The one-half ounce 24-karat First Spouse Gold Coin prices are about to rise to their highest level ever on Wednesday, October 6, 2010. The increase will be $25 and will make the Proof version $829 and the Uncirculated $816. In the past, when the United States Mint changed the price of their numismatic gold products, they usually did it before 12:00 PM Eastern Time.
The change is due to the ever increasing cost of the precious metal. The market price of gold has steadily remained above $1,300.00 an ounce since last Thursday, September 30. Below is a chart of the past few days of the London Fix’s AM and PM prices.
| Day | AM GOLD | PM GOLD |
| Wednesday, Oct. 6 | ? | ? |
| Tuesday, Oct. 5 | $1,325.75 | $1,330.50 |
| Monday, Oct. 4 | $1,316.00 | $1,313.50 |
| Friday, Oct. 1 | $1,313.00 | $1,316.25 |
| Thursday, Sept. 30 | $1,311.00 | $1,307.00 |
Tomorrow’s gold prices are not very important for the Mint’s calculation since the weekly gold average is already so high. The Mint uses the London Fix prices between Thursday AM to Wednesday AM to calculate the average for the previous week. If the new average is above or below the thresholds in the Mint’s pricing grid, then it looks to the Wednesday PM price to determine whether it will change prices to correspond to the current market trend.
Right now the current range in use is $1,250.00 to $1,299.99. The average of the figures in the above chart come to $1,316.62 an ounce and indicates that only an AM price of something lower than $1,170 could drop the average back to or below $1,299.99. An event such as that seems nearly impossible. If the Wednesday PM price is also outside the current range and agrees with the weekly average, then the Mint will adjust their coin prices accordingly.
The US Mint has been basing its gold collector coin prices on the London Fix average weekly price since early 2009. With $50 windows in the Mint’s pricing matrix, the market gold price can fluctuate in that realm without affecting coin prices. After gold coin prices are increased tomorrow, the weekly gold average would have to move outside the $1,300 to $1,349.99 range to trigger another adjustment.
The last time the Mint changed their prices of First Spouse Coins was on Wednesday, September 15, when they increased prices from $779 and $766 to $804 and $791 for the proof and the uncirculated respectively.
The US Mint’s web address to purchase these coins is http://catalog.usmint.gov/.
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