Are Ike Dollars A Sleeper Set?

I wish I had photographed each coin. This is a set of all 7 years of the Ikes. All 7 of these, of course, are MS. 3-4 have an iridescent tone to them.

I agree. I think we are seeing the beginning stages. By "awakening" what I really meant was an explosion in popularity in a relatively short period of time. My impression is that Ike popularity has been building steadily over the past few years. Is that your take on it, cladking?

Yes. Until recently the evidence for awakening was mostly anecdotal; there's a lot more talk about them. But in the last ten months or so there has been a lot of firming of prices on the wholesale level and broadening demand. ACE is paying $1 over bid right now for the '73 set and bid for the other dates. These are good buyers but they're usually under bid on mint sets. There's another offer of $80/ roll on the '76 type I at Littleton. Some common dates have been going for near $40 wholesale.

I've always believed that the move will happen very suddenly and would start with Ikes or Kennedys. Quarters will be last but the largest percentage gainers. Once it's started there will be very little doubt but I'm not so sure this is it yet. There have been false starts in the past such as the run up of 1969 mint sets to $20 back in 1989.

I don't think the popularity will surge so much as that the increasing popularity will stress supplies to the breaking point. When this happens people will look around and see that there is almost no demand but prices are surging anyway. Suddenly everyone will want to pile on and there just won't be any supply left to speak of.

Across the board in moderns really nice coins can be ducedly tough to find. Sure chBU usually is available for most dates and can even support a mass market but gemmy coins can be very few and far between. Since lower grades are often not very attractive in clad there will be an inordinate demand for nicer coins. This could put a lot of demand pressure on very few coins.

This is a prescription for a price explosion that will likely result in far greater attention and popularity as even the general public starts looking for less worn coins in circulation.

Let me answer the question. I went to the ANA show in Dallas a couple weeks ago. One of the biggest coin shows in the country. There were almost 0 Ikes there.

Now high grade/scarce Ikes...there will always be a market for those because people like to own stuff either no one else has or very few have.

I think you are reading my message wrong. There were what, over 600,000,000 Ikes minted with probably most still around? There is no shortage of them in BU+. There were virtually none at the show because no one wants them.

Yes. Exactly.

There were lots made but most are in a degraded condition now. Indeed, a significant percentage left the mint in MS-60. Some were so poorly struck and banged up they could be called MS-45.

Let me put it this way; the best coins mostly went into mint sets yet the Philly Ike in the '75 set is so poor only about 45% can be sold as BU! Over the years now most of these sets are gone and these dollars are in worse shape than they were in 1975. Say there are 10,000 of these sets available to the market. This means only about 4,000 chBU's are available to meet any increasing demand.

Yes, there weren't Ikes at the show (there never are) because there is almost no collector base. People don't ask for the coins so dealers don't stock them. But if people started asking then dealers have to start stocking them and this is what I mean by needing to "prime the pump". Until there is a supply there is no demand. The fact that the supply doesn't exist just shows how very very thin these markets really are.

But demand is growing and it appears that much of it is wholesale demand which suggests dealers are acquiring the stock as a result of increasing demand.

Really only time will tell but some of these Ikes are not very common in nice chBU condition. There may be nearly two million '78-D's but some of the other dates are much much tougher. There are not enough to satisfy a mass market and Gems will always be scarce. Even the most common ('77-P) has only some 40,000 surviving examples. We'll just have to see how it works out. But you can be certain that if the demand continues to increase there will be a major reorganization of pricing. In a country of 320 million a few thousand chBU coins can disappear almost overnight. The only reason they don't is everyone thinks they are common.

It's just an estimate.

About 2% of mint set coins are Gem for this date but half of those are probably degraded now. From the rolls I look at the incidence is enough to leave another 20,000 survivors.

Of course this is merely a ballpark estimate and is highly dependent on definitions. I do weight strike pretty stongly in defining "Gem" so your results or the TPG's results may vary. Most people tell me all my estimates are high but I don't adjust because I believe the coins are really out there usually in collections. But coins like '16-D dimes did not all wear out or get lost like many people claim. I believe at least a quarter of the mintage survives.

Ask yourself this jbuck... Did General Eisenhower ever take a weekend off?