Investing In Rare And Key Date Coins

Not saying you should go this route but here are a few things I like for various reasons and a few things I have purchased or traded for. Bullion values can go up and down fast while any numismatic coins still can go up or down but not at the same pace as bullion market, with silver at a 31 year high it seems like a good time to switch some stuff over to more numismatic coins . Either way its a gamble but one thing that puts a strain on the market is counterfeiters and that could destroy the market but again people have been collecting coins for ever and people have been counterfeiting since the start of money and we still have money don't we. As for pure silver bullion I like the ATB 5 oz as they have under 34k mintage and the 2011 silver wolves as they have 1 million mintage, I wish I could of got the ATB 5 ozers but its unrelaistic right now

1. high grade barbers halves, key Barber halves and proofs

most have low mintage and most coins are vg and below and its hard to find ms coins and I feel there undervalued

2.early commemoratives pre 1950



Just a little rant of what I like, hope that helps

yea, I will have to speak with someone that knows rare coins.

im looking for charts like this:http://www.us-coin-values-advisor.c...e-coins.html

not sure if pcgs has an extensive one.

but basically this shows how certiain coins in certain grades have preformed over time, the last 50 years or so.

not only key dates, but rare coins that are popular among collectors and investors do better than purely just RARE coins.

it is interesting. I would love to see how much I could get with a budget of $500 or less. even back in 1980 I could have purchased an XF 1878-cc morgan for $30, and now it would of been worth almost $200.

i need to find THAT kind of data. that shows the performance of keydate, rare coins over time. even the ultra MS67+DMPL coins worth 15k have had smaller precentage returns thatn Xf or even MS60 coins.. also somthing to look for

SDCoinguy,

The data you seek is out there. Time will bring you to it. Don't forget to "real-world" it. By that I mean factor in transaction costs (as high as 20%), storage, insurance, risk of actual physical damage, opportunity costs, adjust for silver prices, etc.

Now as for the link you provided, as a financial analyst, I could actually use that to come up with some pretty compelling arguments to steer clear of coins altogether. In short, it shows in spots not only do you have to buy at the right time, you have to pick the right coin(s) and also, have to pick the right grade. It's hard to be right that many times.

That said though, here's something I'm kicking around...putting together a basket of about 5 key coins, all slabbed, with a target outlay of maybe $4-5K. I would view it as a purchase for myself as a collector/investor. Wording and order is important there. I do feel I could produce a positive return doing it while having something I'd enjoy. Why? Because I've been thinking about it for 15 years and every coin I've had in candidate status costs more now than before!

Really, if you do invest, make sure you're in good shape with all your other investments first and structure things so you'll never, ever be faced with needing to sell coins quickly. Best of luck to you.

What we are seeing on the market in coins is the metal value. There are many money merchants using there buying power to buy and sell real gold in hand instead of paper or gold on account. Our old Morgans are worth more because silver is high. When silver or gold goes down the animistic value kicks in. A friend has a few old Half Eagles that have not really changed in value they are back to their value in the 80s. In a pinch when paper money and government backed coins are worthless, Metals still have there value. In times like these reach for the gold. It will always have some value. My opinion only.

Salomon Bothers used to keep track of a basket of super-rare coins as part of the non-traditional investments they reported on. Once a year, they'd come out with some ridiculous figure like rare coins rose 30% from last year.

If that was true, in 1980 I'd have converted some inventory into $10,000 of rare coins. By 2000, I'd have $1.9 million worth of coins, and could sell $500,000 a year, while watching the base value continue to grow.

Which is nonsense. The stuff they were using as their sample was so rare that it was almost impossible to buy if you wanted it, and there was so little of it around that there wasn't any way to expand the supply beyond the existing demand.

Comparisons for "back then" are useless. In 1964, authors were pointing out that if you bought a roll of each cent since the Lincolns started, your under-$100 investment would be worth five figures.

What they didn't point out was that was purely because no one bothered to do that, making MS early coins hard to find.

The second problem is that investments like that don't scale. Speculators in 1964 took that info, and figured that if they bought a bag (or hundreds of bags) of each date, in 50 years, they'd be millionaires. The number of collectors didn't grow 5000 times, and there were many times the cents available from circulation.

It looked like a no-lose proposition, after all, you could always spend them. Start counting the cost of getting them, storing them, insuring them or having them stolen, and decades of lost interest. The only reason a bag of 1964 LMC is worth more than face today is its copper content, not any collector value. I'm sure if someone wanted a hundred unc bags, it wouldn't be that difficult to find them.

good points.

a lot of that is speculation for sure.

i wish I was back in 1916 and picked up a few rolls of quarters. ;)

but with that said, there are coins out there that have and will continue to appreciate over time because of their scarcity and grade.

some coins in any grade, 1916 25c, 1916d 10c, 09svdb, will do well over time regardless.

this is the whole point of my post: research and locate those coins that will hold their values over TIME. not for quick turn around profits.

my dream is to some day pass these pieces of history on to my kids. the only trouble now is having the money to acquire these keys without my wife out. it is one thing to my wife to see an investment like the ATB 5oz bullion coins that I could have purchased for a total of $900 and have them graded, get good grades and turn around to make that quick profit. but it is hard for her to see the 'profit' in purchasing a key date i.e. the 09svdb for $1000 and sit on that for 50+years. so if any of you could or would throw out some speculative profit margin numbers for me so I could relay them to my wife so it might give her some ease on one of these purchases, it would be greatly appreciated.

another question, probably one of those that go "it is your choice" type questions would be if you had limited funds, say $500 to $1000 annually to burn on a key date, would you buy the lower grades to be able to at least HAVE that coin, or would you WAIT, 5 years or something until you had the $$?

in my own answer to this, I would probably go for the lower grade keys and cc's to acquire them quicker before they shot up in price. by the time I had enough money to buy an MS quality key, it might be years.