The apparent sellout of the circulation-quality 2022 American Innovation, Rhode Island dollar is notable for two reasons. It represents the rare sellout of one of the Mint’s “regular” coins, and the sellout occurred without dealer sales of the giant ballistic bags.

As Paul Gilkes reports this week, the Mint has sold 899,800 of the Rhode Island dollars, all in 100-coin bags or 25-coin rolls. None of the coins were sold in the 140,000-coin bags, an option only made available to bulk coin buyers. The usual buyers of the ballistic bags had to compete with customers who typically place much smaller orders, including collectors who might be seeking a bag or roll each of the 2002-P and 2022-D Rhode Island dollars. For many ordinary collectors, that probably comes as something of a relief when often, dealers sometimes manage to acquire large numbers of a product that is in demand, to the exclusion of those same collectors.

The rapid sellout of the Rhode Island dollar was a surprise to us. The Mint reports that the coins were purchased by customers who signed on to the enrollment plan and by those placing single orders through the Mint website. Actual sales of the coin began Feb. 23, with the inventory of the coins essentially exhausted within four days. That is a remarkably short period of time for something in the Mint’s product line of “circulating” coins, like the American Women quarter dollars and the Native American and American Innovation dollars.

Mint officials are stressing the convenience for customers of using the enrollment plan available for many of its numismatic products. Customers can enroll for a particular product — the Rhode Island dollars, for example — before the actual sales begin. Anyone not enrolled for the latest American Innovation dollar and who did not log on to the Mint website in the first few days of sales will probably be surprised at the rapidity of the sellout.

The enrollment option, when available, might be the wise choice for collector customers of the Mint. The surprisingly quick sellout of an American Innovation dollar in just a few days might just prod holdouts to enroll for the next coins in a particular series. Are you going to change your buying habits?
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