In less than five hours June 13, collectors and the public at large placed sufficient orders to exhaust the maximum authorized mintage of 100,000 Proof 2025-W American Eagle, 250th Anniversary United States Army privy-marked 1-ounce silver dollars,  launched for sale at $105 per coin.

Of the 100,000 coins minted, 10% (10,000 coins) were reserved for sale to the Mint’s 17 Authorized Bulk Purchase Program dealers (whose identities are not publicly disclosed by the U.S. Mint). Individual ABPP dealers are allowed to place advance orders for some portion of the reserved coins.

The remaining 90,000 available for the June 13 sales launch were sold within five hours.

Overloaded system

According to U.S. Mint official comments released July 1 through the Mint’s Office of Public Affairs, “As with other anticipated high demand product launches, the United States Mint (Mint) implemented household order limits and utilized a waiting room to manage access to the online catalog for the American Eagle Silver Dollar with Army Privy Mark (25APM) launch.

“Almost immediately, we became aware of concerns regarding the wait times customers in the waiting room were receiving, with some customers initially receiving estimates of 8 hours to ‘more than a day.’ We also encountered issues with payment processing, which were exacerbated by bots and people trying to avoid the household order limits.

“For the payment processing issues, the Mint is working with our providers to determine how to improve this process for future high demand product launches, which will be implemented as we are able. For the waiting room, the Mint is looking for ways we can improve this customer experience. The waiting room looks at current traffic trends when calculating wait times.

“When it initially opens, traffic has not yet started flowing to the online catalog, so it takes time to ‘learn’ how quickly the existing traffic (which was tens of thousands of customers on June 13) will flow. The high wait times were reported between approximately 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Eastern Time.

“As incoming traffic slowed, and customers were admitted to the catalog the wait time calculations become more accurate. By 12:15 pm ET, wait times were 30 minutes or less for most customers.”

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