They where at their lows towards mid December, they seem to have picked up steam again and a box of five sets will cost you $4600 plus on Ebay.
Here is a post from Eric Jordan on the PCGS forum;
Guys a few points if you don't mind.
1. The mint says that they want to set the 2012s silver eagle mintage limit at 200,000 special sets with a per household max.
2. They will sell out at the $125-150 price range they are looking at.
3. The W mint marked issues have been going through a classic inaugural spike mintage drop since 2006w (go look at page 50 of our first book) This tends to bottom out around 30% of peak so without split demand the coin is about a 210,000 mintage coin. Now if you assume that the 12s, 13s etc are going to cannibalize sales and use a .6 multiplier which is typical then the 13w, 14w etc are likely to stay above 125,000 going forward.
So the bottom line in my view is the 2012S etc is likley going to be a 200,000 mintage coin for the next few years. When the 12S sells out violently and it will, the heat will spill over to the 12W to some extent and I think it will sell 200,000+ coins too. If the price of silver does not go nuts then its likely over an extended period of time to see all the mint marked silver eagles stay over the 125,000 mark.
As you guys know it is my view that the silver eagle is the modern Morgan and that mint marked silver eagles are the modern "CC". There are many structural reasons for this that I will not go over again here but I will point out one thing. The 1880, 1881 and 1885 CC Morgans with their over 130,000 mint state surviving populations are not the king of the CC set and certainly not the king of the broader Morgan series but they all trade at $500 to $600 each at the center of their mint state grading bell line curve. It will take time but I have no reason to believe that these coins will not trade in that range at the time of series maturity (who knows how long that is). Popularity is important. Ask your self what a 100,000 mintage silver proof 50 state quarter set would sell for. These coins are like that and the Mint is about to emphasize the silver eagles in their marketing efforts.
Big populations are a wonderful thing because they can contribute to collector base development. At the same time a staggered mintage table produces numismatic flare that can help promote collector base formation too. If the Mint cranks through mint marked coins and the mintages stay up over 150,000 coins at each branch mint then its likely to help the 25 anniversary set just as the 25th set helped the MUCH more common 20th set and the coin could be driven into the $500+ MS69 price range over the next 10 years or less. If the branch Mint issues sales sag into the 100,000 to 125,000 range then the 11s will not preform as well as it would have without low mintage siblings.
I dont think the 11s is going to be any better coin than the 11P reverse proof but at the same time its not obvious to me at this point that this new silver dollar marketing focus is going to hurt the 25th set.
In the future?
