When all the shouting's done...

[jducoeur]

... when the confetti has been strewn, the speeches have been made, and a quiet tear of relief has been shed in the hopes that maybe sanity might return for a while, there's nothing like a little crass old-fashioned money-maker to remind us of day-to-day reality...

Comments

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

I really loved the line "layered in pure 24 karat gold". I suspect referring to that coating as a patina would be overly generous.

Let's see, gold is going for about $830.00/oz., and they're charging $9.95 for a coin. That's less than 1/100 oz. per coin, so somewhere in the neighborhood of .1-.2 grams of gold per coin. With a density of 19.2g/cc, we've got an upper bound of about .5 cubic millimeters of gold per coin, and I suspect somewhat less than that, as I suspect the real costs of producing these things are the shaping and stamping process, and not the cost of the gold.

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

I was assuming they were using real Kennedy half-dollars, and gold plating them using whatever the cheapest current technique is (probably sputtering). So, truly microscopic amounts of gold, whatever market value is for the half-dollars, (analysis and history here (http://cmi-gold-silver.com/kennedys.html), pricing here (http://cgi.ebay.com/2001-P-D-Kennedy-Half-Dollars-100-Mint-Bag-200-coins_W0QQitemZ220212552536QQcmdZViewItem), and the cost of printing the stickers...

Heck, they could triple-plate the coins and still make lots of money.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Yes, money-maker - literally!