Will Ours Be Worth Anything?

I think you guys are getting way off of the OP's question talking about Russian coins and high end clad coins. He is talking about your average BU coin. A 1911 nickel for $138 isn't a high grade.

Your average BU clad will never be worth much over face in any of our life times or there after. Maybe 10-20 times worth over face, but that is way off of $138. There are a few exceptions, but not many, like the ones for 1982 and 1983 are valuable, since no US Mint sets were sold from the Mint.

Like I've said, there were millions of BU coins saved. There are lucky to be a million or two collectors of them. Since there are way more coins than collectors, the price isn't going to go up much.

You're making several assumptions here that I don't believe are true. You are assuming that millions of coins have been set aside or collected and nothing could be further from the truth. People didn't save clad and this is the bottom line. You almost never saw any clad come into the coin shops and when you did it was typically junk like VF/ XF 1965 quarters that someone heard contained a little bit of silver. For every collection of clads you see there will be a hundred collections of silver. The clad collections were usually low quality.

You're assuming that mint sets are "saved" or "collected". I'd be surprised if even 1% of mint sets are actually collected. Perhaps 15% are purchased to get a specific coin but there is a huge tendency for that specific coin to be a penny, nickel,Ike, or Kennedy. The rest of the set will often be spent after a coin is removed. Large percentages of all these sets have been cut up and put in dealers cash registers because they aren't worth the postage to ship. Many times I've walked into coin shops and seen the dealer cutting sets randomly or received brand new old coin (mint set coins) in change.

When dealers do ship these sets thy usually are being shipped to big wholesalers like Silvertowne, AR Jewel, Covina Coin, or Littleton. Millions of sets have been shipped to companies like this and virtually all of them have been cut up. 20% of destroyed sets right off the top go into circulation and not infrequently most of the sets go into circulation. When they don't they mostly go to telemarketers who sell largely to the uneducated public. This is the public that lies awake night buying stuff from TV so don't expect most of these coins to be available in pristine condition in the future.

Just because two million 1974 quarters went into mint sets doesn't mean the coins were "collected". 60% of these are already in pocket change or in very precarious danger of damage from being pushed into folders or corroding in a basement. Of those 40% that survive the bulk are unattractive and poorly made. Perhaps 20% of the mintage were nice attractive coins meaning a mere 160,000 coins survive in nice attractive condition. There are still relatively few collections of these as evidenced by what comes into coin shops. If the coins existed they would be offered for sale so the lack of coins suggests they don't exist. If the demand for the coin were higher the price would escalate to the point that demand and supply remained in balance.

To put this in perspective there were some 2,000,000 1950-D BU nickels available to the market in 1964. In today's money its price was $175. Now look at the 160,000 nice '74 quarters and try to figure what the price would be if the market were as crazy as it was in 1964! Indeed, one should keep in mind that a lot of these 1974 mint sets are not really available to the market because they belong to the original purchaser who probably doesn't even keep up with the market. At any given time (right this moment) one would be very hard pressed to come up with even 1000 nice '74 quarters. You could offer huge premiums and lay hands on the coins in a month but you'd spebnd an average of about $10 each for them and have a lot of mints you'll need to unload to get the cost down to $10. In 1964 there were numerous parties you could call to get 1000 '50-D nickels and you could do it over and over and over without affecting the price at all. Do this with the '74 quarters and the price immediately responds and won't come back down until enough sets flow back to the market from the estates of original buyers. It could be weeks and weeks and a few orders like this would cause semi permanent price increases. The supply is so thin that even modest demand will show up.

The Russian coins really are a good barometer because in many ways they are the same thing. They are the modern coins of a major world economy and were made in base metal. Their price increases aren't being caused by speculation in all probability but simply by the demand exerted by a growing middle class. Most of these new collectors want the old silver coins and the prices of them are going up as well but these older coins were made of silver and were saved in enormous quantities inadvertantly and by intent. Even large demand increases are having modest effects on prices. A little of this new demand is for moderns and it's here that the supply is so weak that prices are skyrocketing. It's exactly the same thing except that mint set mintages were far lower and the circulated coinage was mostly melted back in 1991. Nobody collected Soviet coins back in the day just as nobody collected modern US back in 1974. In the USSR coin collecting was actively discouraged and the few collectors who did collect wanted the old coins, not Soviet coins.

People will be in for a surprise if they ever decide to collect modern US enmass like they collect the old US coins. They aren't there because they were never saved. This same thing exists world-wide because all over the world they switched to base metal and all over the world people did not collect it.

Years or decades from now I believe even zinc pennies in pristine condition (and I emphasize the word "pristine", MS69 or 70, no "zinc rot" or splotches, preferably new ones in rolls) will be worth many times face value and might be worth more than face even for the zinc content. I'm starting to collect rolls of new zincs from the bank at face but I don't save any circulated ones. I just pick up a couple of rolls from the bank now and then along with nickels but I don't hoard them.

@cladking: I see your explanation and it does make sense, but I see tons of Mint sets for sale at coin shows. I like to look at the facts and not assume. If you look at the NN price guide for Mint sets from the 70s - 90s, almost all of them are around 5-6x face value or less.

If there were only 1% saved (~15,000 - 20,000 sets), the prices would be much higher for them. Quite a few people still collect them. Most mintages for the sets are around 1.5 - 2 million per year. Even if 50% were cut/spent, you'd still have around .75 - 1 million sets and that is probably still much higher than the # of collectors for them. I would doubt there are more than 2-3 hundred thousand people collecting them as sets today. Dealers buy a ton of them each year. Many more than the collectors do.

I still don't think their value will go up much, but I do like to save a few rolls of each mint and denomination, just for collecting, no speculation on going up in value. You can still buy BU nickel rolls from the 60s-80s for around $6-$8. That is just 3-4x face. Similar thing with dimes and quarters (not including silver of course), they are just 2-3x face or less.

If they were really that rare, they'd be going for a lot more than that, right now. I read the NN and they have a great price guide. Most of the time, it is a little high on their listed prices, but generally a good marker on value. They list BU rolls of cents through halves. Most BU clad coins really aren't priced that high.

No, I didn't mean to imply only 1% still existed. Only 1% have been collected. Only 1% have been set aside in a collection. More than 40% still exist. It's lower for the early dates and higher for the later dates. Those that have been saved have a very low attrition rate of about .5% but those which haven't been have a very high attrition rate of about 3%.

If people decided today to collect the moderns there would be 160,000 of nice '74 quarters but if they wait till next year there will be only 155,000. Each year winnows the numbers lower and lower. At one time there were large numbers of these but we're already down to low number on many dates.

Many coins weren't issued in mint sets at all and some of these are already rare (<10 specimens exist) because no one saved them. Many moderns are very scarce due to attrition and each year just means fewer and fewer survive. Lots of people saved that 1911 nickel or there would be none today. Almost nobody could even be bothered to look at the moderns, far less collect them. Future generations will pay the price for this because the coins won't be available just like the Russian coins.

When you see a mint set at a coin show the odds of it still existing in five years are about 1: 100 for most dates. Any given coin in a destroyed set has a high probability of being spent.

You are very welcome.

Certainly this is true but the majority of collections that "walk into" a coin shop aren't brought by collectors but by their heirs. Now days if there are moderns the dealer will probably look them up but all through the '70's and '80's the dealers would tell the person to just spend the coins. If someone had a roll of VF/ AU '72-D type "b" reverse coins today the dealer would probably tell the person to spend them.

When you see high grade coins in circulation there is a significantly higher probability they are a rare type than mere chance. Some of this is because someone spotted it and accidently spent it many years later but dealers are, no doubt, a major cause. I always give high grade coins a good looking over.

The tricks to future valuables are:

• Save the right coins, like self-destructing Zincolns
• Prevent them from self-destructing
• Live long enough to be the guy with the goodies once they're recognized