aircraft on coins.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I could understand it if it were a silver proof set ($245 for 2026) but for non-silver is the Mint's cost 2.7 what it was just last year for non-silver coins? Of course not. They went from promoting coin collecting to a for profit organization.
I know how you feel. Back around ~2015, I used to buy the Royal Mint's commemorative proof sets. Were about £50-£70, and all the coins (other than the £5) would enter circulation too.
Now even the BU on cardboard annual sets are £75, and none of the commemoratives even enter circulation...🙄
The times, they are a-changing. 😔
I agree, which is a shame as there's been no £2 commemorative minted for circulation since 2016, and I do like the RAF planes, Orwell and the ships.
Sadly I think in the last 10 or so years, especially since 2019-20ish the Royal Mint have been maximising the profit they get from Numismatic coin sales which has pushed away the vast majority of decimal UK coin type collectors. For me it was the Olympics and Beatrix Potter coins that inspired me and probably many young “Gen Z” to start collecting.
In 2022 for example from my purchase history, 50p coins were £11, £2 coins were £12 and £5 coins were £14.50. Now in 2026, 50p's are £15, £2 and £5 coins are now £17.50!
Thus I've stopped buying from the Royal Mint apart from the annual sets though I did buy the Concorde 50p as I like aircraft on coins.
I am shocked at this, what a rip off! So in a few years when young collectors who have paid these prices from the mint see their coins plummet in value and can’t sell them for the price they paid, they will stop buying coins or lose interest in coin collecting all together.
So glad I live in a country where commemorative coins are sold at face value (for a limited period) when they are released. Not that I buy them, but it is the principal of the thing.
I suspect that if you wait until the 50p and £2 coins are worth 50p and £2 then you will find them in circulation in 20 years time or being sold in original beat-up packaging for a reasonable price, just like all the other commemorative coins of the UK from the 60s 70s and 80s - you literally can’t give those crowns away!
„If your reply or post in the Forum stinks of AI, I will call you out! Knowledge comes from experience, the I in AI stands for incompetence.“
Having said all of that, I think they over-corrected this year by a lot. In fact, the Uncirculated Mint Set was adjusted up from $33.25 to a whopping $124.50 just a few days ago.
I noticed that with America, they had UNC 2022 sets for like $31 and 2025 for like $125 - Highway robbery and Trumpanomics. In a few years everyone will stop buying them and the mint will find an excuse to not make them.
I thought they had stopped the Morgan and Peace dollar restrikes, but there they are $175 each (And people were whinging when they cost $85).
NZ shot themselves in the foot back in 2012. Up to 2012 the Uncirculated set of 5 circulation coins 10c to $2 cost $59.95 and included a muck metal $5 coin (Annual theme, crown sized). However in 2013 they went to 2 sets, currency which was coins to $2 and the large $5 piece separately and zoomed up prices to match ($89 and $59). In 2015 they stopped making sets completely, but a coin club privately minted them.
However the money hungry Reserve Bank kept making the proof set which was the same coins polished but the $5 was 1 ounce silver, their prices climbed from $89 in 1999 to $295 in 2024 (Bear in mind before this was mental silver prices). The number of silver NCLT pieces usually sold at between $119 and $199 per 1 ounce coin, when silver was US$25 and lower.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
I noticed that with America, they had UNC 2022 sets for like $31 and 2025 for like $125 - Highway robbery and Trumpanomics. In a few years everyone will stop buying them and the mint will find an excuse to not make them.
The 2025 set cost was already locked in before Mister President Trump and his Treasury Secretary could influence it.
The 2025 set cost was already locked in before Mister President Trump and his Treasury Secretary could influence it.
US UNC Mint Sets
2022 - $25.25 (~4.3 times face value)
2025 - $32.95 (~5.7 times face value)
2026 - $124.50 (~21.4 times face value)
Surprisingly, the U.S. Mint just updated the price on all of their UNC Mint sets (even the older ones like the 2021 and 2022 sets). They all now reflect the same new price of $124.50. This is quite confusing to me since you can still buy many of these older sets on the secondary market for a small fraction of their newly hiked up prices on the U.S. Mint's website:
I decided to get my old proof sets from the storage suitcase.
Here's my receipts (Well, my mum's since I wasn't old enough to order!). £65 three years running: 2013-15 sets
Now let's see what my £65 bought me:
A lovely slipcase, a thick book-sized holder, a leaflet with details on the coins, the CoA, the slightly indented card and 5/6 coins plus the RM medal.
And here's my earlier 2009-2011 BU sets (2012 is as above but no receipt).
I couldn't find the prices, but they weren't much IIRC. Obviously way less than the £65 deluxe editions. Probably what £20? £25 tops surely?
Let's see what £75 buys me today… only the cardboard BU edition!
They don't produce proofs for just the commemorative any more, but the nearest thing…
£190!!!
The BoE inflation calculator suggests £65 ~2013 then is ~£90 today. £25 in ~2010 would be ~£40.
So the BU set has near doubled in price.
Harder to judge on the deluxe set as it has twice as many coins but even still. £100 just to add the proof “definitives” is a big ask.
=====
I reckon the prices must have started jumping in 2016/7, because I don't have that set. In fact, I don't have any later sets other than the Charles III 2023 BU definitives which I only bought as the first run for the new monarch.
Which ties in with when they started releasing fewer into circulation.
The £5 at face values stopped in 2008, though weren't excessively produced until 2017.
The last £2 commemorative was 2016.
We used to get a new £1 design every year, stopped 2016.
They had a big push of 50p with the Beatrix Potter & Paddington sets from 2016-19 but have calmed down again. Not had commemorative 50p since 2023 with the Coronation one.
Also had the Alphabet 10p in 2018/19 but that's been a one-off collection.
Yet look at the catalogue for non-circulation coins in those years. Ooop, tonnes. Shocker!
~150 x 50p from 2018
~40 x £2 from 2017
~170 x £5 from 2009, though the big push is from 2017 which counts 147 of that 170!
And it's a real shame as there's some absolute stunners which would've looked great in circulation.
I am shocked at this, what a rip off! So in a few years when young collectors who have paid these prices from the mint see their coins plummet in value and can’t sell them for the price they paid, they will stop buying coins or lose interest in coin collecting all together.
So glad I live in a country where commemorative coins are sold at face value (for a limited period) when they are released. Not that I buy them, but it is the principal of the thing.
I suspect that if you wait until the 50p and £2 coins are worth 50p and £2 then you will find them in circulation in 20 years time or being sold in original beat-up packaging for a reasonable price, just like all the other commemorative coins of the UK from the 60s 70s and 80s - you literally can’t give those crowns away!
I wouldn't say that they “plummet” in value. I've looked online most sets made in the last 10-15 years have barely lost their value and ones made in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2016, 2018, 2021 have increased in value due to the shield 50p being a NIFC for those years as well as some rarer issued coins such as the Kew Gardens 50p, Edinburgh Pound coin, etc.
Those crowns and older £5 coins were issued at face value through banks and post offices, at least a couple of hundred thousand to a few million were minted due to that, hence those are so common.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I can remember in the mid 1990s buying a UNC NZ coin set ($8.85 FV) cost $29.95, which then I felt was very expensive and the proof set with a silver $5 coin (Sterling crown size) was usually $85.
For reference in 1935, they sold Waitangi Crowns at a 50% mark up at 7/6 and hardly any sold, as it was the Depression and in those days people paid what it was worth they felt. Of course that far back, there was no promotional material, just a box worth a few pence more.
Even in 1949 and 1953 when crowns were issued in NZ, the 1949 coin sold out all 200k coins in one day (A few allocated for the Island colonies were returned unsold and sold out in one day here, in March 1950).
Yet in 1953 to avoid them selling out, they made 250k of them and they did not sell out. Why?
Because in 1953 the coins were sold at 5/6 (8.3333%) above face value to pay for a perspex case, the 1949 coin was sold at face value and there was no extras, just the loose coin. It was not because 49 was half silver as silver was not that expensive then, it was because there was no greed like today.
By the 1960s people had more money to spend and new sets of the 1965 coins (Face value 6/10½ or 82½ pence) sold at 10/- (120 pence) for the cheapest sets and these nearly sold out. Even in 1967 a pink set of coins (FV $1.88) was sold at $3 and a blue polished set at $5.
Rsirian, I probably meant the 2026 set, was the one hiked up, I looked at that page a couple of weeks ago and forgot and wanted to cover my bases in case a fellow pedantic kiwi came along and corrected me yet again.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
I decided to get my old proof sets from the storage suitcase.
Here's my receipts (Well, my mum's since I wasn't old enough to order!). £65 three years running: 2013-15 sets
Now let's see what my £65 bought me:
A lovely slipcase, a thick book-sized holder, a leaflet with details on the coins, the CoA, the slightly indented card and 5/6 coins plus the RM medal.
And here's my earlier 2009-2011 BU sets (2012 is as above but no receipt).
I couldn't find the prices, but they weren't much IIRC. Obviously way less than the £65 deluxe editions. Probably what £20? £25 tops surely?
Let's see what £75 buys me today… only the cardboard BU edition!
They don't produce proofs for just the commemorative any more, but the nearest thing…
£190!!!
The BoE inflation calculator suggests £65 ~2013 then is ~£90 today. £25 in ~2010 would be ~£40.
So the BU set has near doubled in price.
Harder to judge on the deluxe set as it has twice as many coins but even still. £100 just to add the proof “definitives” is a big ask.
=====
I reckon the prices must have started jumping in 2016/7, because I don't have that set. In fact, I don't have any later sets other than the Charles III 2023 BU definitives which I only bought as the first run for the new monarch.
Which ties in with when they started releasing fewer into circulation.
The £5 at face values stopped in 2008, though weren't excessively produced until 2017.
The last £2 commemorative was 2016.
We used to get a new £1 design every year, stopped 2016.
They had a big push of 50p with the Beatrix Potter & Paddington sets from 2016-19 but have calmed down again. Not had commemorative 50p since 2023 with the Coronation one.
Also had the Alphabet 10p in 2018/19 but that's been a one-off collection.
Yet look at the catalogue for non-circulation coins in those years. Ooop, tonnes. Shocker!
~150 x 50p from 2018
~40 x £2 from 2017
~170 x £5 from 2009, though the big push is from 2017 which counts 147 of that 170!
And it's a real shame as there's some absolute stunners which would've looked great in circulation.
Rant over. For now 🤣😅
The big factor though, is the decline in cash usage in the UK in the past decade as well as the withdrawal of the old pound coin, which prompted many people empty their coin jars thus many older coins got recirculated which likely cuased a drop in demand for new coins to be minted for circulation.
The UK should follow what the Isle of Man is doing. Such as the Olympics and Beatrix Potter 50p's or Capital cities pound coins. Mint a low enough number that they are “special” but enough to be findable by young children to boost the hobby. I imagine like a UK county series, Monarchs, Commonwealth countries series spread on all denominations to be found.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
Well, I'm getting this years, but I'm cancelling for the next two. Thankfully the American Women's series is done so that'll free up some cash flow for me too.
Its just an example of the unfettered greed and capitalism unleashed by the current regime strangling the USA and the world. Such greed goes unchecked, its Mammon and Babylon.
125 bucks for some hunks of worthless muck metal is just crazy. If they wanted more buyers of it, they went the wrong way, at least include one high value or silvery coin. I mean American circulation coins are minted in the hundreds of millions and even billions each year, these coins will never be rare or collectible and such items will have no resale value.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
Its just an example of the unfettered greed and capitalism unleashed by the current regime strangling the USA and the world. Such greed goes unchecked, its Mammon and Babylon.
125 bucks for some hunks of worthless muck metal is just crazy. If they wanted more buyers of it, they went the wrong way, at least include one high value or silvery coin. I mean American circulation coins are minted in the hundreds of millions and even billions each year, these coins will never be rare or collectible and such items will have no resale value.
I could not agree more. Totally opposite approach then they had in 1976. Maybe I'll be a customer again in 2029.
