NorthWest Territorial Mint Says They Have Silver

(Despite others saying they are out!)

Silver Stock Report

by Jason Hommel, March 25th, 2008

I spoke on the phone with Ross Hansen for about 45 minutes today.  Apparently, I've slandered his business because I don't know what I'm talking about with regard to his total silver inventories, because he said he does have more ounces of silver that he's paid for that is at other locations, such as Johnson Matthey holding about 70,000 ounces for him, that he simply needs to go and pick up with a rented armored truck for about $3000. (As you all know, I advise against having other people hold your silver for you.)  Here are my slanderous comments from earlier today that need retracting:

It appears to me that Northwest Territorial Mint is bankrupt.  Based on Ross Hansen's letter to me last week, a reader did some calculations based on the admissions in that letter.  Ross sells 20,000 oz. of silver per day.  And Ross has 300,000 oz. of silver "in the pipeline", and deliveries are about 60 days, at best.  There are about 43 business days in 60 days. (5/7).  43 days worth of silver, for Ross, at 20,000 oz./day, should be about 860,000 ounces, creating a deficit of about 560,000 ounces of silver that they are short, and have taken orders for, and have not yet bought that silver in this rising market from $13 to $20/oz. 

Therefore, I must and do retract that guesswork math and numbers, as I have not looked at their books, and don't know how their business is run, nor do I have any idea how much silver is owed to the mint, nor by whom.

I asked him to include such details of silver being owed to them in a letter to me.  While full details are lacking such as the amounts and by whom and whether the silver is in transit or at other locations, the gist is there.  Here is the letter.

Dear Jason:

Your attack on my company is beyond the pale, a disservice to your readers and the clients of Northwest Territorial Mint, and shows a complete lack of understanding of our business.

In my letter last week, I explained that we manufacture approximately 20,000 ounces of silver at our mint every day, and that we had approximately 300,000 ounces of silver in our production pipeline.  Somehow from these two numbers you wildly leapt to assumptions about Northwest Territorial Mint that are totally incorrect.

In addition to our own silver production, what you fail to know is that we have tens of thousands of ounces of silver that have been purchased from our vendors and, while not on the production floor, are on the way.  We receive silver from vendors such as Johnson Matthey, Pan American Mining Corp., and others on a daily basis.  You also fail to understand that we mint silver products for many other companies under different brands, some of which do not pay us until they are ready to ship.

As I noted in my letter, the unprecedented volume of business over the past several months has put extraordinary demands on our hard-working workforce of more than 140 people.  As a result, our delivery dates have averaged 30-40 days after our fund-clearance period and, on some products, at different times, they have been even longer.

We strive for excellent customer service every day.  Acknowledging that some customers have gotten their products later than anticipated, we are doing four things to better serve our customers:

·      First, we are working to communicate more clearly with our customers to give them a more realistic expectation on delivery.

·      Second, we are continually expanding our inventory.

·      Third, we are expanding our shipping operation, and

·      Fourth, we are working to increase our production.

As I said in my previous letter, last year Northwest Territorial Mint shipped over 69,000 individual orders, encompassing more than 2,000 different products. Other than some complaints about delivery, we never had a complaint about the quality of our products or failure to deliver them.

For 27 years Northwest Territorial Mint has been there for our clients, and we look forward to serving them for many, many years to come.

Sincerely,

Ross Hansen
Owner & President
Northwest Territorial Mint
P.O. Box 2148
Auburn, WA 98071-2148
Direct: (253) 833-7780 | Toll-Free: (800) 344-6468
Fax: (253) 735-2210 | www.nwtmint.com

I, too, have 28 hundred ounce silver bars that are "on the way" from another dealer, I expect it to arrive on Monday, the 31st, about 1 week  and one day after I ordered on the dip on the 20th.  This other dealer is drop shipping the silver to me, from another dealer.  Perhaps my other experiences I have with other dealers makes it difficult for me to understand Ross's bussiness pracitices of longer shipping times.

Ross was kind and patient with me on the phone and went over a lot of the details of his business with me, that he gave me permission to share with you.  He says he mints about 400 different silver items, and up to 2000 different items.  Each one requires its own production run.  For example, they mint 5 ounce silver bars once a month.  Therefore, things like that can require longer shipping times, depending on how the time of the order relates to the time they do a production run, and they won't do an entire production run for a small 12 bar order.   Their last run making 10 oz. bars, for example, they made 2300 of them, and made a small mistake as they realized they needed to make 1100 more.

So, small orders sometimes get caught in the mix, and generally speaking, people who order small amounts are the most likely to complain.

Further, I later emailed Ross that I liked his company because it provides two services that a lot of other dealers don't provide.  First, they ship small orders, and second, they ship overseas, and many of my readers could benefit from that kind of service.  The only thing holding back my recommendation of his company was the large number of customer complaints about long shipping times.

Ross sent me a letter about their benefits and drawbacks, first.

Thank you, we strive to provide good customer service and the best products in the industry.
 
The advantages of dealing with Northwest Territorial Mint:
    1.    Clear, concise up-to-the-minute pricing on our web site of our bullion products
    2.    Highly competitive pricing
    3.    Factory-fresh newly-minted products
    4.    We accept small orders
    5.    Free shipping and insurance
    6.    Can lock in a trade without a pre-existing account or having money on account
    7.    We accept personal checks
    8.    A wide assortment of products
    9.    We ship to other countries
 
The disadvantages of dealing with Northwest Territorial Mint:
    1.    Longer lead times

I will be sending you a letter addressing our silver production issues in a moment.

Jason Hommel
silverstockreport.com
miningpedia.com