The Royal Canadian Mint has been under fire for selling Silver Maples that have noticeable milk spots — attributed to the process of cleaning and preparing planchets.
The mint’s official position on the problem has basically been this:
Silver Maples are one ounce silver coins made primarily for investing, not collecting. The spots have been noted on the surface of the coins since their 1988 inception, and there is absolutely no way the RCM can fix the problem.
In short, we may all just have to live with it.
Presenting a periodic headache for dealers and investors who order the coins assuming they will be blemish-free, milk spots don’t seem to be a problem to most investors. After all, an ounce of silver is an ounce of silver, and folks generally purchase the coins for their metal content alone.
Yet while an ounce of metal may be an ounce of metal, there are many collectors concerned about the resale value of Silver Maples bearing the irksome spots. For instance, could they impact a coin’s grade?
According to the Professional Coin Grading Service — one of the world’s most trusted third party coin grading services — though milk spots are not technically considered an eye appeal problem, grade deductions are sometimes made for the spots, similar to other marks and hairlines.
In the end, while investors seem to be scratching their heads at the RCM’s seemingly blasé response to customer concerns, marketwide the consensus seems to be unanimous: Milk spots don’t present much of a threat to the value of your Canadian Silver Maples. And the coins continue to sell.
Should the RCM take a more active approach to fixing the milk spot problem on Silver Maples? Are you concerned that milk spots could impact the value of your coins?
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If the RCM only sells bullion silver for investing, not collecting, then why do the produce so many collector series? Why a Wildlife series? Why a Birds of Prey series? Why even date the maples? Why not just make them all the same and make them cheap?
For such a high premium, and beautifully diverse designs, one would only expect collectors to be interested. They are obviously fostering customers who are interested in collecting. Their statement seems contradictory. And out of touch. And kind of insulting… I’m a life long collector, but after only a few months of collecting RCM products, the Canadian mint has lost my business for life. I’ll just invest in generic rounds–which, by the way, don’t get milk spots. And I’ll collect/invest in products from mints that can deliver quality and lasting value.
I agree with the other comments, the attitude of the mint is pretty disappointing. They’re definitely not interesting in excellence. -am.
RCM’s stand on milk spots/stains is pure BS. It’s a quality at the manufacturing level. Operators/supervisors/managers are not paying attention on what they’re doing and the Mint backs up the shoddy pieces by saying nothing can be done. They are right, they can’t do nothing. They technically can but they won’t. If RCM can make millions of dollars then they should and could offer to have a quality system (which they actually tout) to literally put their money where their mouths are.
Poor buggers like the authorized dealers have to deal with trying to peddle stained merchandise. I fell into the trap of buying tubes only to find almost 20% of the stack with milk stains. I refuse to buy or support a product or producer who offer excuses instead of action. Now I insist on inspecting every blessed coin or bar that I buy.
If bullion is the only sell point, then RCM should just pump out stained blanks with RCM logo and year. Why bother paying artists and creating new logos? Just sell weighed out non-descript 5, 10, 100 oz, kilo slabs of silver.
I’ve quit buying Canadian Maples after purchasing several Canadian Wildlife Series coins that developed milk spots on 75% of them within a couple of years if they didn’t already have them on the coins when I received them new.
We purchase for Metal value and always like the chance of a numismatic gain with some coins over the years. Milk spots will curve an investors direction….in my opinion.
I avoid maples, which is sad, given the nice security provided by the face value.
I agree… to a point. If I were buying OPM silver rounds, then sure, I’m buying just for silver content. When I buy an ASE, I’m fairly certain that its quality will be above that of a private mint round. I would expect the same from a CML. However, CML’s, at this point, are known to have them, and as far as I can tell, the milk spots don’t affect their value. Therefore, by ignoring milk spots, Canada has made them irrelevant on the secondary market (as far as I can tell).
With that said, selling coins with milk spots is like selling cars with fish eyed paint. A car company could never get away with it.