Eric Roseman is at it again, it appears — a few months ago I wrote about an ad of his that was based on some very sketchy assumptions, an ad that promised you could buy gold for a $600/ounce discount. There was a little truth to it, of course, but not $600 worth … and today, we’re seeing heavy circulation of another Roseman ad for his Commodity Trend Alert that also promises a big opportunity to buy the best kind of gold available.

You’ll have to subscribe to his newsletter first, of course … at a discount, naturally (he’s asking $1,281 for it now … I wrote that he wanted $1,100 back in February, the current price on their website appears to be $1,161, so take your pick). The newsletter is focused on commodity picks and trends in general, not just on gold, but I don’t know what his track record has been, and we don’t have any reviews in yet for that service.

So … what is it that’s “30 Times More Profitable Than Ordinary Gold?”

He starts with the following:

“When I first heard about this, I thought, “Must be a typo.” How could one type of gold jump 24%…60%…even 82%, when common “bullion” rises 2-3%?

“The good news is, it’s not a typo… no leverage is involved… and I can prove it! In fact, hundreds of investors are exploiting this trend as we speak…”

He talks about the genuine scarcity of gold, and about the importance of holding it in person instead of in certificate form — though his example of “paper gold” is the Gold ETF GLD, not exactly the same as a mint certificate that represents personal holdings in a vault somewhere.

“My point is, in reality, gold is scarcer than diamonds. And because of this, and all “gold bugs” stocking up like a squirrel heading for a long winter – there is one form of the precious metal that trumps all others – by a long shot.

“… And I’m not talking about bullion bars, “ETFs” or mining company stocks… there’s plenty of them to go around.

“Rather, I’m talking about a kind of gold that’s issued by the U.S. Treasury. Last year they sold $948.8 million worth…and every last ounce was snapped up. Gonzo. This year’s shaping up to be even worse.

“Why? Because thanks to a colossal government screw-up, the Treasury is completely sold out. Thousands of mom ‘n pop investors have been turned away. Some folks even put their names on a waiting list to buy gold at $1,200 an ounce.”

You may have heard about this problem from the treasury recently — the demand was so high for gold coins that they got totally swamped, and were clearly unprepared for the massive increase in orders. They’re not currently selling the 2009 American Eagle bullion coins because they don’t have any, but they are dedicating all the 22K gold blanks they can get to minting more of them, and they won’t be making any other gold coins or fractional (less than an ounce) Eagles in the near future, either.

And the bit about putting their names on a waiting list? That might refer to the Ultra High Relief St. Gaudens coin that the Mint offered earlier this year — the price for that one was often up around $1,300 when gold was close to $1,000, but delivery was significantly delayed so it was kind of like being on a “waiting list.” Who knows, there may have been people who were so panicked about the economic meltdown that they bid up more than that to get on waiting lists for regular American Eagle coins, too, I don’t know.

It does seem, though, like the mania might have settled a little bit, at least temporarily, with the gold price retreating from that $1,000 level. People do seem willing to bid up to $1,000 or so for 2009 American Eagle coins on eBay at the moment, which is still a stiff premium over the melt value of better than 10%, but not quite as crazy as it got for a while back in December and January — and those assessments that the price of these gold coins went up by 20, 30, or 80% when gold was virtually unchanged are, I’m sure, verifiable … but they’re also implying that you can currently profit from a mania that is unpredictable.

We still hear that there are lots of complaints from desperate people who urgently need to buy 2009 American Eagles …

“Mark Wilson says, ‘[they] ought to initiate an internal investigation of Mint staff and employees. Something is very wrong and deteriorating at the Mint.’

“Diane Beasley complains, ‘It is unforgivable that a government-run enterprise with unlimited product demand and unlimited profit potential is so blatantly incompetent.’

“And Tom Pelicano recently fumed, ‘My opinion – the U.S. government has no gold left to mint.’
You can hear the frustration in their voices. Clearly it hurts to be shut out of this booming market.”

(as far as I can tell, by the way, those are all anonymous comments posted on one of the many mint-follower collector blogs — they’re almost verbatim of the comments on MintNewsBlog here, here and here. I guess blogs really are the copywriters best friend — what better way to get defensible quotes on almost anything?)

So what is Roseman offering, other than the subscription to his newsletter? He tells us that he has scrounged up a supply of these fabulous, hard to get coins — and that you’ll get the opportunity to buy some of them if you subscribe.

“Because this month, a small number of these little wealth-builders have become available…except… instead of 342,000, I’ve only been able to secure an allotment of 200 for readers of this FREE report.”

The 342,000 is the mintage of the gold American Eagle for the first quarter this year, a number that climbed in January, February and March — and I t hink that includes both the bullion coins and the collectible uncicrculated and proof coins.

And despite the fact that there is a shortage of currently available coins and the direct sales by the Mint are suspended, the Mint is still producing bullion coins and selling them to dealers, at least as far as I can tell, just not in the volume that’s being demanded … and not the snazzier Proof and Uncirculated coins that they previously sold direct to collectors (those are marked with the W — for Washington, I guess? And are more desirable by collectors, but have no more gold value than any other one ounce coin). [Correction, as you’ll see from the comments below, I didn’t think that through clearly — the W is for West Point]

It probably is hard to find 2009-W American Eagles, and if Roseman has 200 of those to sell at a reasonable price perhaps that will be worth it for some folks, though he doesn’t go so far as to make that specific promise.

There seem to be regular bullion American Eagle 2009 coins in “uncirculated” condition available from some of the dealers I’ve checked online (APMEX and Gainesville Coins have them for about $60 an ounce over spot prices, Kitco and bulliondirect don’t currently have them). So if that’s all he’s selling, I don’t know if there’s great value or not in the cache of 200 coins he claims to have available. Maybe he’s got some kind of great deal, but there are bullion American Eagle coins available both from dealers and on eBay (folks seem to be willing to spend a bit more on eBay, as usual, the pricing gets up to around $1,000 for 2009 coins that have $890 of gold in them at current prices — I expect there’s probably a fair amount of arbitrage going on with folks buying from dealers and selling on eBay for a quick profit).

Is this all Roseman is telling us he can provide? A cache of American Eagle bullion coins that you can possibly buy? If so, that’s a little silly — demand is certainly high, but if you’re someone who simply wants to buy bullion coins (as opposed to specific collectible coins) and hold gold coins personally because of the commodity value of that gold in the future, there are a multitude of options. I am no coin expert, but with four or five countries producing widely-recognized and trusted one-ounce gold coins I see very little reason to pay huge premiums for the American Eagle coin.

You can easily buy Canadian Maple Leafs, which are purer gold than Eagles, Austrian Philharmonics, South African Krugerrands or any of a number of other coins at lower premiums to their gold value — and even if you want the American Eagle coins, if you’re happy with a good quality uncirculated coin from a random year and don’t need a 2009 or 2009-W coin, those are also available on eBay and from plenty of dealers at lower markups than the newest mintage.

Buying a coin for its collectible value gets into all kinds of “what if” situations, but if you’re really just wanting to hold some personal gold for safety and don’t want to put in the time to understand the collectibles market and monitor the value of your coins, it seems like just buying an ounce of verified gold (meaning, minted by one of the major countries, and bought from a reliable dealer) is a much easier step.

Of course, Roseman may well have other things in mind — he inserted a couple hints about “other G-8 countries” in the letter, so he may well be implying, as he did in