Average Cost Of Junk Morgan And Peace Dollars Going Back To The 70s

Ken,

I wrote this up in October 2017. I haven't updated since then. I was asked how to invest and how the OP pulled out the funds after the great recession.

"I work for a financial firm, I've worked for 3 of the largest asset management firms in the world. I am not a trader or broker, what I'm telling you is just what I do, it's not advice nor a recommendation. Because of what I do and the restrictions I have on trading, I only own open ended mutual funds. I've owned shares of mutual funds for over 22 years and have records of my finances for the last 11. In 11 years of having not a small share in the market, I've only lost value in 7 quarters, out of 44 quarters only 7 (3/31/2007, 9/30/2008, 12/31/2008, 3/31/2009, 6/30/2010, 9/30/2011, 9/30/2015) have lost value. Today I have 3.66X more than I did in 2006. The reason I do as I do is because I have a simple strategy. My allocations are as follows, I only own 5 classes of shares:

40% is a low cost stock index fund, the lower the cost the best (SP 500 index)

10% in small capitals (Russell 3000)

20% in bonds

10% in International

20% in fixed

To me there is no secret, if I was more risky I would probably be 90% in SP 500 and 10% in some type of fixed, but after looking at the correlation between investments, this works for me. I checked my returns and I average around 8-9% per year. Some years a little better, some years a little worse.

I was in the market in 2008. I lost 10.12% from 6/30 to 9/30, lost .3% from 9/30 to 12/31 and lost another 1.88% from 12/31/2008 to 3/31/2009. I gained 8.74% from 3/31 to 6/30 and 6.51% from 6/30 to 9/30. On 9/30/2009 I already had made back the money I lost and was ahead of the curve. I kept the same allocations and the same shares. I can't tell you what to do, but you would have been better not getting out of the market."

I used to sell rolls of Morgans in the early to mid 80's at local coin shows and also had a box of lower grade junkers that I recall pricing around $6 your pick. $5.50 take em all.

The big kick we small (and most larger dealers) didn't even know about was the Continental Hoard and Wells Fargo Hoards that hit. I do remember a couple of wholesale dealers that had literally hundreds of double row 14" boxes full of choice BU dollars (mostly all common dates), Back then we used BU Choice BU and GEM BU so ms60, MS63 and MS65+ The prices were reasonable but there were so many I was afraid to buy too many, they were priced by the various boxes they were in, to dealers.

Can't remember the exact dollar amounts but compared to today they were dirt cheap of course. Gems (MS64+ and up) would be priced at one set price if they picked them, or slightly higher if you wanted to go through and pick out ones yourself. The wholesaler that came around Denver I recall had to have stronger springs put in his Cadillac as the trunk was so weighted down with all the dollars he hauled around for a year. They never seem to run out, and the prices never crashed or dropped in the retail collector end, even with all the new coins hitting the market, the prices kept going up, albeit slowly.

It is amazing to look back and realize the wholesalers must have pumped tens of millions of uncirculated Morgans into the market and never even saturated it. I know there is a video of one of the "Big Dealers" talking about that hoard getting sold off on Newman Portal, it's in one of David Lisots videos, but not titled or searchable as silver dollar hoard. I took a quick look to see if I could jog my memory and find it but there are so many videos it would take me days to go through all of them. I think it might have been Bowers or Ivy telling the story.

Wow, so if you purchased them in 1978 and held them till today, you would have sold them for what you got them at. Shows you how quick the silver prices went up in 77 to 1980.

I can get AU for 18-22 and MS for 22-34 for common dates. So I would still be out of money.

He paid $87 an oz? Silver spot barely broke $50, why would he pay $37 more per oz than the highest spot price? Maybe he paid $47. Even so he is unlikely to ever make a profit on it. Silver would have to be $153 an oz today for him to just break even (same purchasing power for the dollars received)