GoldFinger1969

Apmex, MCM, Monex -- all pretty good.

More information with a TPG and/or CAC is fine. TOO MUCH is excessive.

(1) 1st....Welcome !! (2) Read Coinbufs post above.....it depends on how valuable the coins are. Unless the coins have sentimental value for yourself and you don't care about cost we usually say it doesn't pay to grade/slab the coin if it isn't worth $50. Of course, dealers get bulk discounts and sell to people like me so I've actually bought a graded/slabbed coin as cheap as $20 or $25. The cost of the grading and slab is at least $10-$15 so it's worth at least that. (3) I think you approximate the value but listen to the veterans here who have submitted. I've never done it. (4) What coins are you interested in collecting, accumulating, buying ?

Every other sub-index is boom-superbust.

Check out the sub-indices on the PCGS 3000 using the 1970-To-Date time interval (sometimes the data only goes back to 1979) : https://www.pcgs.com/prices/coin-index/pcgs3000 Fascinating stuff....note the continued drop in Commemoratives, down another 50% in 15 years and below the late-1990's lows. Generic Gold Index and Mint State Gold Index are both down from 2008 highs by about 1/3rd but Generic rising in recent years. I don't know what is included in the Key Dates & Rarities Index, but it has generally been in an uptrend since 1970 and is only down 10% from the ATH a few years ago.

https://www.pcgs.com/prices/coin-index/pcgs3000 In the last 3 years, down about 4% In the last 10 years, down about 18%. In the last 50 years, up 27-fold or just under 7% a year (not a bad return; S&P 500 returned 7.4% on price and 10.7% including dividends). The spike into 1979-80 is impressive, but the bubble into 1988-90 is practically legendary. Technically, we're still basing 30 years later much like the Japanese stock market.

You ALWAYS want multiple sales prices to avoid using an outlier as the FMV. Of course, if sales are infrequent and the last sale is 25% higher, something may have changed in the market (maybe the underlying gold or silver price) or maybe on that day there was just an excess of buyers (less likely to happen on HA, a bit more so on GC, more on Ebay). Then you buy 25% higher and another sale happens in 3 weeks 25% lower and you realize you shouldn't have chased. I probably watched 1923-D auctions/sales closely (like EVERY week) for 3-4 months as soon as I knew I was going to FUN 2020 and would likely be a buyer. Before that I had watched a bit less frequently going back years. People know the market for more liquid, more popular coins like Saints and more so for years or mintmarks that are ALWAYS available like the 1923-D. Get a rarer coin that only has a few hundred and you can easily see the price bounce around alot. It's the market pricing as best it can and markets work best when you have lots of sellers and lots of buyers. But liquidity in the coin game will never approach that of the financial markets.

Hey, I get it....in the past, people paid up based on what they saw with their eyes and not what the label said. "Buy the coin, not the label." And I get that what I see in a Saint you might not. And I want to be paid for that attribute and you are saying I am $200 too high in price and take that coin and stick it. And sometimes the difference in price between 1 grade is freakin' astronomical (check out the FRANKLIN GRADEFLATION thread I've posted here that is also over ATS). But if I bought an MS66 Saint for $3,000 and I know that an MS67 is $12,000.....I'm not necessarily entitled to just say that the other coin is twice as good as mine and I am entitled to $6,000. Maybe my coin has hidden attributes and I can $3,200 or $3,400 for it. Maybe I get a CAC sticker and I can get $4,000 for the coin. But just because the price jumps alot at MS67 doesn't mean my coin should be graded or sell closer to it in price. Maybe the coin isn't 4x as good as mine, maybe only 2x. But the coin's quality -- and the population census -- dictate what the price will be. Otherwise, you have market grading on a curve....and it leads to gradeflation and ultimately, mispricings and lots of unhappy collectors IMO.

I think so....RARCOA is choosing the coins based on their aesthetics including some attributes that might not be incorporated into a grade. Then NGC does the grading. If RARCOA thinks that having a bagmark on the Morgan Liberty's nose is aesthetically appealing, then they are going to look for those with bagmarks on her nose and not send in those without a mark on the nose. Then NGC grades them and can give a hoot about a bagmark on the nose relative to the chin, face, fields, etc. Presumably, RARCOA is choosing based on attributes that matter. The key to me is these coins are geared to the retail market which tends to skew younger, more novices, and not serious/dedicated collectors. We'll see........

And alot of those 1970's collectors were older...had $$$...and remembered coin collectors of the 1930's and 1940's as making fantastic sums of money by 1970 and then especially a few years later when the monetary system changed and gold/silver went up 20-fold within 8 years. You had a Perfect Storm in the 1970's and it reminds me of the Gold Bugs always looking for inflation to bring on $5,000 gold and The Good Times of the 1970's (the gold price moving, not the Jimmy Walker sitcom ) DYN-O-MITE !!!!

Those Zimbabwe notes aren't cheap. I see them on Ebay and also at FUN 2020 and for a note that is ridiculously devalued because of the printing press churning them out like Weimar Geramny did the mark, they sure charge alot for those notes in pristine condition.

Aside from Inverted Jenny's, not that good. It's basically stamp collectors trading with one another. There is hardly a market for stamp collections anymore. The American Philatelic Society has lost half its members in the last 20 years, down to about 25,000.

Suppose there are lots of MS63 Morgans and they vary all over the lot ? At least the CAC sticker is saying that the coin is strong for the grade. If lots of crappy coins are graded MS63 -- if they are really MS62's -- then that $40 coin really is for MS62 coins. CAC is simply saying that some of the MS63's are MUCH BETTER than others. Where the price goes....the market determines it. If you believe all coins graded the same are in fact the same, then your criticism of CAC at least makes sense. If however you believe there is a wide lattitude in the grading even within the same coin grade, then you can't berate CAC. Right, P&D involves inflating a stock like we saw with GameStop. CAC is nothing like this because CAC and John Albanese are eating their own cooking by making a market in their own stickered product. Were all the Gamestop boosters who said the stock was worth $1,000 when it was trading at $400 now willing to pay $400 for the bagholders who own it with the stock at less than half that price (about $200) ? No, they are NOT !!! That's a pump-and-dump.....exactly the OPPOSITE of what CAC brings to the table, Alex.

To an extent, I am too. But I think we have great balance right now with 2 major TPGs, 2 support TPGs, and an enforcer of strict grading (CAC). I could get another stickering company, but only to compete with CAC, not to promise folks that their stickers will grab some of the real estate between 2 different prices at inflection points.

If MAC provides a useful service and their graders/owners have some credibility, then maybe their stickers will acquire some market value (though not to the extent they are promising). CAC was founded by John Albanese, who was a key early player in both PCGS and NGC. CAC is in effect a "grader of the graders" by making sure that the coins graded are "strong" for the underlying grade. I admit to knowing nothing about the founders and people behind these other firms. But whereas PCGS was strickly interested in providing desperately needed knowledge to make it so that you didn't need to be an excellent grader to participate in coin collecting......and whereas NGC provided competition to PCGS so a monopoly didn't exist....and whereas CAC then kept both PCGS and NGC on their toes (so to speak) by making sure that their grading doesn't go off the rails.....these companies (or at least their marketing verbiage) seems entirely focused on grabbing some of the price gap at key inflection points. Seems too much focused on monetary benefits and not getting quality coins for one's money.

(1) CAC makes a market in their own stickered coins and will buy/sell sight-unseen their own coins by making a market in them. If they were putting stickers on coins that didn't deserve it -- if they stickered "C" coins that didn't deserve it -- they'd be buying back "C" coins at "A" prices and stuck with their own overgraded/overstickered coins. (2) Maybe 90% is too much but you get my drift. Could be 50%....could be 75%....point is, it'd be alot less buying as I would need to vet folks I buy from especially gold coins costing ~ $2,000 much more carefully.

They were. I think it's a case of "a rising tide lifts all boats." Unless you are fairly well-off (or rich), most people do not have the discretionary income to indulge in large-scale coin purchases during their 20's and 30's and 40's and into their early-50's. This is when they are buying a house.....having a family...raising kids....it's not until they hit 55+ that they have gotten those items off their monthly expense list and by then they're usually making more $$$ at their jobs, too. Then they have discretionary income -- and time -- once they slow down into retirement to pursue coins and spend the $$$ on building out their sets, buying gold or silver, etc. I'll mention Saints because I'm most familiar with them but I can see the numismatic bubbles over the last 50 years as prices on generic coins and semi-scarce outstrip the price of the metal during certain time periods. This basically insures that unless you bought at the lows....or market-timed sales near the top....that you ended up flat-or-down on an investment basis with most purchases made over the last 45 years or so. Of course, if you started before 1974 you might have bought gold/Saints at such a low price that you made out like a bandit but this was a result of price-controls on gold before the 1973 upheaval. If the same holds true with small face value U.S. coins -- I have no reason to think not -- then unless someone started collecting in the 1950's and/or sold periodically at highs in the last 30 years.....they are probably flat-or-down overall, depending on when they did most of their buying.

I get where you are coming from, Rev, but the analogy doesn't hold under closer inspection for those naysayers to the TPGs. Most coin collectors are NOT great or even good graders. That meant they were at the mercy of unscrupulous dealers who sold them overpriced and overgraded coins -- sometimes by accident because the dealers themselves weren't good graders. Imagine Ebay without TPG-certified coins -- OMG. Economics 101 says you need transparency and (perfect) information to make good efficient markets. I don't think we have 100% transparency and perfect information with the TPGs -- but they definitely closed the gap. Even with the occasional/inadvertent mistakes, overgrading, occasional loose standards -- the amount of mistakes, fraud, overpriced and overgraded stuff has gone down a ton since 40 years ago. I don't have the time to do the necessary research, DD, and grading analysis for all my purchases of coins and currency without the TPGs. If we were back in the ungraded, pre-TPG era, I'd probably have 1/10th of my holdings. Not necessarily. Sometimes it's not about wanting a coin that will grab 20% of the gap to the next-grade, the inflection point for price. I looked into a CAC 1923-D MS-66 last year at FUN. I wanted it not for the price it would command but for the quality. Ultimately, I spent alot of time and found a really nice 1923-D MS-66 without CAC. Who knows, maybe it would even qualify for a CAC sticker. Most importantly, I like the coin alot.

Don't let these companies force you to leave the biz. The fact that they have so little business and that I never heard of them before today and that I doubt that more than 3 dealers out of 600 at FUN 2022 would have any of their coins shows that most astute collectors know this thing is a joke. If they want to be another CAC stickering company, fine. Let them focus on either overall quality like CAC or maybe some individual attributes.....and then MAKE A MARKET in the coins they sticker so they eat their own home cooking. They say they're correctly grading coins that are more valuable ? Then put your money where your mouth is. Buy at the higher price.

(1) We're about the same age.... (2) Yes, I've looked at the PCGS 3000. (3) Why do you think that Capped Busts (and probably other non-PM coins) went up 6-fold during that 1970-77 period.....gold and silver went up 6-fold but all the coins NOT tied to PMs seemed to have matched or exceeded the gold/silver moves. Do you think gold/silver coins just "dragged" them up ? Great post, very informative.

Over any period of time, ROLLING time periods would show coins to be a coin flip at best as investments and most likely losers compared to other asset classes, even PMs. And if the starting time period is 1950 or even 1960, you caught the Baby Boomer Coin Years and then watched coins take off in the 1970's for PM and numismatic reasons. And again in 1988-89. And 10 years ago. Yet overall, most coins are DOWN from recent peaks unlike a stock market that has had 3 big bear markets in 20 years and today hit record highs. Unlike the stock market -- which actually CREATES wealth -- coins (as with most commodities) are simply a function of supply and demand. No dividends, subject to boom-and-bust conditions = highly volatile. At least with Morgans and Saints, I have the underlying bullion value as a floor -- though they too can move up or down -- and I just have to decide which coins I want. Buy an MCMVII High Relief in any condition....I'm taking mostly numismatic risk, more so above AU53. Buy a 1915-S in MS63 or lower......it's a play on gold. Buy an MS65 1924 or 1926 or 1927....MOSTLY a play on gold with about a 25% premium for numismatic value.

No disagreements. I wonder how Saints and Morgans will react, both assuming the gold/silver price remains unchanged from today's levels....and if the prices for both move up, say, 50% in the next 10 years. If you have time, hop on over to the MAC Grading Thread and let me know your thoughts there.

Great observations, Bob....if somehow NGC does grade them (subjectively or otherwise) higher than non-RARCOA coins, it would show pretty easily. What I would have liked was for RARCOA to just take regular NGC-graded coins and if THEY saw something exceptional in the coins AFTER NGC graded, then sticker them.

Hey....I've been a wide-eyed skeptic of 70 modern coins selling for multiples of 69's....but it's a function of population census numbers...I don't AGREE with it and for the most part I stay away from the 70's when the absolute dollars involved are hundreds of dollars or more. That said....I don't think that "grade enhancement" -- even for all of my 69's -- is where I want to take this hobby. We're cheapening the hobby, IMO. We're Balkanizing the label....leading to more confusion and segmentation which adds complexity for newcomers and part-timers....and turns off veterans and purists who help lead the hobby. More information is usually good...but too much can be bad.

Don't ask me, I know nothing of the coins...but is the example given true, a 1000-fold increase in price ? Even 100x increase would be alot though I understand that the Full Steps thing is important for the nickles.