When 2016 comes before 2015...A Tale of the 2015 Australian Kangaroo Coin.

There are some tales in the silver stacking world that get forgotten by many. Here's one that I remember, yet leaves me with a couple of big questions. Read on to find out what those questions are...

In 2016 the Perth Mint released the Kangaroo coin and many dealers were selling it as the first ever Kangaroo coin. However, quiet as a mouse, the 2015 coins found their way to the market...AFTER the 2016 issue was released. How could the 2016 coins be out before the 2015s?

In an article from Coin Week (full citations will appear at the end of this post):

"...It turns out that the 2015 issue was produced at the initiative of eBay and Bay Precious Metals (BPM), a division of Coins ‘N’ Things, a U.S. Mint-Authorized Purchaser and the largest supplier of precious metal planchets to the United States Mint.

In addition, only 300,000 of the 2015-dated kangaroos were minted by Perth on BPM’s behalf and, perhaps most interestingly, the coins were held back from sale by BPM since last year and were offered only this past May exclusively on eBay, with the first sales recorded on May 10."

And per an article on NewCoinReleases.com (full citation below):

"The industry insider revealed the following to me: “Looks like the 2015 coins were only struck to 999, not 9999, and only shipped to CNT (who operate Bay Precious Metals)...Looks like CNT just decided to keep the lower mintage (300,000) 2015s an industry secret to avoid distracting from the launch of the 9999 2016 version, of which millions have been struck. CNT basically instigated this coin program, so my bet is that they have all 1200 monster boxes of 2015 dated coins they just sat on.”

photo from www.coloradocoins.com/collections/australian-kangaroos

Bay Precious Metals held on to them until 2016 and sold them exclusively on E-Bay. They eventually found their way to other dealers, but there is still some uncertainty surrounding this coin. If you look at APMEXs listing as of today, October 5th, for the the 2016 coin it states "Perth Mint is pleased to present the first-ever Australian Kangaroo 1 oz Silver bullion coin."

Now here are my main two questions:

• Why aren't these worth more? They command little premium, yet had a mintage of 300,000 (see the screenshot below from the Perth Mint website). This is less than the Kookaburra, yet those rise in price every year! Note that they are referred to as the "Red Kangaroo"

• Why is there no demand for these? You can find them on JM Bullion right now for $20 and some change. You would think between the back story and limited mintage, they would command quite the premium.

Oh well, I am going to keep adding one or two of these to my JM orders until they eventually run out. Maybe someday, the stacking / collecting community will realize these are more rare...

If you would like to see the differences between the 2015 and 2016 coins, check out this video from one of my favorite You-Tubers, Salivate Metal ( @salivatemetal on Steemit) titled "2015-2016 Silver Kangaroos: Up Close & Personal Comparitive Study"

Sources:
https://www.apmex.com/product/92656/2016-australia-1-oz-silver-kangaroo-bu
http://www.perthmint.com.au/documents/Mintages/2017%20Perth%20Mint%20Bullion%20Other%20Sales%20311216.pdf
https://coinweek.com/featured-news/coin-analyst-australian-silver-kangaroo-series-began-2015-not-2016/
http://www.newcoinreleases.com/2015-australian-kangaroo-silver-bullion-coin-mystery-solved/