Sorry to hear this, its a right kick in the pants.
My brain cannot work out the bit about the "Distributor", obviously this a third party who takes
physical possession of the goods to ship to others so I have a few questions?
Why use a distributor and not handle the postage yourself?
Is the distributor a single person or is it an organisation?
Did you have possession of the coins then sent them to the distributor or were they sent
from the mint?
My thinking is similar to others, I'm not sure if the package was insured and tracked that a
USPS worker could jeopardize their position by doing something like this.
Anyway besides ebay there are many other places these could turn up, facebook marketplace,
etsy, craigslist for example. I will keep an eye out too but I dont know what series 1 look like and
as Steeley points out what does the reverse side look like?
All the best I hope you get to the bottom of this
This is done quite often - both Mitchell and minerjones do this for polymerbit notes - as an example.
I also have dine this for several projects and/or group buys.
I believe he has already stated that the distributer is not st fault and that these arrived empty to the last USPS location - that would specifically imply thst it was the post office.
I have had 3 packages I have sent that have been tampered with by postal service.
The last one arrived even weighed less upon arrival than it did when dropped off at the post office.