Will Our Coins Ever Be Valuable?

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.

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.

You sure said a mouthful there and especially about mint sets.

After WW II countries started switching to base metal coins one after another all over the world and in almost every case collectors quit saving the coins because they were base metal, made in much larger quantities, and were of lower quality as production ramped up to replace the circulating silver coins. A lot of the base metal was copper nickel which is harder to coin than silver.

This has resulted in many post WW II being quite scarce in pristine condition but one thing I've noticed is that where mint sets exist the coins aren't scarce. Even if the mintages of mint sets is very tiny and they are sometimes in the low thousands or even the hundreds, where mint sets exist the coins can be found.

Many people will look at the huge mintages of modern US mint sets and assume the coins will be common forever but, no, they aren't; they are merely available. This is for a simple reason: Most of the mint sets are gone and the coins were spent many years ago. Not only are the mint sets gone but so too are the coins that were in the mint sets because coins only have a 30 year life expectancy.

Then you have to add in the fact that most of the surviving mint sets of many dates are universally tarnished. Most of the few coins left can be restored to pristine condition by soaking in acetone but some of these coins like the '68-P dime is notoriously difficult to restore or like the '76-P type I Ike were usually poorly made so "pristine condition" is still ugly.

A lot of these coins simply are no longer widely available and people are starting to notice because even very weak demand is bumping up against a virtual vacuum of supply.


There are coins from all over the world made in huge numbers but the coins have been demonetized and melted. Without min sets some of these coins are quite scarce and even where there were large numbers of mint sets the coins can be quite elusive.

An interesting situation.

Thank you, Sap and cladking, for sharing your thoughts.

Ah yes, the infamous and possibly mythical Josh Tatum and the Racketeer Nickel. There's a whole episode about his scam on Mysteries at the Museum.