cladking

I'm very surprised. I've been driving around the country for over 50 years looking for '65 to date (1998) clad rolls and rarely see even one. The only place I have any luck in out west where once in a while I'd see a Denver mint roll. When I do find them they've always either just come in or they've been in stock for many many years. Of course you can find 1976 coinage and states coins. About everything else is rarely seen.

This isn't true at all. The average age of collector in 1965 was ~20 In 1975 it was ~ 28 In 1985 it was ~35 In 1995 it was ~42 In 2005 it was ~40 In 2010 it was ~38 In 2015 it was ~40 In 2025 it will be ~42 The average age of coin show attendees has remained relatively stable between ~50 and ~58. It peaked ~2013 and has been dropping sharply ever since. It is about 54 now but it was lowest around 1975

...And this could just indicate the great depth of potential demand.

Up until the mid-90's the ANA held that there were no coins in circulation to collect. But up until this tine the common wisdom was the US stopped minting coins in 1965. Even Madison Avenue invariably used a picture of pre-1965 coins in advertising. 1995 was a watershed year when the coin market hit bottom. Coins under $1000 were almost all dead money. It only changed because of the influx of baby boomers and other new collectors spurred on by the prospect of new coins in circulation and the recovery of moderns. Grass roots coins were simply impossible to move in that era. It was even worse if they were world coins but nothing sold.

There are virtually no bank rolls of 1965 to 1998 clads. When they appear is such a freak occurrence that the price realized is irrelevant unless it's a sale on the net.

Up until 1995 kids and older people entering the hobby were told moderns are garbage. This really isn't much different than your message either but now every new collector doesn't get "the talk" the first time they encounter established collectors. That moderns are common junk that can never have any value is obviously misinformation. That you believe these coins will be worth face value in the future as you've already said and verified in this thread is wholly irrelevant to whether or not modern coins are collectible. They are what they are and your beliefs and my beliefs are irrelevant and irrelevant to future supply, demand, and price performance. The reason young coin collectors are congregating on sites other than ones like this one is they know if they come to any of the regular sites they'll get "the talk" with their very first post. No collector wants to post his coin and hear people say their prizes are just "pocket change". I've seen some rather desirable moderns called "pocket change" several times. Coin collecting is largely a social activity and long has been. collectors meet people to buy, sell, trad, and talk coins. Younger collectors have a great deal more in common with other young people. We old fogies often don't even understand their language.

Yes. Individually this is the biggest driver of change and especially in their individual collections. But people are a product of their place and time so there will be little similarity between the goals of a Soviet collector from the 1940's and a British collector from the 21st century. New collectors today will not have the same perspective as the baby boomers from the 1950's.

Wow!!! You can't step into the same river twice but this particular one has changed its course numerous times as well as reversed and flowed as a stream and the mightiest river. Cities have been left high and dry for decades and then had the river flow around them on both sides. This numismatic river is a microcosm of all rivers and has been doing this forever. In the 1890's civil war tokens were all the rage and some of their prices exceeded the old coins in perfect condition and scarcest varieties. The human race has existed 40,000 years and coin collecting only 2500 and everything changes continually. There are very few similarities between the coin market I grew up with and the one that exists today. There are no similarities between the coins I started with and those that circulate today. There is no similarity between the 1955 dime that had real value and was hoarded in massive numbers and a 2015 dime that has no real value other than to make change which all circulate. All similarities are facile and experienced at face value. The coins are shaped about the same but they weren't even made the same because everything has changed. There is still a demand for millions of the older coins but the demand for the newer coin is severely limited.

Actually what I really said was that there would be a new generation of collectors in 20 years. Most of the old line collectors are baby boomers and won't be as active in the markets by the early 2030's. This is already being seen at coin shows. The new generation will not have learned to hate moderns in 1965 and odds are a larger proportion will want to collect them. Who knows?

You're right of course, if you're talking about everyone who collects and US coins made after 1964. I tend to define the term as anyone collecting any circulating series that began in 1965. I should have said "clad quarter or dime collectors" rather than "modern collectors". In the '60's millions and millions collected cents and nickels from circulation setting up the conditions that have led to the crash in many coin prices. Today there are very few collectors of base metal coins from circulation other than states coins and beginners. There has been enough interest in moderns to create a few "fallen stars" like the '73-S PR silver Ike. This got up to a few hundred dollars in today's money and now it's around $20. But this coin is silver and far higher denomination than what was collected in 1964. Part of the allure was that it was very low mintage compared to any modern previously and collectors believed it would always be king of moderns.

This is not to say that mint and proof sets are a good "investment". Not only are no coins good investments but the mint sets really should be cut up and the nicer coins cleaned in acetone to prevent permanent damage. Of course nice older mint sets in ten years might be worth a fortune but nobody will want dark corroded coins and they'll all turn dark eventually. Of course it's entirely possible the scarcest coins in these sets will not have a market even in the foreseeable future. But I'm still betting that when people discover that the sets are gone and there's no source for things like '69 dimes there will be a lot of price pressure on the very few available.

All of the older sets have doubled, tripled, or quadrupled during the time that retail sales have been so strong (starting in ~2020). From these low levels most people consider the increases insubstantial but i consider them virtually "explosive" because I see the market much differently. I see the increase of the premium to face value. This is because the typical set has only 7 or 8 nice coins in them with a face value around $1.75 Other coins in the sets are impossible to clean or very difficult to sell due to their poor quality. The old price for these 7 or 8 nice coins totaling $1.75 was about $2.00 so their was a mere 25c premium to face value. Now the average premium to face/ silver value is about $7 which is a 28 fold increase. I've never really cared about the substandard coins because I find them ugly and I doubt collectors will want them. I'd far rather have a nice chXF old clad than a poorly made ugly MS-62. The increases haven't hit the wholesale markets for all of the coins in them but it has certainly hit the market for Ikes and half dollars. Most Ikes have been selling for $70 to $90 per roll wholesale. Sets are disappearing to fill this supply and even today most of the other coins go into circulation because the market is this. I keep asking where are the other coins going to come from when the few mint sets left are earmarked for the retail market? Attrition on the mint sets has always been just staggering and it is to be assumed that all this increased interest is destroying a larger percentage of available sets than ever before. In the past sets just languished and waited to be destroyed but now there is demand for both nice sets and many of their component parts. Of course these have always been a losing proposition and it's gone on so long that ,mint and proof sets are simply regarded by the entire established market to be long term losers. I think we are rapidly approaching "the long term" and these old saws about lousy buys will go the way of the horse and buggy.

No rolls were saved for these coins. Not literally, of course, but probably fewer than a quarter million '69 dimes were saved in addition to the mint sets. Quality was just awful so finding nice ones to save was difficult. Most of these coins were released back into circulation when the owners discovered nice specimens could be found in the sets. But here's the rub, only about 35% of mint set coins were nice attractive BU and most were poorly struck and heavily marked. These coins were widely distributed in lots of five sets which was the order limit. You couldn't accumulate nice attractive coins easily. Then over the years there was almost nobody trying to find these coins. Most of them were just spent regardless of quality when the sets were dismantled to get the half dollar. Probably nearly 70% of this date is just gone now and most of the dimes were put into circulation. The remaining '69 dimes are picked over only slightly but most all of them are tarnished now. This applies to many of the rolls of dimes as well. Nice chBU '69 dimes are available only because so few people care. It's getting very difficult to find these in circulation as well since they were designed to last only 30 years and it's been over half a century. When one is found it is typically a cull and in only VG condition. Gems for this date were scarce in 1969 and they are far carcer today. Some might say it doesn't matter and conditionally rare coins are a contrived metric but with moderns even chBU coins usually have significant strike and die problems. They are often poorly centered and even have distracting planchet marking. Many people collect moderns in Gem or near gem condition. Only a few thousand of these exist in retail friendly chBU condition. Another 20 or 30 thousand can be retrieved from mint sets and cleaned but the numbers are far too low to support any kind of mass market. The unavailability of things like '69 dimes will put more pressure on the supply of 1969 mint sets which, again, are the sole source of most of the coinage for the date. I believe the increasing difficulty of obtaining retail friendly older mint sets is driving the burgeoning retail markets in older clads. Even if success didn't breed success in collectibles markets this is still ideal conditions for explosive price increases. At some point a sort of critical mass will be achieved where the flow of mint sets onto the market is insufficient to satisfy either the mint set market or the market for the coins in them. Where coins have always historically flowed onto the market from old collections and hoards there are no old hoards of mint sets, no old collections, and most accumulations of things like '69 dimes are simply insignificant.

Yes! It's intentionally overstated but it is not misleading. There are many dates of cents and nickels that exist in rolls and bags (not all of them) and there are a few Ikes and half dollars but very few dimes and quarters were set aside and for some dates it is virtually none. In most cases the number set aside pales in comparison to mint set mintage. Even though there are tens of millions of moderns set aside in rolls and bags this doesn't affect the availability of 1969 dimes or 1983 quarters which were not set aside. Even among those coins that were saved in some cases the vast majority are no longer 'collectible" because they are tarnished or severely corroded. Just like morgans or bust half dollars availability is on a date by date basis.

I meant there are only a few thousand advanced collectors of moderns. Most modern collectors are beginners or intermediate. ...Many many thousands of them. Millions counting states quarter collectors.

One of the trends here is the disappearance of mint sets. There are no other sources for most of these coins and now the mint sets are nearly all gone and those that survive are often tarnished. This isn't going to reverse itself. As demand grows more people will be forced to pay retail prices for moderns. This is why retail markets are booming and it will become far more dramatic as the sets continue to disappear. People imagine vast overhangs of typical coins and Gems sitting in storage but they don't exist. The only overhang is mint sets. Those who don't know the mint sets can be cleaned or don't know how to clean them pay retail. This situation is not sustainable.

Obviously you're right that there is very little interest and it's entirely within the realm of possibility there will never be interest. But I'm guessing the interest will develop. I've been watching it expand since about 1980 and I can see the effects of those collecting from circulation for the last quarter century begin accumulating on the pocket change. Scarce dates and high grades are disappearing disproportionately to common dates and grades. Every year I see new road signs suggesting where we are headed. Soon we'll see lots of younger collectors buying their first coins because so many coins in circulation are almost gone and too hard to find. These will be very inexpensive coins but these will each be watershed events. There are only a few thousand advanced collectors right now but there are hundreds of thousands of beginners. Advanced collectors run the gamut of age ranges from very young to very old so their collections will dribble onto the markets for decades and decades but beginning collectors are almost all young and their demand will only grow. You can't buck trends and demographics.

I've always preferred to see coins before I buy them. No matter how "fungible" a coin seems often there is something wrong when you get it in hand. It's very difficult to sell coins and it's far more difficult with problem coins.

It's the same with the cent. More cent collections end at 1964 than at 1959. I hated clad as much as anyone in 1965. In fact my hatred grew over the years until I began collecting them in 1972. They got more interesting every year as new dates and varieties appeared and the older coins started showing wear. I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune in 1972 that said the mint and Fed were going to start rotating their coin stocks with those in storage the longest to be the first to be issued. It stood to reason every date would begin wearing out evenly so I wanted nice pristine specimens of every date and each variety. I always expected a stampede into these coins as collectors realized what was going on but it just never happened. Now virtually every single old quarter is worn out and more than half are gone forever through misadventure and still no stampede has materialized. For years I thought is was because of the existence of mint sets but they are almost all gone now and most of the survivors are corroded. Obviously the hobby is NOTHING like it was in 1964 and this is why so many coins that were popular or expensive in the '60's and early '70's are like shooting stars; they light up the firmament briefly and crash into the ground. People scour change looking for old nickels many of which can be found in high grade and ignore things like a '71 nickel that can't be found in high grade and is scarcer than a '50-D in coin shops. These are disappearing from circulation so fast that even if all the nickels aren't withdrawn and melted they will be absolutely scarer than the '50-D in 15 years.

This is irrelevant. It matter only how much demand there is for some specific coin and this tends to be proportional to the number of collectors. There are exploding numbers of collectors today but they are not behaving like established collectors in 1964. They are more like the kids who were collecting from circulation (clads) and new coins (states quarters etc). I don't expect anything except all trends to eventually return to equilibrium; to normal. Obviously like swinging pendulums I do not expect them to stay there. I expect most rare coins to eventually have premiums. I'm referring to US coins. Historically US coins have always had the highest demand in the world. So people call clad debased garbage that are like Chuck-ee-Cheeze tokens and that are more common than grains of sands on the beach in every grade because they just like the coins and don't want competition collecting them all!!! \ You can't imagine the level of hatred for these coins in 1965 and they killed coin collecting and replaced every coin in circulation with coins that each looked alike. It was so bad that by 1995 after decades of gaining new collectors the hobby nearly died almost altogether. It nearly came to look like you believe it should with a few gentleman collectors in their study looking at financially significant coins. I believe coin collecting is the greatest hobby in the world because it is so broad and so diverse. I lover seeing newer collectors who are more diverse and spanning every spectrum of humanity including sexes, nationalities, races, religions, and ages. Except for high grade rarities almost everyone can collect any coins they choose. The only limitation is how much work they're willing to do and now days with the net they have far more access to far more coins.

No. The '60's were not normal. There were far too many collectors collecting far to many recent dates in too high condition and in too large of numbers. This is why there are so many "fallen stars" of the era. I do think the number of older established collectors and what most of them were collecting was "normal" and I might be wrong here but Mehl popularized coins decades earlier. They were mostly collecting old US coins by date and mint. Today old coins from the '60'ds and '70's is hated. This is not normal.

I don't really disagree per se but I would suggest that coin shops have always been a microcosm of what popularly sells in the hobby as well as the point where most coins reenter the hobby after being collected for a lifetime. While niche markets are not serviced by coin shops except through wholesale selling to specialized dealers these shops do very much tie the hobby together and virtually define it. Of course this isn't as true as it was even ten or twenty years ago because most shops have a very large online presence.

Very interesting. Thank you. There has been a parabolic explosion in interest in coins in general and moderns in particular for quite a few years now. You can see it everywhere with things like coin folders for circulating coinage being sold in book stores. You can't get the coins to fill these folders in any coin shops but the folders and albums seem to be selling like hot cakes. You can also see it in the explosion of moderns in the hobby being sold at retail prices. Very few coins sell at retail and haven't since the market crashed in 1965. You can see it in the explosion of interest in social sites that talk about coins. These are mostly young people. I've stayed out of this for the main part because my influence does not seem to necessarily be positive to these markets. Certainly I've made precious little gains in improving perceptions in established collectors. A few things I've championed may have actually been detrimental. But the bottom line is what I've told World Colonial for many years now: Older collectors have a very unnatural hatred for modern coins and, on average, younger collectors will not shun coins simply because they are clad ore base metal to the degree we do. Younger collectors will be far more likely to collect any metallic composition. As soon as the last of the mint sets disappear it will be a whole new ball game because these constitute virtually the entire supply of most US moderns and especially clad. Long term trends have a way of playing out.

Yes. Indeed. There was obviously a bubble in 1989 just as there had been many others over the years. There were dealers buying dip in 55 gallon drums! The "perfect" morgan dollars I had sought in the late-'70's were selling at prices far beyond the scarcity of the coins. Some dates were exceeding common as gems but they still brought hundreds of dollars. Walkers that had never been on anyone's radar were being pushed and Gems were trading at very high prices. By 1989 most US coins even including Ike dollars began to hold somebody's interest. I had extreme doubt that grading could be standardized well enough to attract investors. While it might be done with different definitions investors would not be good for the hobby. Collectibles and things of beauty in general simply lose their allure with any attempt to be made fungible. The foundation of collecting is something with which tinkering can damage.

The '60's were in no way "normal" for coin collecting. It was the perfect storm that had created the largest possible number of coin collectors but the pendulum swung and by 1995 there was the smallest possible number. Some of these classics are quite common so obviously some moderns are much scarcer. Most such coins are difficult to sell. Buyers should be aware of this and this is why I always and still advise new collectors to sell coins once in a while to learn their true value. At this point I am just collecting all these into the same safety deposit box with the hope of consigning all of them to a sale. An old silver shilling is far easier to sell for fair value than a more valuable modern because there is highly limited demand and highly limited supply for the modern. Hundreds of collectors are seeking the silver coin but very few the copper nickel.