Overrated/Underrated Coins

Most 2 Cents are underrated especially when you take into account that a significant portion of the mintage was melted.
"During the post-Civil War years, demand for Two Cent Pieces waned, perhaps due in part to introduction of the nickel in 1866. The Two Cent Piece was abolished by two pieces of legislation (1871 and 1873). Large quantities of Half Cents, large cents and Two Cents were melted in 1873, creating raw material for Mint production of small cents between 1873 and 1876.

Large scale melting of copper coins probably accounts for scarcity of 1872 business issues, which are far rarer than proof specimens.

I would note that research on the 1877 IHC suggests the coin is much rarer than the 1909-S IHC.
Despite a given mintage of 825,000, there is only one known reverse die--and none show significant Die Deterioration.
So, the actual mintage may be just a fraction of that, or coins of this year may have been inadvertently melted during the recoinage of 1871-81.

I'm going to really stick my neck out and say most CC Morgans are over rated. Now before the hate mail comes my way, I admit that I love Morgans. To me they are the most beautiful coin ever produced.

But when I read Bowers book on the Morgan silver dollar; and in particular the sections on surviving mintages, it became apparent that for most years there are more MS CC Morgans than for the other mints. Bowers himself notes this fact.

It seems a lot of people are hooked on the original mintage figure rather than the estimated survival rate.

Seems like key date and modern U.S. coins are the overrated but it does seem to be the popular. Overated are those ASEs graded MS70 with the high price.

I see a mintage of 1000 circulation strikes and 900 proofs in 1872. They list at only $640 in numismedia in XF40. One thousand made. One zero zero zero. I have no idea if that reflects reality in terms of actual prices people actually pay, but there are several similarly low mintage years for both silver and nickel 3 cents.

On the other hand, 52,000 Standing Liberty quarters were minted in 1916, making it a fairly titanic, widely admired rarity, and it retails for thousands in just about any grade.

The most overrated coins in the market today in my opinion are errors, with the exception of 1808 over 1807.

The most underrated coin that I can think of is a 1857 large cent. It has a low mintage of somewhere around 300,000 and you can pick up an MS for 300 or 400 bucks there are 50 on ebay now. I also really like flying eagles for only having 3 years an MS goes for 300 bucks except for the obvious 1856.

By far , Peace dollars are extremely under rated. Lots of low mintage coins out there at melt right now.

My biggest concern with the Peace dollar is how many have been melted over the past 2 years due to bullion demand. Only two carry major premiums. Most of the rest from my understanding are being melted down for other purposes, so you end up with many coins with 1m mintage and a significant number have been melted. THey are what I'm buying now, many MS grades are available at melt.

Well Johnny , go buy some ! LOL : )