Rarities in the Canada Silver Privy Maple Set posted by Augustus

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The Canada>Bullion>Silver Maple Leafs with Privy Marks Set

 

Privy marked SMLs are notoriously difficult to collect in high grade, and the elusiveness of the set has made it all the more desirable.

 

First off, these are bullion coins, so prior to 2007, most of these coins were stamped out and packed in an SP67/SP68 grade. If you look through the populations, you will see a number of SP64/SP65 OGP coins being graded by NGC.

 

Second, the 9999 purity of the coin makes them very soft and susceptible to nicks and dents. The American Eagle bullion coins, for example, have more copper in the coin which hardens it.

 

Third, the Queen's cheek extends past the rim of the coin. When packaged, the Queen's cheek makes contact with other coins in the roll or in the Mylar, this damaging the coin's surface.

 

Let's look at some of the rarities:

 

1. 2005 liberation privy (mintage = 3500)

- released exclusively in Europe, this is the lowest official mintage coin in the set. An SP69 example is about $300USD.

2. 2000 Hannover Expo (mintage around 750)

- the official mintage is higher for this coin, but very few were actually sold. The majority of the mintage was smelted. Of the 750 or so remaining coins, it is estimated that under 25 of them are the MS-variety while the remaining are SP. This coin raw is about $200, and sells for about $300-$400 in SP68.

3. 2011 F15 Privy (Mintage = 1000?). Due to the run up in silver, the Mint did not fully engage/market the privy series for 2011. Due to this, and the extremely high cost, very few collectors subscribed to the series making this coin a rare find. (About $300-$500 raw).

4. 2015 Heart Privy (Mintage = ?). The entire mintage of this coin was purchased by a California based investment firm. To this date, I haven't seen ANY of these coins turn up on any of the regular sites.

 

Enjoy the series,

JG

 

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[RWB]

To me, the only privy mark that is useful is the one out back.