Deputies want to allow banks to sell commemorative coins not made of precious metals at market value

Deputies plan to allow banks to sell commemorative coins not made of precious metals to citizens at market value, as numismatic companies do. The profitability of such operations is measured in thousands of percent, and the audience goes far beyond a narrow circle of collectors. However, legislators have limited the coins available for sale to banks only to those that are in souvenir packaging from Goznak, which significantly narrows the market potential.

A bill has been submitted to the State Duma that should allow banks to sell coins not made from precious metals, on an equal basis with gold and silver. As noted in the explanatory note to the document, the draft proposes to establish the right of credit institutions to carry out transactions with numismatic sets of coins and commemorative coins of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation at prices different from the nominal value.

“To regulate the circulation of numismatic sets of coins and commemorative coins on the secondary market (when sold by credit institutions to retail clients), it is necessary to introduce a corresponding amendment to the current legislation of the Russian Federation,” the document says. The Central Bank told Kommersant that they would “consider the bill in due course.”

Today, according to the law on banks and banking activities, credit organizations can sell commemorative coins consisting of a copper-nickel alloy or steel coins only at face value. The bank can sell commemorative coins made from precious metals at a premium. Moreover, notes Evgeniy Timin, senior consultant at FBK Legal, the Tax Code exempts operations with coins made of precious metals from VAT; there is no such rule for copper-nickel coins.

As a source in the banking market explained to Kommersant, the Central Bank issues a large number of commemorative coins, which numismatic companies sell to citizens tens of times more expensive than their face value.

At a cost of 25 rubles. a coin can cost 500, 700 or even more than 1000 rubles. depending on the topic and volume of circulation. At the same time, Kommersant’s interlocutor clarifies, unlike commemorative coins made of precious metals, which can be sold at twice the purchase price, the bank receives commemorative coins not made of precious metals at face value, and accordingly, the profitability of such operations is tens of times higher. Commemorative coins made of precious metal are produced in much smaller circulations, which in the future can increase their value as rarer ones.

According to Kommersant’s interlocutor on the numismatic market, in Europe the sale of coins not made of precious metals is “a very big business, since the target audience of coins is not so much collectors as tourists and ordinary citizens who want to make an inexpensive, original gift.”

The head of the Association of Electronic Money and Money Transfer Market Participants, Viktor Dostov, calls the idea “quite reasonable,” because for numismatic coins, the denomination and value “diverge by orders of magnitude.”

“For investment coins made of precious metals, this issue has been resolved. The extension of the rules to numismatics seems logical, but the mass nature of this market, the mechanisms for setting prices and other technical details are not very clear,” he clarifies.

At the same time, the vice-president of the Association of Banks of Russia, Alexey Voylukov, draws attention to the clause that banks will be able to sell non-precious commemorative coins not at face value only “in the souvenir packaging of the organization that produces banknotes and coins of the Bank of Russia,” that is, Goznak. This clarification significantly devalues ​​the scheme, he explains: “Potentially, the bill could expand the field of activity of banks and increase their profits from the sale of commemorative coins due to a wider audience of buyers of cheap copper-nickel and steel coins and greater profitability, and from the current version it follows that Most of the commemorative coins not made of precious metals issued by the Central Bank fall out of the field of activity of banks.”

Goznak reported to Kommersant that in recent years, coins made of base metals in souvenir packaging were produced only by order of the Central Bank: “Goznak does not distribute them among commercial banks and does not have information about their demand for certain types of commemorative coins.” .

Maxim Builov