cladking

Greysheet lists this coin for 15c and even this is a little optimistic if it's really only MS-61. Buyers willing to pay 15c want mostly MS-63 and better. There is certainly room for price increases if any demand ever materializes.

I'm sometimes little more optimistic than you are. I can grow extremely cynical watching the evil prosper while the good and competent fall by the wayside. But then I look at the children and remember most of them will try to do what is right and our job is to merely teach them right from wrong. They remind me that where there's life there is hope and there's nothing like a human or entire generation of humans working together to get any job done. I believe that right up to the time we manage to make human life impossible there is a virtual certainty that moderns will be hot. Collectors collect and so long as there are collectors someone is going to want every coin; even if it is nothing but "clad".

Last year I made the monumental mistake of buying a computer with cash. I expected it to cost under $400 but the HP I bought that doesn't even have a disc drive, monitor, or anything else was well over $500 by the time they added everything up! I thought it was a good time to get rid of a few bills but I sure was wrong. They acted like they had never seen cash before and managers were crawling out of the woodwork to OK it and pass on it. You'd think I was trying to cash a third party check on a foreign bank with all the commotion. Believe me I've actually done this before and it took less time. Maybe they thought I was planning to come back after closing time and steal the bank deposit. When I set aside a Gem 1980 quarter I knew full well that I was taking a large risk on inflation and opportunity costs. Never did I realize the loaf of bread I didn't buy with that quarter might someday require a handful of quarters in the form of a credit card. Every day the world gets screwier but people don't seem to notice. We have the worst products in history yet their producers of it get all the money. If I sell the Gem 1980 quarter the middlemen, ebay, and paypal get the lion's share.

It's not just collectors who hate moderns; https://goldseek.com/article/americans-throw-away-millions-us-coins-because-american-money-junk The American public probably "throws away" a lot more than 68 million dollars worth each year if you add in what ends up on the ground, recycled with cars, and in public incinerators. A lot of coins are discarded accidently or are dropped but not worth the effort of retrieving. Most countries have some coins of real value and their vending industry flourishes but here coins have no value as the government wants it that way. The paper currency no longer has ,much value either inasmuch as no significant purchases can be made with it. Every year inflation chips away more at the value of coins and more coins are discarded and lost. Every year all those old quarters are further degraded and another ~4% are lost forever. Older coins have a higher attrition because they are thinner and lighter. Soon enough they'll just be a memory. When the government demonetizes and recalls them there will be only a few left to turn into refrigerators and other appliances that won't last. But at least we'll have gotten our money's worth out of the clads; the last vestiges of quality in a throw away society.

Even though debased coinage is USUALLY scarcer and often much scarcer than the coins they replace they usually sell for a small fraction of the price. Why would you think this is?

Repeating things that aren't true has no effect on anything. You can find fistfuls of Unc and gemmy British silver for every 500 fine coin you can find yet the sterling sells for more. Then you can find a lot more of the 500 fine than cu can the cu/ ni yet the 500 sells for more. Mintage and sales are irrelevant. The only things that count are how many survive and how many want one. I'm selling. Not because I have as much profit as possible but because of my age.

I had a chance to buy a few hundred of the scarce 1959 Scottish 1S back in 1995 but would have to take them all at ~40c each. I passed. They were almost all XF and AU with a few VF's and sliders. I doubt many of the cu/ ni coins are tough in XF except maybe the early ones. I see a lot in poundage and they tend to be F. Moderns are funny. It seems most are either more common or less common than one would expect.

Imagine how hard these would be to find if there were lots of collectors and lots of collections! 20 years ago most of them were just a dollar or two each and I always picked them up but rarely saw them. Now they are five or ten dollars and you still don't see them. These come nice but Gems are not easy. A lot of them are tarnished and these don't clean up as readily as clad. There are lots of sliders and AU's also.

No. what I am describing is collectors refusing to pay much less for scarcer coins because they are base metal. There's a simple reason they won't pay a lower prices for scarcer coins: They don't collect them because they are believed to be common debased junk. Part of the reason they are considered such is that mintages are higher and quality is lower on average. I can find handfuls of nice chBU, XF, and VF British sterling for every "common" mid-'20's .500 fine debased junk. Then I can find handfuls of high grade .500 fine for the '50's era cu/ ni coins in BU. It's this way in "every" country.

In almost all countries (at least major countries) between the Bretton Woods agreement and 1968 silver was discontinued and the coins were replaced by base metals, usually cu/ni. Referring to the debased coinage as "modern" makes sense because its introduction in every case marked the beginning of the cessation of collecting new coinage. In a few case copper coins that were unaffected by the debasement continued to be collected but in most (such as the US) all coin collecting of new coin ceased. This happened in this country in 1965 but in most countries it was earlier and in a few it was later. The definition of "modern" hence is "new debased coinage that was not collected and usually still isn't". Whether or not this ball was set in motion in Bretton Woods is a question that won't be answered for years yet. I strongly suspect it was. Mebbe the bankers wanted all the precious metals so they could sell the same bar to numerous individuals.

I wasn't aware of this. When I was young back in the late-'50's/ early '60's most of my friends were collectors though most rarely bought coins or supplies. I suppose it's possible that it's more widespread today than I believed. I've been trying to get the numbers for coin folders that are printed each year but haven't succeeded. I'm sure it's very substantial because I see these everywhere except filled and walking into coin shops. Obviously there are a lot of state quarter collectors.

If you define "collector" as anyone with a collection of coins that they are studying and increasing or simply has an advanced collection then there are probably at the very least 10,000,000 collectors. About 1,000,000 of them buy supplies, services, or coins on a continuing basis. The number is still lower than in 1964 but is approaching it.

Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker make an important observation in this article; https://coinweek.com/1983-p-kennedy-half-dollar-a-collectors-guide/ Only two '83-P half dollars trade per day. This pales in comparison to the number of something like an '09-S VDB that trade. Tens of thousands of people have wheat cent collections and as the population of this group evolves coins must trade in the market; you can't take it with you and you can't have a complete set without the VDB. How many people are collecting half dollars for so few to trade hands? There are no old collections, no BU rolls and WYSIWYG applies.

If it weren't so well struck I wouldn't give it a second look.

Here's a really nice coin from Herndon's site; https://www.collectorscorner.com/Products/Item.aspx?id=65660796 Believe it or not it's the best strike I've ever seen for the date! As a buyer I'd be a little concerned about the hazing on the reverse but many collectors are not. It's a very remarkable coin though they also come cleaner than this. It's one of the few high grade coins I've seen of the date that's not blatantly overgraded and is positively among the finest. It looks a lot like a mint set coins but it can not be, of course.

https://www.wayneherndon.com/numisu/rolls3C.htm Most BU rolls on the market are from mint sets. Original BU rolls are not only hard to find but are often skunked. Even when they are pristine the coins tend to all be ugly, poorly struck specimens from worn dies because this is the way they were made. Sure, you can find some that are clean without great difficulty but many collectors demand attractive well made coins whether they are circulation issue or mint set.

No. This is not true. Before 1965 mint set coins were probably selected for higher quality and plucked from the line. After 1964 they used dedicated presses and the coins were made to higher standards and then washed and dried and otherwise specially handled. Yes, these coins often don't look better than coins made for circulation but dies were retired from mint set production after only 40,000 strikes. They were also set at even higher pressure than proof set coins. The odds of mint set coins being Gem are many multiples the odds of regular coinage even if most mint set coins are bad. The mint described the coins as regular production coinage until 1996 when they admitted they were specially made. Well made coins made for circulation are most unusual and coupled with the very low savings rate is why the number of Gems for almost every single mint and date of all denominations is closely correlated to their incidence in mint sets. A few Ike dates and the '80-D half are the only exceptions I can think of but these exception exist for identifiable reasons; a larger percentage of Ike production was set aside than any other denomination. One coin in 4000 in mint sets is from a brand new die. Only one in 100,000 of the early clad made for circulation is from a new die. Mint set dies make about 10 new die strikes. I imagine that regular dies make twice as many, or more, because they are at lower pressure. These coins appear 'matte" for lack of a better word.

As the mint says "mint set coins ARE regular issue coins". But collectors took this to mean they were shoveled off the floor of the mint and put in mint sets. In actuality mint set coins would more accurately be thought of as early strikes made more carefully than "run of the mill coins". They are made on older presses that are slower leaving more time for the design to strike up. They usually use the exact same dies with more pressure burt the biggest difference is none of the above. You can't tell by looking at a coin how much pressure was used, the nature of the press, or how fast it was made. What you can tell is the condition of the die and mint set coins are all made with new dies. These same dies are then used to make regular issues and some regular issues are made by new dies. Long and short of it is that for every single practical purpose these are just like the coins in circulation. However, most of the coins made for circulation are garbage and Gems are very scarce. Finding Gems in mint sets is like shooting fish in a barrel: You might miss the one you're aiming at but another will float to the surface. There's still far more water than fish though. No, quite the opposite. Anyone pursuing modern collections is missing the boat entirely if they ignore BU rolls. Sure you can more easily find Gems of every date but some of the coins made for circulation are just as pretty. Just because a die isn't brand new doesn't mean it can't create a virtually perfect strike and then remain pristine. Many coins (especially varieties) don't appear in mint sets at all and a few are invariably scratched in the mint set. The '80-D half dollar, for instance, almost always has shallow gouges on it caused by the mint set handling equipment. There is no right or wrong way to build modern collections but the only way to find many Gems is in mint sets because there are no rolls saved. '67 quarters for instance trade at well over $150 per roll. These often come very nice but Gems are exceedingly scarce and the only others of this date are SMS which are distinct from circulation issues. Imagine how few of these rolls must exist for the paltry demand to push the price so high! I'm quite confident they made Gems of every single modern coin for circulation. But, there are quite a few I've never seen because their incidence is so low and there are so few saved. Some coins were likely made as Gem less than .0001% of the time so you need a good sample of many hundreds of coins. These Gems would bunch up a lot so you could look at a hundred bags of a date and see none and then the 101st bag have dozens and dozens of Gems. I lack sufficient sample size on most of these coins to even guess. Remember I looked at very large numbers of '69 quarters made for circulation and ever one was awful. Long after I gave up a dealer gave me a few in change and I found a bunch of Gems in his cash register. I value these a lot because they are Gem and obviously not mint set coins. They may "all" be unique.

This market is still in its infancy and how it matures will largely be dependent on things that haven't happened yet. I hope the speculators stay away but the reality is they'll come charging in anyway if prices start moving up quickly. People hate moderns but nobody minds a profit. The individual who will comprise this market won't behave like the ones from the 1960's. It's not only a different world today but a '50-D nickel is dissimilar to a '69 quarter. They have different dynamics and characteristics. The supply of '50-D's was highly concentrated but the much lower supply of '69 quarters is very dispersed. Set building is not as widespread today though does seem to be making a little comeback. I would expect some parallels to the 1960's but even more differences. I expect most collectors to be young and middle aged adults but with substantial numbers of young people putting together their own collections purchased online or gleaned from bank rolls. I would expect eBay to have more sellers selling fewer coins at substantially higher prices. But these collectors will invent their own market as they go along. Dealers will establish wholesale markets to increase the efficiency and as catalogers begin printing more realistic guides the efficiency will increase even more. There will somehow develop a multi-tier market for nice and really nice coins. The current registry and slabbed markets should be unaffected at first. After that it's anyone's guess.

Yes! Exactly. Most collectors hear words like "rare coins" and they're expecting coins with five figure price tags. But the reality is even rare moderns are not going to have as high a price as comparably rare classics for many decades. It takes time for markets to shake out. I'm talking about huge potential percentage increases. It would require very very little demand to push some moderns up 100X or more just as has already happened in Russia, China, and India (et al). All stocks aren't Berkshire Hathaway, some are penny stocks.

You'd be surprised how few of these sets dealers "hold" in inventory. Most keep a single set of each date and few keep more than three of four. There is no market and sets tie up capital. Sure dealers accumulate vast numbers of sets even if they don't offer a good price but they periodically go through and ship off all but a couple of them. They did not check them in the old days so you'd often see sets that were short, cut, or had extraneous coins and even folding money in them. If you asked if they checked them they said "no". The common wisdom is that all moderns are common and are uncollectible. Mint sets which represent the best coins made by the US mint have been treated accordingly. Ironically from 1965 to 1996 as the mint was putting the best coins into mint sets they described the coins in the sets as "regular production issues". It wouldn't have mattered if they admitted the truth because the coins would have been perceived as gilded garbage. The reality is the coins in these sets were specially made for high quality but collectors didn't notice because most of the coins are not very attractive. They didn't notice because they didn't take a good look at the junk made for circulation or compare them side by side with mint set coins. It doesn't matter how many sets dealers have on average because only a few sets survive the periodic purges. And even these few sets are likely to get mixed with the next batch and purged. The sets are gone.

You do realize that Morgans wholesale for $50 but if a probably a scarce 1968 gemmy cent sold for so much it would have to increase 500 fold? I can't produce the destroyed packaging nor do I have film of the sets being consumed in fires of bulldozed after floods. All I can do is to repeat what dealers tell me and what I have seen for more than half a century. When sets come onto the market there are no buyers so the sets are destroyed. You say they are cut up for singles which is certainly true but is a relatively minor cause of the drawdown. Sure, it happens a lot in the year of issue and shortly thereafter but in short order everyone has updated their collections and the price plummets as the demand drops. It happens every year for 60 years like clockwork. New sets are high priced for a few years and then they fall through the floor often selling for less than face value. If it were true that these sets are getting cherry picked for singles then the average quality of sets would drop year after years but this simply hasn't happened. When sets come into the coin shops they are just as nice, just as random and when they were issued (for the main part). If a variety appears in one set in 180 and you find 180 of these sets then odds are still pretty good there will be one of these. If Gems account for 2% of production for a specific coin then just about 2% of the sets you find will have a Gem. This happens because most sets are destroyed and what's left in the wild is random. Sets aren't destroyed one at a time, they are are destroyed wholesale and as part of a process caused by a lack of demand. Many times I have walked into a coin shop and seen employees cutting up sets for the cash register or walked out with mint set coins in change from his cash register. I always ask if the sets have been checked for Gems and varieties and usually the answer is no. Yes, I know the sets are everywhere and you could drown in them if you offer bid. But it's not because of large mintages it's because the coins aren't in collections. The demand is soaring but it's still tiny relative the number that survive.

I'm selling now. It's too late to have much affect on most of my coins. Yes, I do still have a few safety deposit boxes full of gemmy and Gem coins but I've sold many of these as well.

A nice attractive gemmy set of eagle reverse clad quarters can be assembled in nice choice attractive condition for a few hundred dollars. Theoretically it can be done far cheaper because Greysheet says the coins wholesale at less than $100. You won't find a seller with the coins willing to sell at wholesale because it would involve looking through mint sets and BU rolls and picking out superior coins and then selling the quarters for 30c wholesale. It won't happen. Every year it gets harder to find the coins and every year there are fewer of them. Nobody is going to spend $20 to grade a 30c coin no matter how tough the coin is to find. Catalog prices are based on junk. Nice attractive coins are in some demand. You can't assemble a nice gemmy BU bust half dollar set for a $100 or a few hundred. Most collectors are priced out of such coins. Meanwhile tough coins that comprise really attractive collections are going begging because the common wisdom is that the coins are as common as grains of sand on the beach. There's absolutely no reason that the difficulty of finding attractive circulating moderns could become widely known. This can happen virtually over night. All it takes is to look and see what nice coins like MS-64 '82 quarters are really selling for on eBay. The common wisdom has been wrong all along and there are enough people who know that it's being shown for what it is. Modern circulating coins have everything going for them. They are so inexpensive that complete sets can be assembled at face value and even high grade coins often sell very cheaply. As long as you stay away from pop tops they are inexpensive and safe from loss. If you don't mind the competition with registry set collectors there are pop tops there have far more opportunity for price increases because all of a coins attributes are not measured by our current grading system. There are PL's and strikes from brand new dies that are unattributed. There are even strikes that are virtually perfect from brand new dies. Then there are underappreciated varieties and errors many of which are extremely scarce whether they appear in mint sets or not and can even be found in circulation still. Since all of these coins still circulate they are each little calling cards to direct attention at your collection. And since they circulate freely (for the main part) there are numerous lessons in metallurgy, statistics, and other fields that can be gleaned from studying them. The circulated coins provide a snapshot of the minting characteristics of the various dates and mints. Moderns have everything to offer that every other series has to offer and more. They will be collected someday. They are being collected now limitedly but there's no reason to presume there is any sort of natural limitation imposed on them. All limitations are in the minds of the observers.

It's a drop in the bucket for a mass market. These 742 sets won't all be cut up and those that aren't will continue to corrode. Some owner will spend the coins in disgust. Many of the dimes will be restored and most probably used in collections. Only about 65% of the restored coins will be nice chBU and only 15% will be "gemmy". This is another 75 or 100 coins in a market that represent 335 million people. These sets wouldn't exist at all available for sale if there were more demand. Even though millions of people might collect these coins the reality is the number is in the thousands because everyone knows they are common and just debased garbage. Most are low quality which hardly encourages collecting. Most of the sets that retail or sell on eBay aren't too bad. They are not dark from tarnish but they will all have hazing and on almost every single coin. There are not millions of these sets any longer and they are not pristine. They are abundant only because there is little demand.