Question On Clad Mint State Finds

I don't think keeping base metal high mintage coins is ever going to be "monetarily smart", unless there's something currently "collectible" about them as far as errors/varieties.

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John1

I have rolls of early-'80's quarters, '50's and '60's Indian mint and proof sets, Chinese aluminum from the '50's and '60's that all say you are very wrong.

There are lots of coins you can buy for 50 cents or a dollar that are quite scarce and will probably be valuable in the future and every one of them are high mintage and base metal.

These remarkable increases have been happening in silence because few people own any of the coins going up and this is why they are going up; they are very scarce because people didn't save them. Indeed, in many cases like old Soviet cu/ni the coins were melted before it was realized how scarce they were in pristine condition so now they are valuable even in XF.

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine you were transported back in time to 1974 with $100 US to Moscow! With this amount of money you could go to the bank and exchange it for 650 Soviet 15k. These are small (19.5 mm) cu/ ni fractionals of Rubles. Now imagine forming a collection of these coins saving the nicest and least worn and then taking the remainder to the bank to exchange for a fresh batch. Lather, rinse, repeat... Today that group of coins would be enough to upset the market and would be worth close to $500,000.

This sounds crazy to people because they can't imagine how such a situation would develop. How could "common" coins become valuable? The answer is simple. The Soviet government thought coin collecting was a waste of time and actively discourgaed it. If you belonged to a coin club it was difficult to join the Communist Party. People have "naturally" disliked base metal coins anyway and needed little encouragement to ignore moderns. Even in the 1980's no members in the Moscow Coin Club collected moderns or had access to any of the older coins except for what was still in circulation! I know because I tried to trade anything for them. Most of them collected pre-Soviet Russian silver but they did not have any interest in modern base metal coins.

It was the same thing in this country. Most world coins were saved by US collectors but we didn't like base metal either and we didn't like high mintage so coins like this were barely saved. Attrition was high because they were mostly ten cent coins that ended up in poundage and then used as play money by children or otherwise degraded and lost. I've long been very vocal about trying to save this stuff because I couldn't save it all. Safety deposit boxes are very expensive and mine always seem to be "full".

A lot of people have the idea that a coin that catalogs at $1 will never be valuable but the reality is that if it's a scarce and pristine modern that wasn't imported to this country to sell to children or give away in cereal boxes there's a very good chance it's rare. Generally such rarities will be high denomination cu/ ni coins from countries that didn't make mint sets at the time. But foreign mint set numbers are generally quite small and the attrition can be astronomical.

Regardless of mintage quantity, few examples acquired via the banking system survive in MS 65 or better condition by the time they reach you. Those are worth saving.

Thanks for the post. I have little doubt you are correct.

I corresponded with only six or eight Russians in the Moscow Coin Club and a few others. It may not have been a good sample of collectors. But all of them told me they didn't collect anything at all Soviet after 1960 and only a couple knew of anyone with an interest in early Soviet coinage. They could get me all the Czarist silver I wanted.

I worked pretty hard trying to accumulate and collect the later date coinage and only managed a few hundred. Only my 1, 3, 5, 15, and 50 kopek collections are complete. Some of these I had to pull out of dealer junk boxes because that's where so many ended up.

I had the same trouble trying to find Indian coins and found even fewer of them. I was fortunate to be able to find all the 1 Rupees but the other sets are hit and miss.

I believe collecting is much more popular in Russia today and a lot of the demand is from Russia.