Trump hawks $100 commemorative coins in latest hunt for cash

jeffw@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 346 points – Trump hawks $100 commemorative coins in latest hunt for cash
theguardian.com
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Money laundering. That’s what this is.

It's not money laundering to sell dumb shit to idiots, like coins to magas, or bathwater to thirsty teenagers, or dogecoin to me

I have no clue if there's indeed any proof for such a claim, but the theory that I read elsewhere is that it's a way to obfuscate money flows.

If a foreign nation (Russia, China, North Korea, whoever) would like to engage in the election, they can't just donate to the campaign officially. But instead, they could buy a couple thousands of these coins in smaller transactions.

TBH I'm rather with you. I think the majority of these coins is just bought by some MAGAs. For foreign nations there'd be probably more efficient ways to transfer money like shares etc.

It is if someone from outside the US, who can’t legally donate to Trump’s campaign, buys 100 of these.

It certainly is if most of the dumb shit is bought by foreign powers as a way to fund a campaign. See also bibles, nfts, sneakers.

You would be gravy, but it would be easy to shovel millions of oligarch money into his organization which will lose it by buying the oligarch’s overpriced services.

How?

Foreign investor buy dozens of these coins. People that probably shouldn’t be “donating” to American politicians cuz they want something in return.

Ah, I don’t think this is money laundering. Most politicians do this but with books. I guess a book was too much work for old don.

It's mostly a wealth transfer from dumbasses to a criminal grifter.

I saw these being talked about on r/silverbugs, Reddit's silver-collecting community. There is definitely a higher-than-usual concentration of Trump supporters there and even they were lambasting it for being a dumb thing to buy.

The thing is, these can't even legally be called "coins". A coin is only called that if it's made with sanction from the state. Privately-made coin-like objects are "rounds". Silver rounds are pretty common and are basically all worth melt value. I have no doubt these "commemorative coins rounds" will meet their end five or ten years from now in someone's backyard kiln who will unceremoniously melt them down and cast them into some nice jewellery or a silver figurine.

Edit: I actually have some Trump design silver rounds. Not official Trump products, of course (or maybe they are, IDK). They are very common and worth nothing more than melt value. I paid melt value of these two. I traded one of them to my former roommate who's a Trump supporter for a cod.

Definitely going to keep the "never surrender" round that has his mugshot that they took after he surrendered though.

A...cod?

Either a nice fish dinner or one of the call of duty games. Hard to say

I'm talking about the fish. Four packs of vacuum-packed fresh-caught cod fillets for one ounce of silver.

melt value is like $35? if it's actually as pure as they say and i do not fucking trust them with anything

It's easy to test. There's a machine called a Sigma Pro that can test the purity of silver. It costs around a thousand dollars and every pawnbroker and coin dealer has one. If it isn't pure, they'll get busted immediately.

Can you not use Archimedes’ principle to determine silver purity? A decent kitchen scale and something to measure volume?

You can determine density using a scale, string, and some water, but this wouldn't be reliable enough to determine silver purity beyond 1-1½ significant figures. 950‰-970‰ pure silver would probably be within the margin of error you'd expect for 999‰ pure silver. That silver is basically "contaminated" from a dealer's perspective because it's unsellable due to being a strange purity and would have to be refined into 999 silver at a significant cost.

Dealers don't do this. A Sigma Pro machine is easier, more reliable, and faster.

For that reason, if you only had 1 ozt of it (or even 10 ozt), a dealer would maybe generously offer you half or two-thirds of melt value.

Ooh, you've given me an incredible idea on how to scam old conservatives in 20 years

“1oz .999% silver medallions”

So 3x the price of other 1 ounce silver rounds?

https://sdbullion.com/silver/silver-rounds/1-oz-silver-rounds

You can’t launder foreign campaign donations by selling things at wholesale prices.

"C'mon. it's got his ugly face stamped on it. That's worth atleast 47x on it's own!" -Trump, probably.

24 ounce "Trump Train" - $856:

I want to melt it down and turn it into a bullet, I then want to shoot whoever designed it for cringe.

Dude needs to learn some body positivity and embrace his true form

It really doesn't look like him. The hair can only do so much, it looks more like JFK than Trump.

The people buying this shit would love to be putting people onto trains, so this tracks.

Can you imagine the horror on the faces of some future generation of they find these things in between the belongings of their grandparents after they pass away.

Or maybe they will think they're rich and can finally afford that new roof for the trailer.

Nazi memorabilia does quite well on secondary markets still. How is this any different? Humans will always have a morbid fascination with idiots of the past.

And the republicans will just say he's being enterprising.

To be completely fair, this is the sort of thing he's done for forever now. A significant portion of his wealth comes from simply licensing the Trump name

If I could get one for the actual price of silver (~31 USD/oz) I think I might just get one - for the "remember this dipshit?"

Check a local coin dealer/show.

Silver ounce rounds come in infinitely many designs, and there are a lot of right-wingers in those interest groups.

I'm pretty sure I've seen them done up with his ugly maw on. I think sometines as copper too.

“1oz .999% silver medallions”

So the coins weigh 1 oz, and are, for all intents and purposes, 1% silver? According to a quick google, silver is worth $31.07 an ounce today. So these coins have 3.1 cents worth of silver in them.
And he's selling them for $100 each.

Or is the decimal used differently here because the Guardian is British and in this context it means 99.9%?
In that case it's $31 worth of silver sold for $100, but that seems a downright generous investment when it comes to Trump merchandise, so I'm still guessing it's 3 cents worth of silver.

When you see "1 oz of .999 fine silver" that means it's almost pure silver. 1.0 would be 100% pure. This is 99.9% pure.

https://topvegasbuyer.com/blog/the-truth-about-999-u-s-silver-coins/

You can also get .9999 silver.

Except, the article has it in quotes:

“1oz .999% silver medallions”

Which suggests to me they are quoting the announcement.

Given the nature of the person selling them, it would be safer to assume they want you to believe the percent sign is misplaced so that you buy it, but then when you realize it's less than 1% silver you can't get your money back.

I checked out the website and it says 1oz .999 silver. Melt value of about $35. Still a grift but not that bad.

Yeah that’s in quotes too like they got it from him or his posts announcing these. I’d say it’s a typo which he is really good at.

.999 silver is common phrase to put on rounds but can be referred to as 99.9% too so someone probably typed it up wrong and combined them.

I would question the purity too though until I see them tested properly. There are other companies making clad Trump rounds and trying to sell them as high value collectibles especially gold plated ones.

Why does he think I would buy a $90 coin? I mean, who in their right mind needs a $70 coin? I'm definitely not buying an $8 coin.

Trump designs are a dime-a-dozen in silver rounds. I've come across at least two just from buying random amounts of them in bulk from billion dealers.

They are sold to suckers for way too much money and then are sold back to bullion dealers for a dollar fifty under their melt value so that the sucker in question can make the interest payment on their Ford F150. They eventually meet a gnarly end in someone's furnace after a few years and are cast into some actually desirable silver jewellery or silver bars.

How about a ₽100 Ruble coin?

I could use a $5 coin, $10 would be reasonable, $20 would be a bit much. But in all these cases only if they’re US currency or the currency of a country I’m in. $1 bills are too small to be bills, you can barely get a soda for that much.

There is a reasonably large silver community who prefers physical coin or rounds rather than certificates, shares or other more virtual/abstract forms of wealth.

There is a visceral and instinctive feeling when the value is purely in your hands and you can feel it.

Still, silver collectors/traders don't give a shit about the design. Commemorative coins are fine if they are roughly the melt value (paying a few % over melt value is common MSRP) but anything beyond that is fully bullshit.

Official silver coins (American Eagle) have government guarantees on the purity of silver, size of the coin, and other attributes. So those are far easier in practice. But silver rounds or bullion are still common.

He doesn't. His base might, depends how much they have left. The people who definitely will are the Russians, Chinese and Saudis.

Buy as many as you can. Then wait to be as rich as he claims to be. What could go wrong.

He’s still leading in the polls that matter these rubes are going to get us all in a heap of trouble if they re-elect their king…

Commemorative of what exactly? The first time he got impeached, his first lie about raping someone? The first time he fisted Putin?

If by "hunt," they mean with a shotgun, shooting a bunch of conservative fish in a barrel.