Remember when magazines were full of ads for this shit? You had medals commemorating everything from the last Studebaker to the dedication of the World Trade Center. The ads always implied that this crapola was going to make your grandchildren rich…words like “limited edition”, “dies will be destroyed after the first 25 million sets”, “exquisite details”, “discerning tastes”…blah blah, blah! Well, what happened to the poor fools who bought this crap-did any of them make money?
Oh, and those commemorative state quarter sets…WHEN will they be worth big bucks?
“Franklin Mint” is a swear word now?
Myb h* jst r**lly lks strsks?
Wh* d**sn’t?
–Cl*ffy
I don’t know if any of it is worth anything–I doubt it very much–but the ads are still around. My Sunday paper has ads for scary real-looking baby dolls. The FM, and several other companies, put out catalogs filled with junk commemorating everything you could think of and then some (I got one recently containing a lot of replica 50’s girl-head vases; evidently people back then liked to have small boquets sticking at odd angles out of large girls’ heads). My LOTR DVDs came with ads pushing replica Sting swords (with real Orc sound action and blue glow!) and all kinds of stupid stuff that undoubtedly had Tolkein, an ardent commercialism-hater, spinning in his grave.
I will sometimes check EBay to see what people are paying for things. I don’t necessarily buy things on EBay but it gives me some idea of the market value.
I’m pretty sure the ads for this stuff always has a disclaimer that there’s no guarantee the stuff will go up in value.
The Bradford Exchange (which AFAIK just does plates) always has the announcer do a two sentence disclaimer ‘Not all plates go up in value. Some may go down.’ Among antique collectors, Bradford is notorious for the drop between their original price and general resale price.
In general, things made specifically to be collectible never become worth much. (There may be a brief artificial market as non-collectors buy what they think is an investment sure to make them rich. The death of Superman issue is a good example. For a month or two after its release, it could be sold for $25. The last copy I saw for sale [mint, in original unopened polybag] was a quarter.) There are some exceptions to this rule. The Hess trucks come to mind. When the ‘collectible’ is a high end item, the odds of it increasing in value are even less.
Still in business as far as I can tell.
Not that they are worth a damn. Just pushing silver into “commenative” shapes and worthless dishes and such. I see Franklin Mint dishes selling at auction for about 5 dollars a dozen! 
Maybe grandma’s stuff will sell high a hundred years from now, but I doubt it . . . :rolleyes:
From what I’ve observed, the only mass-produced collectibles that ever increase in value are ones that are meant to be read, played with, and/or used in some fashion that marks them up a little, thus reducing the number of mint-condition samples. Any item with a “do not touch” package (i.e. sealed in plastic) has zero chance of appreciating, as 90+% of the people who buy them will still have them, in mint condition, twenty years from now.
Now an intact lunchbox from a 1970s TV series, when all your classmates spilled their tomato soup all over theirs… THAT’S where the bucks be. As for me, I have my Mego Kirk and Spock in their original boxes to see me through my retirement.
We buy approximately 5000 ounces of Franklin Mint silver medals/per year in our coin shop. We resell about 10 percent of this to the public, charging them approximately 10% over the price of silver. We buy it for approximately 20% under the melt price. We wind up melting the other 90%.
Great investment. :rolleyes:
I’d put “collectibles” in scare-quotes there, since most mass-market stuff that’s designed to be collectible of course isn’t: truly collectible stuff was only meant to be purely ephemeral - like my 1970’s 2000AD comics collection I sold recently - and mostly was: the vast majority were thrown out or torn up 25 years ago; the ones that survived purely by chance turned out to be worth something precisely because they are relatively scarce.
I was in the comic shop the day this came out. It was packed. I ran into a guy I worked with who was all excited to get it. He was buying two copies and was going to immediately bag one. I laughted and told him that everyone else in this store was going to do the same thing and so were thousands of other people across the country. The result would be everyone would have one in mint condition and no one would want to buy one so the price would plummet.
Guess I was right.
(by the way, I didn’t buy the issue)
How? Seems to me that there is at least one middle man for the silver purchase. If you make a profit, from melting down a “worked” piece of silver, why wouldn’t franklin just melt and reuse, or retail out the silver in the first place?
If it works, how do I get in on the plan!!??? 
The FM sell the stuff originally for much more than the silver price. The original buyers take a bath on the stuff, everyone else in the system makes their money off of them. Why do people buy something for much more than it is worth? That’s the magic of the whole deal.
Yeah, samclem’s “Great investment” was ironic.
If you have money to spend on silver, spend it on actual U.S. silver coinage rather than the “collectible” crap. Unless the commemorative has some sort of sentimental value for you, it’s almost certainly a waste of money.
That part I get.
But why would they then sell the unsold coins, at less than silver price? Why not recycle it themselves?
A couple of possible reasons:
- Buy low, sell high. Perhaps they bought at a much lower price, although that’s kinda unlikely in the bulk silver market.
- Crap on your shelves is worth nothing. Any money is better than no money, and bills must be paid. Nobody will pay what they ask, and nobody will pay melt value for a product that is probably adulterated. Take a loss on what doesn’t sell, and make a profit on what does.
I’m not sure I’m getting you, or maybe you’re not getting us. samclem doesn’t buy unsold coins from the Franklin Mint. He buys coins from the suckers who bought them from the Franklin Mint at a huge markup (or maybe from the relatives they left the crap to). The suckers take a huge bath, having paid considerably above the market price of silver for their “collectible”, and selling for much less than market price.
Because that’s the basis of the economy? Most people don’t have the tools to melt silver into bullion (or whatever it gets turned into) and don’t have the connections or quantities needed to resell it on the open market, plus their time has enough value that if they’re not in the silver business it’s not worth it to go to the effort. So they sell for less than the value of the silver because that’s what they can get for it. That’s how everything that gets bought or sold works. Why would someone buy a latte for four bucks when the coffee and milk are only worth about a dime?