Sap - excellent point regarding my comparison although as silver was also commonly found in many denominations issued at the time of the issuance of classic commemorative, some of the commems did go into circulation. But excellent point regarding the mark-up over face value. The only correction to your post is there are modern commemoratives with extremely low mintages --- even lower than the classic commemoratives.
Here are a few examples:
1937 Roanoke Island 350th Anniversary - Mintage 29,030. Compare it to Boys Town 2017P Uncirculated Silver Dollar about 12,000.
1923
Monroe Doctrine Centennial - 275,000 approx. Compare it to 1990 Eisenhower Commemorative uncirculated dollar - about 241,670.
1935 Old Spanish Commemorative - 10,000. Compare it to 2021National Law Enforcement Museum Unc Silver Dollar - about 9,400.
In fact since 2011 mintages of most modern commemorative unc silver dollars have been below 50,000 and often around 25,000. In some recent years below 15,000.
But I agree the difference is the mark-up is a bit higher - about 2.5 x average spot price for silver uncs (and yes for face value much higher) and it is impractical to spend these.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to still ask my original question as the old overproduced commemorative issued in the first half of the 20th century cannot be spent now and the mintages from those issued in the past 10 year has been quite a bit lower than those of the classic early 20th century commems.
As an aside, also look at some of the mintages of 2022's commems: 2022 Negro Leagues Clad Half dollar sold 9,775, the silver unc 8,448, gold unc 1,500 (! making this definitely a scarcity); 2022 Purple Heart fared better - Clad Unc - 12,460, Silver Unc about 14,000, Gold Unc about 1,670. And as usual the proof strikes had higher sales or those offering privy marks.
So to me it is an interesting time to ask this question despite some pessimism.
First Page
Posted 12/02/2023 9:21 pm
