Expert: Dan Moore - 7/19/2011

Question
I was puting a set of Silver Eagle Proofs together and I thought I had them all and then I notices that some of the boxes were thicker. On further inspection some of them where Uncircualted with COA's stating they were uncirculated but I also noticed they have no mint marks? At the US Mint website it seems that Even uncirculated have mint marks? What's up I have a range 1989, 1990, 1991, 2000, 2001, & 2002. All in USMINT boxes All with COA stating Uncirculated and none of them have mint marks. Is this normal?

Answer
Hi Mark,

All the uncirculated eagles were made with no mintmarks -- only proofs had mintmarks -- except for the specially minted West Point uncirculated eagles that have a "W" mintmark.

As for the boxes and COA's, they may state that the coins are from the U.S. Mint, but the boxes and papers are not.  There are several private companies out there that put common uncirculated eagles into fancy boxes that look like the proof packaging, include official-looking certificates, and charge exhorbitant prices for them.  Makes for a nice-looking gift, but adds no value to the coin.

The only way the uncirculated silver eagles (other than the W-mints) came from the mint was in 500-coin "monster boxes", which contained 25 green-topped tubes of 20 coins each.  These were only sold to a handful of national distributors, who purchased 10's of thousands of them at a time, and then sold them to other dealers in smaller increments, trickling down to smaller dealers, eventually making their way to collectors' hands.

So what it boils down to is that you can get just about the current spot silver price for the UNC eagles you have -- but you may as well throw away the packaging.

I hope this helps,

Dan