|
|
|
From the best I have uncovered, it seems that when IGT owned the strike machines/program, they had a contract with the mints to make strikes for a set $$ amount, whatever that dollar amount was. The casinos approve the artwork, but the mints submit the design/strike to gaming for approval. When they are approved, the mints make the coins and ship them to the casinos at the contracted amount. It seems, though I'm not sure, that the contract has survived IGT's dumping of the program, and the mints are now losing money on strikes (and doing a lot of work) since the price of silver has gone up in the last few years. That is why it seems the MINTS are dictating to the Casinos (which still seems strange to me) how the program will be run. So to save money, the mints are switching to HSP for $10s and also the one pounders will become $300s (subject to gaming approval) and require 30 strikes to be redeemed instead of $200s that they produce now.
Supposedly, the machinery is either too tricky, or IGT just doesn't want to mess with it, and it's not a simple switchover to change the quarter machines to $1 machines and produce a $40 strike instead (or even $20 for that matter).
Lastly, it seems to be a common understanding that HSP strikes have MINIMAL silver content and would be fairly worthless as scrap silver. I'm guessing that because it would be too costly to assay the silver content for such a small amount, that they will probably not even be redeemable for silver content anyway.
So I guess subject to gaming approval, we're headed for HSP strikes and $300 one pounders whether we like it or not....
Dave.
SS - 1029
|
|