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 Replies: 20 / Views: 630 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3747 Posts |
Another wrinkle for discussion is the creation of "contrived rarities," coins that are minted specifically to become scarce. Recent examples include the so-called "last" 2026 Lincoln Cents and the multitude of Privy-Marked coins. This constant creation of low or lower supply coins can have the opposite effect of discouraging collectors from trying to assemble sets. For this, consider the very late introductions of San Francisco and West Point coins into the ATB Quarter series. The mint initially sold rolls and bags of the Philadelphia and Denver coins, and built a solid number of subscribers. The San Francisco coins suddenly appeared, but were only sold in 100-coin bags, which created odd arithmetic for connection with the 40-coin roll subscriptions. The abrupt circulation-only appearance of the West Point quarters created something of a frenzy to locate them, but also made assembly of UNC sets problematic. This sequence of events soured many on mint offerings, and not a small number of the Philadelphia and Denver rolls and bags have been dumped into commerce because of lack of interest. That's a long-winded way of echoing the comments that demand is the issue. If demand shrinks, the entire concept of "rarity" or "scarcity" changes. The proof Shield and Liberty nickels are a decent example. For many dates, the proof coins trade near or even below the value for business strike mid- to high-MS coins, despite a huge mintage differential. Then number of new collectors is declining. Many reasons can be offered, including a cultural shift from sedentary hobbies to more active hobbies, the shift from collecting emphasis to investment or business emphasis, the shift from cash to digital transactions, the shift from LCS to online trading, and more. Coins-as-investment will still exist for the well-known high value rarities (e.g., 1804 Dollar), somewhat parallel to art collectibles. The future of the rest of the hobby looks bleak. IMHO, the inevitable eventual cessation of coin mintage will end the hobby, but preserve a niche investment market. Once a generation is both born and grows up without cash transactions, it's done. Short answer to "Will our coins ever be valuable?" No. Edited by fortcollins
Today 7H 19M ago
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6908 Posts |
When I first learned of the Omaha hoard, I became very enamored of the story. A mysterious collector stashed pristine BU rolls of coins in a bank safe, every year. I started assembling and stashing BU rolls of nickels from circulation to emulate that cache. Ultimately, I decided that was pointless for a few reasons. First, as people have pointed out, modern mintages are high. Second, the coins need to land in the hands of an appreciative collector to be correctly valued, far in the future. Third, you have to store all those coins properly for decades. Fourth, investing that same amount of cash into an index fund would produce a tremendously higher investment return. Therefore, what you are really doing is accumulating heavy, difficult to store, fragile items to be inherited by a hopefully appreciative person far in the future, and accepting that the monetary gains will be massively inferior to basic sensible investments. Regarding what might be valuable in the future, I have this particular thought. Get a coin book from 2000, another from 1980, another from 1960. Examine the lists for the high demand coins. Those are the ones that will probably be valued by collectors in the future. The current batch of coins is anyone's guess. I would hazard a prediction that anything described as "collectible" or "limited mintage" or deluxe today will probably be spurned by collectors in the future. Partly because more will be saved in good condition than collectors will demand, and partly because collectors seem to have an aversion to limited edition collectibles. We have Beanie Babies, comic books, baseball cards to thank for that. |
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Moderator
 United States
196702 Posts |
Quote:
Another wrinkle for discussion is the creation of "contrived rarities," coins that are minted specifically to become scarce. Recent examples include the so-called "last" 2026 Lincoln Cents and the multitude of Privy-Marked coins.  Quote:
Short answer to "Will our coins ever be valuable?" No.  |
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Moderator
Australia
17012 Posts |
While "collect what other people are already collecting" is sound advice, the opposite can also be true. As a case study, let's have a look at Australian florins from 1927. In 1927, Australia struck two different kinds of florins. The one everybody's heard of is the circulating commemorative, with the picture of Parliament House on it. This was Australia's first ever commemorative coin, and was issued into circulation for regular face value. Mintage was 2 million, which was par for the course for early Australian florin mintages. But they also issued the standard design florin in 1927, with the same design that was used 1911-1936. Mintage for that coin for that year was 1.42 million - slightly smaller, but not really enough to make a difference in terms of initial supply. It's relatively easy today to find a Parliament House florin in nice grade (AU to low Unc) for under $100. But normal 1927 florins are much harder to find in that same state of preservation, and much more valuable (typically 4 to 5 times the price for the same grade) - because anybody collecting "the complete florin set" will need one of each, so the demand for them is much the same. But why is the supply of high-grade 1927 "normal" florins so low? Because they weren't "special", nobody thought they were worth keeping, so nobody kept them. Each of my grandparents kept a Parliament House florin, so I inherited four of them. I didn't inherit any "normal" 1911-1936 florins, at all. Now, this lack of high-grade "normal" coins is skewed in this case because Australia wasn't making mint sets in 1927 so there was no way for collectors to obtain perfect examples of the "normal" coins direct from the Mint. In this sense, any modern coin is going to be different circumstances from 1920s Australia. But it does highlight a key concept: if you can find something that no-one else seems to be keeping, but that everyone will nevertheless want in 100 years (and, ideally, a coin that was only issued direct to circulation and not included in any NCLT releases or mint sets), that is where you might stand a chance to assemble a hoard worth hoarding. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6908 Posts |
Sap, allegedly the same thing happened with 1966 clad coins. Everyone saved the 1964 silver coins as the final year, and a great many collectors preserved the first year of clad coinage in 1965. Fewer people decided to save 1966 coins in mint state.
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Posted Today 7H 6M ago
