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Coins and Currency Weekly(c) is Published by Alan Cohen 
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November 15, 1998

Issue #7

Dangerous Territory

The modern US Commemorative program of coins is in serious trouble, and 
has been for a few years. A couple of years ago, congress established a 
set of rules to limit the number of different programs to two a year, 
with reduced mintage of coins. Additionally, the US Mint could not show 
a loss due to these programs, they must come out of the funds going to 
the special programs. Why are these programs so popular politically? It 
is because they can raise money for a pet cause without costing anything 
to taxpayers. Each coin comes with a hefty premium attached that goes to 
these causes. The most recent congress decided to ignore their rules set 
just two years earlier, and a bunch of commemorative coin proposals were 
set forth. Luckily, most of these did not pass, but they could have. 

The dangerous territory deals with the Jackie Robinson commemorative 
program. Almost former Senator Al D'Amato of New York recently pushed 
legislation to extend this program beyond the limits established in 
the legislation. Sales did not go too well. According to the US Mint, 
20,128 of the 48,500 gold $5 coins remain unsold, and 87,173 out of 
222,933 remain unsold. This is a large portion, and especially painful 
for the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which was forced to agree to let 
the Botanic Gardens project receive a flat amount of the sales, 
reducing even further the amount that went to the organization that 
the coin was supposed to benefit. The extension allows for "bulk sales 
at a reasonable discount to the Jackie Robinson Foundation of not less 
than 20% of any remaining coins." This is an outrage to anybody who has 
purchased this coin, hoping that mintage was low, and thus the secondary 
value to be potentially higher. Legislation like this will surely kill 
the commemorative coin program. If it can happen with this coin, it can 
happen with any coin. There needs to be serious changes to the way this 
program works, otherwise it will disappear due to the number of 
collectors who stop collecting these coins.

 Coin-Auctions.com

I'd like to introduce a new web site I am developing - For those of you 
who like on-line auctions, I plan to list as many numismatic auction 
web sites as I can locate. I am open to suggestions as to any additions 
to the site, just e-mail me with any information. If you like auction on 
the internet, be sure to bookmark this site as a handy reference guide 
to internet auctions

Paper Money Net

The current contest at http://www.papermoney.net has just ended. A confederate 
bill is being given away. The winner will be announced soon. The new contest 
just began, enter it every day to win a World War II Australian bank note.

Until Next Time,

Alan Cohen

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Coins and Currency Weekly(c) (CCW) is published by Alan Cohen. 
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