Liberty 1912-S Mintage And Value

Not trying to be rude, but you might want to take Economics 101, or better yet read a book by David Bowers. There are simply not as many people looking for an 1895-O dime as there are collectors looking for a 1916-D Merc. Scarcity is only one function of price, the other is demand. Without an increase in demand, price will not increase much regardless of supply. It is impossible to artificially manipulate this basic law of economics except temporarily. If your theory is correct that there is a huge supply of 1916-D Mercs around and the price is being inflated artificially because we "have been led to believe they are scarce" than that situation should correct itself in a very short period of time. That simply hasn't happened because of the popularity of trying to complete a set of Mercury dimes. I also think comparing one coin series prices to another is kind of useless. Of course it is always possible that a Barber dime date set might become more popular in the future than a complete set of Mercuries. In that case you will have made a wise choice. I would also guess that if that happens the supply of 1895-O dimes will increase as more people place them up for sale at the higher bids.

well, coming from someone that got his grandfathers collection (who collected just about all his life) there were numerous sets of Mercury dimes in various forms (folders,albums,jars) and not but 1 set of Liberty nickels which was complete, the Mercury set was always missing the key coin. Same thing with Lincoln Cents, there were 7 albums/folders of them and only 1 was complete with all the keys in them. The other sets were incomplete and if I wanted to add to what he spent his life creating I would have to purchase these key dates to do so, so there is your demand. I am sure other people have inherited just about the same thing and are in the same situation I am in, if I want to finish up what he started, either buy the key dates or just leave them in the box he gave them to me in because if you can't add to them there is no need to open them up. How many people have actually filled a album/folder to find after it was finished you hardly ever looked at the set again unless you were showing it to someone else

Interesting...

It's supply and demand, but it's simply not a straight-forward version! It's difficult with older examples perhaps, but some modern examples pop to mind: the 1931-D lincoln, the 1950-D nickel, the 1955 roosys, the bicentenniel coins, etc. Here, supply was "artificially" manipulated by hoarders and investors - it wasn't "what is the most popular collector coin", but rather, which coin was everyone hiding under their pillow.

When I first started collecting, the 1955 dates were the keys in the Roosevelt series. Today, they might be considered a semi-key if that series can have a semi-key. Now it's the 1949 dates. Supply and demand from collectors? Popularity of one series over the other? Mintages are approximately the same. So what gives? Manipulation of "supply and demand". At 13,000,000 the 1949-S does not merit the price it is getting if it were only collectors collecting them.

There are people, lots and lots of people, who just buy keys and semi-keys. At ampex dot com, you can buy rolls of key and semi-key dates. So on and so forth.

In fact, collectors probably play a very, very small roll in what the going prices for keys are. As someone else said, if the price were to go up for a particular date, all of a sudden all sorts of examples would appear as people start shaking their pillow cases to find some of that gold.....

Has the 16-D been rare from the get go ? Looking at the majority of pieces for sale, they are well circulated with an average grade of AG-G, which may indicate that people did not collect them til way later.
In comparison, 1856 FE was different. It was going for 200 times face value in 1856 and relatively few entered circulation.
Even though the 56 FE mintage is only roughly 1/1000th of the 16-D, it's value is only triple that in Fine (7k for the 56, 2k for the 16-D). Are there more people that collect Mercs than FE/IHC ?

springcypress makes a great point, especially about the 1895 O dime.
I haven't seen a decent one in about a year, and I try to get them.
As for '16D's, plenty around, but pricy.

SpringCypress, You are only taking the rarity equation into account.
The Mercury dime was produced all the way up to 1945, which means they were found in circulation for decades after that. The reason Mercs are so popular is because generations still alive today know them well and because the Merc has a very popular design.

On the other hand, the 1895-O dime with a mintage of almost twice that of the 16-D Merc has a price tag roughly 1/3 the cost of the 16-D,
yet Barber dimes are not nearly as popular as Mercury dimes.

The reason there is so many 16-D's on the market simply because it is a very popular coin that many collectors want to get their hands on.

What's not to understand? -PP

I'm not just taking the rarity into account... I think I mentioned on the previous page something about survivability. I've also brought up availablity.

Kabiye_Lady did a great job of putting words to what I've been stumbling around trying to get at. I think we're both on the same page.

I do think collectors affect the price of coins. And I think we see this in general price trends. But when certain coins start outperforming their peers at exceptional rates, what's causing that?

Somewhere in the last couple of years I saw a chart that tracked average prices of keys vs series over time. Certain keys like the 95-O paced along in lock step with their series fairly nicely. But others were showing gains that were nearly double of their series counterparts.

I don't think this is by collector demand... But I think its a combination of collector and investor demand. (I also think I tried to put a verbalization to the diffence as relates to collectors and investors...) In my head Collector demand should cause keys to follow along with their series. For those little kids who are picking up $2.5 coins a $500 coin is out of the question... a few years later when that $2.5 coin is a $5 coin the key SHOULD be in the $1k range... This makes sense... But when it's jumped to $2k or even more there has to be something else involved.

BUT if there are a group of investors that are coming in via a fund or some such and buying up rolls and rolls of certain key date coins, then it would only make sense that those coins would outperform their series peers.

I don't know... It's late, I've been on the job now for about 42 hours and I know I'm struggling to put my words down. Maybe later it'll clear up in my head and I'll do a better job.

(And for the record I've taken Micro, Macro, Basic Econometrics, and Transitional... but models and actual practice rarely coincide.)