In Your Own Words: 2021 Morgan Dollar Pre-Sale
Numismatic News received an abundance of email messages from readers sharing their experiences with the U.S. Mint’s May 24 pre-order event for the 2021 silver Morgan dollar coins with the “O” and “CC” privy-marked coins.
Following is what our community encountered, in their own words.
Editor’s Note: On May 28, four days after this first pre-sale, the Mint announced that it will postpone pre-orders for the remaining Morgan and Peace dollars in the 2021 lineup. (Read the full statement on Page 4 of this issue.) The majority of the email messages we received from readers arrived prior to this announcement.
I’ve read the numerous horror stories from your readers about their experiences with the U.S. Mint, but being a skeptic, I had to get up close and personal and try this for myself. I figured that the 2021 initial offering of the Morgan dollars would be a great place to get my feet wet. It turned out that not only did my feet get wet, but I took a bath in ice water!
I was ready when the Mint opened the pre-order sale at noon on May 24. All seemed to go reasonably well (at first), but things quickly digressed into chaos. Within less than three minutes of the start, the website crashed; about one minute later it came back and I ordered three 2021 Morgans with the “CC” privy (at least I got them in my bag). I zipped through the checkout process as quickly as I could input the needed info (mailing address, phone number and credit card info). I got to the last page to confirm the order and just as soon as I hit the confirm button, the site crashed again. I had no idea if the order went through or not. It took a few minutes to reconnect (after three or four cryptic web/server error messages).
When I got back on, I quickly started to order three 2021 Morgans with the “O” privy mark – it was now 12:08 p.m. I got the coins in the bag and started the checkout process again. Luck was not on my side! The site crashed again and took another three minutes to verify
