RM mintage numbers - are they now minting to maximum

[Orpster]

I was looking up some mintage numbers on the 2019 BU Matte sovereign this morning as the royal mail page for it said it had a maximum mintage of 25000 which seemed super high for a matte

https://www.royalmint.com/sovereign/brilliant-uncirculated/the-sovereign-2019-brilliant-uncirculated/

Then when I checked the sales numbers it only totalled 1514

https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/mintage-figures/2019-dated-uk-commemorative-coin-sales/

I checked a few other coins from 2017/2018/2019 and there were lots and lots where the mintage number is far lower than the maximum mintage.  I am thinking maybe RM are now minting to their maximum mintage and selling 'cheap' to dealers any they do not manage to sell.  Basing this on the fact Bullion by Post had the coronations on Black Friday massively discounted and also the amount of dealers, Britannia Coins springs to mind, who have the coins discounted even at pre-release.  I wonder how much this is contributing to how badly proof prices on new releases are bombing post release.  Obviously RM increasing their selling price margin does not help but, if I am right and they are churning them out to the max mintage and not only minting to demand, can we expect the proof market to stay in the doldrums?

Edited January 15 by Orpster

[Silverlocks]

They wouldn't have to have minted all 25,000, just discovered they'd overestimated the demand.  If they had a few hundred surplus they might want to flog them cheap just to recover the capital tied up in the gold.  I see similar things going on with Perth Mint coins - the authorised issues are sometimes far greater than the numbers actually produced.

[TeaTime]

Judging by the delays a lot of people have been experiencing in receiving coins, i doubt if the RM are over-producing anything.

I would imagine that, excepting popular bullion and base metal issues, the strategy will be to mint to demand.

As for dealers offering discounts on RM prices - all that means is that they are getting better deals than joe public. 

Probably.