Mint ends credit sales for Direct Ship
Say good-bye to buying large quantities of U.S. $1 coins with a credit card and having them shipped to you. After an apparently failed crackdown on coin buyers who are racking up frequent flyer miles on their purchases, the U.S. Mint ended debit and credit card sales July 22.
Say good-bye to buying large quantities of U.S. $1 coins with a credit card and having them shipped to you.
After an apparently failed crackdown on coin buyers who are racking up frequent flyer miles on their purchases, the U.S. Mint ended debit and credit card sales July 22.
You can still buy the coins for face value through the U.S. Mint’s Direct Ship Program, but you will have to pay for them the old-fashioned way, by personal check, bank wire transfer, or money order.
Tom Jurkowsky, the U.S. Mint’s director of public affairs, said, the frequent flyer issue is “still a problem,” even though the Mint had attempted to develop a software to pinpoint the abusers.
Banks objected to the program because the coins were bought at face value in $250 boxes and the buyers then deposited the coins, swelling inventories and costing the banks money to send the coins back to the Federal Reserve. Airlines also objected.
Since the program started in 2008 260,794 orders for 284 million $1 coins were filled.
The number of buyers was 32,150.
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