Moderns And Changing Demand. .

I didn't see that as his point at all. It looked like to me he was just pointing out the increasing demand which has been happening and how a lot of people are going to find out that a lot of nice moderns aren't as easy to find as most people think

Yes, exactly.

People have the perception that all moderns are as common as grains of sand on the beach but the reality is most of them are uncommon to rare. Sure some exist in enormous quantities that are likely to swamp the demand for decades even if demand continues to soar, but most exist in tiny numbers that aren't readily available for sale. If you offer bid for most inexpensive coins they'll come flooding in but no body has things like nice chBU 1974 Ikes or Unc '69 quarters. They aren't out there but the tiny demand hides the scarcity.

The problem is greatly compounded by the fact that most mint set packaging has caused the coins to corrode. In the past Ike rolls were made up from mint sets but now the mint sets are few and far between and most of the coins in them are tarnished.

The irony here is most of the rolls already sold have been distributed to non-collectors and the general public. Many of these coins will be degraded. Attrition acts on them regardless so most will never come back on the market. These sold for as little as $1.50 each so it's not like they are sitting in safety deposit boxes.

I've long warned people to watch out when the mint sets got used up. Well, they were almost used up even before they started tarnishing. This especially affects the '75 to '78 Ikes.

It should be an interesting few years. I expect success will feed success. People like being in on the ground floor and the more they increase in value the more demand will be generated. With nothing in the woodwork the only way demand can express itself is with higher prices.

As scarce as the Ikes are, many of the quarters (and even some dimes) are much scarcer.

It seems impossible.

Back in the day you couldn't get anything for these so all the rejects all the way up to nice MS-64's just went to the bank. Even in the 1990's you could only get $1.20 for them so they were barely worth the cost of postage. A couple years ago Littleton needed a few hundred roll sets of them to fill an order and just keeps raising the price trying to fill it. It's almost filled so the average price shouldn't be too high.

So many of these are still ending up at the bank as collectors and dealers cut sets to get the Gems, varieties, and individual coins to fill sets. Lots of collectors are looking at their sets and finding the coins damaged or ruined so they take them to the bank. Some of these coins can be saved by a soak in acetone but they either don't know or don't want to trouble with it.

The price will have to go up a lot more to make a viable market for singles but I can't see anything that will stop the increasing demand that is still tiny and the quickly shrinking supply.

If collectors demand nice attractive and choice specimens we'll find out just how thin this supply really is. Some of these dates were made horribly even in the mint sets and time has been kind to them. Between being unceremoniously dumped into circulation and tarnished by mint set packaging new demand is going to crash into a brick wall.