Help In Buying Peace Dollar

There is no reason to have Peace dollars (or basically any coins) graded unless the value is $200 and up. Retail is around $24 for common Peace dollars and they are extremely common. There is no added value for a common Peace dollar in a TPG holder in low MS condition, but it may make it easier to sell in the future.

I view the cost of grading as a sunk cost that only helps the marketability of a coin. It will sell faster, and likely for more with the right label / sticker on it for sure. That money is spent though, it doesn't get capitalized into the coin. To me if you paid $12 to slab a $2 coin, you still have a $2 coin but now with a bulky reminder of your 12 bucks wasted, not a $14 coin. That type of math may work for the government, but in the real world you'd go broke fast grading low $ coins with the hope of profit.

Submitting coins seems to be a bulk only game for moderate priced coins or a very high grade / high $ game. I really think the only way to grade coins through a TPG as a small time collector would be in bulk. I have heard you can get it down to about $12/coin maybe that way. Who knows though, I certainly don't. Buying raw Peace dollars and then paying to have them graded is generally a bad investment. It can be done profitably, but those who do usually see tons of coins and cherry pick out the best or what is under graded to crack out and resubmit. If you are just getting into coins and transitioning some from stacking, it is unlikely you will see enough coins or have the fine grading skills to do that profitably.

If you want them graded, I would buy graded coins if I were you.

If you want low premium coins and the ability to profit with any upswing in metals, go with raw coins with as low of premium as possible and as nice of eye appeal as possible.

Here is a premium calculator I print and take into the LCS when I go. It helps me turn the odd weights into a $/oz price for comparison.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...g/edit#gid=0


If you really like Peace dollars and want to collect them, I would recommend buying an assortment of them at various grades for reference. It is more enjoyable than I thought it would be to go over your collection and grade them carefully and to have graded examples to reference. After doing this for a little bit, it is amazing how your eye can just jump to the relevant details or dings on a coin in your area of interest.

As a former coin collecting kid, turned adult stacker, fully transitioned back into coin collecting, I highly recommend the old US gold. Very low premiums even on graded coins compared to the bullion modern stuff.