There are more than two million beautiful proof 2001 Sacagawea Golden Dollars in the world... perhaps closer to three million, depending on whose numbers you use... combining coins from the Silver and Clad sets. This is the same number of shiny golden dollars as you will find in several later dates... and all of these coins carry little to no premium... not like the vaunted 2001 S Sacagawea which once demanded astronomical prices and has cooled down recently.
So who is responsible for the hype behind this sham key? I mean, imagine if there was a
Barber half dollar Proof that was minted and there were 2 million of them in existence and 95% of them graded out at Proof 69... what do you think that coin would be worth? How many would every collector have in their collection? Heck, when a classic coin has more then 100,000 examples available- like a common date Morgan or Peace Dollar- they become worth little more than melt... unless they are available in an uncommonly high condition.
For the 2001 Sacagawea proof only a PCGS PR-70 gives it any cache over what you'd likely to find everywhere you look in the market.
I ask myself, how can a valuable key coin be readily available in a $20 proof set (the 2001 clad) which could be had any day of the week for even less than that. It's not possible, really.
So who again, I ask, has hoisted this petard upon the collecting community? The
TPG's with their unrealistically low populations on moderns- which add thousands of dollars of value to an MS-68 quarter from 1998 because tens of thousands of collectors would never consider paying someone fifteen times the value of the coin to examine in and put it in an airtight capsule?
Don't get me wrong. I love collecting moderns. I feel more kinship to them than to older coins that I cannot afford in the high grades I like to own. That said, shame on whoever it was that ever said this 2001 base metal token was worth anything more than a trifle over face value... because it's more common than any silver state quarter- and we all know how worthless they are.
Posted 11/25/2011 2:16 pm
