cladking

Lol. There's a silver preference!!! There's also a indian cent preference, a wheat cent preference, and a 3c nickel preference. It is not natural for the coins of the realm to be overlooked and this happened all over the world for moderns.

OK, let me try again. In 1964 every corner coin shop had a '50-D nickels for sale. Kids sat on school busses talking about '50-D nickels and their wheat cent collections. Today kids may talk about their states quarters collections but they can't go down to the coin shop and buy other clad quarters because this is a "niche market" not a "mass market". '50-D nickels are still part of a mass market, a much smaller mass market than in 1964 and you can tell because coin shops stock such coins. They only stock coins that will probably sell and they don't try to stock all the rare Chuck e Cheese tokens or Swiss shooting Thalers.

I'm sure I can learn prices if I cared about prices. I am first and foremost a collectors. Secondarily I am trying to be a steward for modern coins. Tertiarily I am an investor. Right now I am selling so pricing is more important than ever before but it still takes a back seat to the coins and their scarcity. I know I leave a lot of money on the table but selling in this hobby has always been harder than buying. I knew this going in so I always sold a coin once in a while so I'd know their true value which is often much less than catalog and sometimes more.

As an exercise then why don't you tell me which countries are an exception to the rule. There are a couple so this should be easy. People simply didn't save the debased coinage which is why you can find plenty of old silver coins in nice chBU but you can't always find the later, high mintage, poorly made coins. The very nature of language and definitions always leaves exceptions.

Again. The 1975 PR dime is far scarcer than the 1894-S dime. The '76 PR Ike is even scarcer than this. There are many very rare and scarce moderns. Comparisons of the collectability of one era to another is practically meaningless but then you take it a step further and declare moderns to be lesser and less worthy. Really! You say there is a "mass market" but the '50-D nickel with nearly two million examples achieved a valuation of several hundred dollars in today's money while the '82-P quarter with fewer than 3% the survivorship can't achieve much more than $7 on the wholesale market!!! Where do you see this mass market? When was the last time you saw a collection of nice BU clad dimes walk into a coin shop? Even after 60 years there are still rolls, bags, and collections of '50-D nickels and '60-D sm dt cents walking into coin shops but there are no clads coming in because these collections don't even exist much less do they constitute a "mass market". People have tunnel vision and they see what they expect/. you expect a "mass market" so when you see HSN selling states coins you see a mass market for all moderns. It simply doesn't exist. Circulating moderns are appreciated only in Russia and China at this time but there are stirrings all over the world and there are isolated coins all over the world already discovered to be rare despite high mintages.

I appreciate the info. eBay prices of 10 and 15k Soviet coins are lower since I last looked a couple years ago. So?

I defined it. All over the world silver was removed from circulating coinage at a given time. In almost every case the old silver coins were withdrawn by the people and the government. In almost every case the new coins were made in far larger numbers and of poor quality. Even those made in good quality were ignored. In almost every case collectors continued seeking the old coins and did not collect the new coins. While modserns began in 1965 in this country they were phased in starting in 1920 in Great Britain and firmly established in 1947 leading to the silver disappearing. In Canada it was 1968. Almost every single country on earth had circulating silver before 1947. Now they do not and that changed over many years. It's just a facts and "moderns" is just a word to denote this fact.

No! That is my opinion based on the relative scarcity of moderns compared to more common old coins. You can call the difference between the typical 1969 quarter and a Gem "minor" until the cows come home but it doesn't change the facts or the numbers. It doesn't make the junk typical coin any more attractive. This isn't a matter of opinion. You are simply mistaken. Perhaps collectors will seek old beat up culls in circulation for all I know and Gems will never be appreciated but I seriously doubt it because there will be plenty of culls in circulation to satisfy demand. There are not enough Gems to satisfy more than the token demand that exists. Even chBU is not common enough to satisfy a mass market. This is simply the way it is and the reason I say they are undervalued is some exist in the tiniest numbers. Again, nice attractive '84-P cents and typical '75 proof dimes are rare no matter how you count them. 1970 Japan 100Y in nice chU are also a very elusive coin. Perhaps even moreso than a 1968 that doesn't appear in minty sets. You are doing nobody a favor by claiming otherwise. In virtually every single case in every single country a rare modern sells for a tiny fraction of the price of an exactly equivalent older coin. This is solely because most people believe moderns are uncollectible. Attitudes are changing all over the world and many moderns are soaring in price. I know no reason this can't continue. It might even come to US moderns.

I like gold a lot for insurance and keep mine in the form of numismatically interesting coins. When the prices goes up I trade nice coins for even nicer coins that will retain their value even if gold drops. I like silver as a bet on the ingenuity and resourcefulness of man. I also keep my silver in numismatically interesting coins. But I like moderns as a bet on history and nature. Rare coins will increase eventually. I have a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in my moderns but remarkably little money. I spend more on storage in safety deposit boxes than the cost in many cases.

There are countless moderns that are rare but cheap. For years I pointed to Soviet 15, 20, and 50 kopek coins from the '60's and '70's that listed for $1 or less. Now many of them are hundreds and hundreds of dollars. They were hard to find because they were scarce but you could find them because no one paid them any attention. Indian coins have finally started moving with many of them up hundreds fold. But there are still a lot opportunities here. Many of these coins from the '50 to '70's are very poorly made and rarely appear as Gems. It used to be a lot easier to find high grades because there were more coins to check but even BU's now are a few dollars each. Every country has overlooked rarities in its moderns. People see low prices and assume the coins are common. But things like 20c and 50c Fijian coins from the '70's to '90's are not at all common. Most moderns are only "common" if they appear in mint sets and most mint sets had mintages of only a few thousand. Attrition on the sets is very high so you can imagine how tough the circulation issues are. I believe a very high proportion of the Gem moderns seen in the marketplace trading for low prices are from mint sets. These mint set Gems are sometimes in series that are poorly made so even common date Gems might have tremendous potential. I believe high denomination Japanese coins are scarce. The coins are mostly low valued due to a nearly 30 year stagnation of their economy but this won't last forever. Many European, African, and South American moderns are grossly undervalued. There used to be a ship that set sail from S America to Japan every month laden with coins to make refrigerators and appliances. Many Central American coins are elusive as well but these are harder to identify. The scarcest tend to be high denomination coins because these saw extensive circulation and then most were redeemed when the governments recalled them. Many are getting quite long in the tooth. New Zealand moderns began in 1947 and they can be quite scarce especially as Gems. Ya can't swing a dead cat in any country without hitting numerous scarcities and most are still unappreciated.

I don't believe it's this simple. The reason is that in most cases it is far far easier and much cheaper to buy graded coins than to find them yourself. I recently sent off what might have been the finest '87 cent struck. It was PL, perfect, brand new dies, full strike, and no visible scratches. I've never seen anything close to it for the date. For some reason it came back far off the money. The irony here is that i didn't want to sell it in the first place because it's a $100 even as a pop top. I thought there was a chance it would grade even higher. Why poke through possibly thousands of mint sets looking for a better one? Many of the pop top moderns are grossly undervalued also. If the buyers of these coins had to do all that work they might not even collect them. If I had it to do over I might not have looked for things like high grade zincolns. Oh sure I have some great rarities that should be appreciated some day but that day is not now. I'm going to just have to leave my heirs a few safety deposit boxes full of grossly undervalued Gems.

I don't have much experience with graded earlier dates. I have searched rolls of the early dates so I have some idea of what to expect. I tend to agree that to consistently get nice coins you need to go MS-66. Most MS-65's are pretty nice but not consistently. I like quite a few MS-64's. In moderns about 20% look good to me.

Why limit it to regular issue?

Yes. I'm sure you're right. I just don't really know when one of my coins is up 1000 fold or really only 100 fold until I actually sell it. Until I cash the check it's vaguely distressing.

I kindda agree but once I started collecting BU coins the folders didn't cut it any longer.

No. There are numerous rare and unique moderns, simply no regular issues that are rare or unique. But be this as it may the fact remains many regular issues are exceeding difficult to find in high grade no matter how you define high grade. There are no MS-67 '76 ikes made yet for instance by PCGS, NGC, or by my standard. They may not exist. Many other moderns are very tough well made and mark free. The common wisdom is that they are as common as grains of sand on the beach but this is not true. Almost all moderns are far scarcer in every grade than is the common perception. This goes many times over if you are seeking a nice attractive coin.

No two people ever agree though sometimes we don't notice. I'm a harsh grader with moderns because of the way they are made with too little pressure, using worn dies, on badly aligned presses, and then being marked up badly. The services overlook a lot of sin because there would be so few Gems if they didn't AND because many collectors are primarily concerned with the coins being free of marks. To me it doesn't matter if a coin is missing detail because of wear or bad strike, it's still missing detail. Lots of 1966 quarters essentially left the dies in MS-3 because the lettering and the rim were merged together. To me it's a shiny AG. To each his own. Older coins were usually well made so counting marks makes much more sense for them. But even with Morgan dollars I really like coins with star details. Indeed, this might be one of the bigger opportunities in numismatics; picking out MS-65 and better slabs with well made coins.

Again I referred to "gemmy". Most coins in MS-64 (especially '51-S) are in no way gemmy. "Gemmy" means "nearly well struck and mark free". '51-S nickels are rarely well struck. For that matter I seriously doubt even many of the MS-65's qualify as "gemmy". After you eliminate 90% of of the 64's and 20% of the 65's that aren't that many and it's pretty easy for me to imagine a large number of people wanting to collect nice gemmy nickels. This isn't because 1938 to '64 nickels are such bad quality. It is because the post-'65 nickels are bad quality. Some are almost universally bad so collections of nice gemmy coins are affordable and look much nicer than Uncs or BU's. Most of the '51-S nickels that haven't been submitted look like junk or are charitably called "chBU".

No. I never paid much attention to catalog value since I was a child and used them to deduce the surviving populations. Now the guides are simple wrong for the US coins and every other world coin made after the elimination of silver from that country's circulating coinage. Moderns are mostly far scarcer than listing imply. Maybe you're relying on prices that were never right.

I have relatively little knowledge in this areas but I know what the coins look like. I really don't care whether there are three or one MS-67 of a given date because this information has no real bearing on what that coin actually looks like in the wild. It is simply enough to know the range and shape of the curve in which the coins appear using any specific definition for quality. This is part of the reason I don't track "pops"; the definitions of the grading companies are different than mine. I don't care how many MS-67 '82 quarters the services think there are because they grade these with little consideration for strike and die quality. These coins are tough clean, they are even tough in BU, but the real scarcity lies in quality coins struck by serviceable dies.

I strongly agree but then, of course, there's no reason they can't go much higher. Fortunately I haven't desired to collect any of these in a long time.

You call "quality" minutia but other collectors might call things like "historical importance", "date", "country of origin", or even "rarity" minutia. As I keep saying when most of an issue like '76 Ikes look like garbage right from the mint it is only natural that collectors seek nicer examples. And many times I've pointed out that some moderns are unique or there are only two known. Many many are "rare" by any measure at all.

I collected these back in the '70's and sought Gems before they got popular. I couldn't believe how interest kept building and building so I sold way too early (1980). It made sense to me to buy Gems at 150 to 200% of silver spot but the mania that ensued in the '80's was just stunning. It seems there are always coins that go for far more than could be predicted and some that sell for far less. There's always opportunity in every series but some series certainly seem fully priced.

As I remember the '60 sm dt cent was found first and was relatively "common" in bags but few bags had been released yet. The '60-D was found shortly later and was only about twice as common. But as the year went on the proportion of the Philly issue decreased and the proportion of the Denver soared. By the end of 1960 the Denver had lost most of its value and the Philly retained much of its. By 1970 even the Philly was going for only a few dollars each and the new '70-S sm dt could be had for a song. Over the years the '60 has kept dropping and the '70 is now up to about $50 each. Of course the '70 has the problem that most come from the mint set and most are tarnished. There were a couple hundred thousand in the mint set initially but there was a great deal of attrition because the sm dt was ignored until the 1990's. Then most of the survivors are tarnished now.

This coin is underappreciated even in XF with a nice solid strike and even wear. For some reason Uncs are far scarcer than the '35 and later coins.