Will Circulation Bring About Higher Value?

ebay does seem to have an effect on all things saleable. I believe more folks use ebay as the yardstick to measure somethings worth, more than catalogues and price guides. ebay has that "crazy bidder" factor, which can send a twenty dollar item into the hundreds of dollars if you get two bidders who don't know any better and are determined to come out on top.

As far as general circulation goes, if coins circulate, then the better ones will command higher prices because of availability. If every one hoards the new dollar coins and few end up in circulation, then the demand for higher quality coins is diminished because there are so many out there.

This can be seen in Canadian coins where the first year of a new monarch, the coins command much smaller prices. Take for example the 1937 Canadian 5 cent coin. It was the first year that George VI was on the obverse and 4,593,263 5 cent coins were minted. Charltons lists it in MS 63 AT $30.00. Lots of people socked away the new coins because they were different and new. Two years later in 1939 the RCM minted 5,661.785 of the coins, about 1.1 million more than 1937 yet an example in MS 63 LISTS AT $100.00. The difference is because the population of MS coins from 1939 are much lower because by then they were common and nobody was hanging onto them as a curiosity like the 1937 was.

Dave has it right ,, it is not that the coins are being degraded but that Demand is on the rise for a fixed number of coins that are in the market.

The internet has indeed brought an influx of people into coins many of them who are into investment rather than collecting ,, these folks pay sometimes 2 or 3 times the actual market value for common as well as rare coins in the hopes that the metals market and sometimes the Numismatic market will continue to rise .

Metalman