1958 To 1970 Mint And Proof Sets.

I agree with the above posters. If I had a couple extra grand....I WOULD invest in multiple mint sets and one of each proof set (silver and clad).

Believe the looooooong term investment is good.

I've long thought that people would be surprised to know just how scarce many of the coins are. Over the years they just keep getting scarcer and scarcer. Most 1969 mint sets have been destroyed and proof sets aren't fairing a great deal better. With a lot of the coins in mint sets the vast majority are highly substandard and unattractive. The combination of few remaining and poor quality would cause lots of stress on supplies if there were any demand. Of course the demand is just infintesimal. About ten companies assemble sets of things like clad quarters and sell up to 100 or 200 per year. Most of these sets will have a lot of low quality and even AU coins but the buyers aren't aware of the situation since most are not advanced collectors. But each of these collectors might someday choose to upgrade. There are also hundreds of thousands, even million, of the folders being sold for clad coins and many of these collections might someday be upgraded. The potential demand is well up in the many millions counting states quarter collectors but the supply of truly nice attractive coins is often in only four figures.

Personally I think the demand will materialize because people are nostalgic and these coins have been used for nearly half a century now. If the demand appears the supply is such that many will have to settle for lots of unattractive coins or they'll have to find nice looking specimens in only VG condition from circulation.




Collectors have the mistaken idea that the mint and proof sets are all picked over. Actually though most sets don't get actually picked over until large numbers are assembled to be cut up. Then the picked over sets are destroyed leaving mostly nice fresh sets on the market. There just aren't very many left especially for the pre-'73 dates. Some dates are picked over for specific coins like '70 sets rarely have an unidentified smalldate any longer and SMS are picked over for cameo usually. People see poor quality and figure the nice ones are missing but in actuality these sets just weren't made very nicely. It takes a little effort to find choice specimens. It's the same thing with singles; collectors often assume these are substandard but as a rule these are actually slightly better than average. Finding Gems as singles is tough but average quality is better. Some dealers slip in AU's so you do have to learn how to tell a BU from an AU.

It's odd how low the price is. With shipping and ebay fees, I see people getting back probably around what they paid for the mint set many years ago if there is no silver.

I still don't own a mint set. Maybe I should go after an 88, my birth year?

Wow, I wish I lived closer to a coin shop so I could do that!

The '88 is a good date but tough work to find just the right set. It was the beginning of a falling mint set production and only 1,600,000+ were produced. They aren't too hard to find and about half of the mintage survives. Quality can just be stupendous because many of the planchets for these were burnished. This means there are large numbers of Proof Like coins though most have unattractive scratching. The Philly half dollar comes with a rotated reverse in the set about .8% of the time. You'll need to look through about 100 of these to find the two parts of an all Gem set and another twenty or so for the rr half. The Denver cents in this set are often spectacular. About 5% are nearly perfect and highly PL and about .2% look like branch mint proofs. Most of this cent comes as Gems and chGems are quite common. The nickels are tough and clean shields can be found on half dollars of both mints.

I bought rolls of 69 p mint set quarters that were cut apart for the silver when the melt value exploded. The mint sets were bought in huge quantities, cut apart for the 40% halves, and the rest were sold in rolls to fatten profits. There's no question these sets will explode in value down the road. I really don't care what happend though, I just want to find my darn quarter. I usually find 2 or 3 64's and maybee a borderline 65 per 40 count roll.

I'd wager close to 90% of proof coins in circulation are intentionally released by dealers because they are culls. Customers demand almost perfect proofs but as many as 10% (usually <5%) of the proof set coins can be substandard. These coins are spent. The mint set coins can be found as well but they blend into the coins in circulation so are much harder to see. But I have seen heavily worn coins in circulation with mint set crimping damage and there's a tendency to see to see high grade, high quality, examples of dates where the mint set has recently fallen in price. Proof and mint sets tend to get cut up when the price falls or the price of silver increases.

One major wholesaler brags of filling up three dumpsters every week with the packaging for mint products and primarily mint and proof sets. The older sets are not nearly so common as people assume.

I agree that a lot of the cause of the low prices is inertia. But sonce 2008 there has been another reason as well; the poor economy. The weakness in the economy causes lower prices by masking the increase in the demand. Many middle class people are hurting and these are the people who own the raw sets after buying them from the mint. Each time a house is foreclosed or another middle manager laid off there is a good chance any mint sets in the house or the possession of the individual will be sold. Demand is so poor that this relatively small increase in supply will swamp it.

If you look at the prices of the sets in the last few years you'll see there's far less pressure on the pre-73 dates. This is because such high percentages of these are gone that relatively few are coming onto the market.

I believe that when the economy picks up the mint and proof sets will be one of the very first places it will be seen. The demand might not go up much but the supply will drop a lot and not be sufficient to keep up with even the low demand.