Why Someday Moderns Will be Hot. 0

[gmarguli]

On 8/20/2024 at 5:53 AM, cladking said:

Take the '76 type I Ike for example in the 1975 mint set.  Fewer than 10% were attractive.  Collectors might bust up 10 of these sets to get a nice example leaving 10 fewer of all the other coins in the set. 

Why would they bust up a mint set if the coin is not nice? You can clearly see the quality of the coin in the mint set. You don't need to destroy the set to learn the quality of the coins.

[cladking]

On 8/20/2024 at 5:17 PM, gmarguli said:

Why would they bust up a mint set if the coin is not nice? You can clearly see the quality of the coin in the mint set. You don't need to destroy the set to learn the quality of the coins.

Of course you're right.  

There is a strong tendency for these to be busted up enmass.  Even if they weren't there's also a tendency for the castoffs to be busted up.  

1975 mint set ikes are often hidden under layers of tarnish and some of them you can't tell are Gem or not without cleaning them.

 

In the old days people might just buy as many sets as needed to find nice coins so I still think in these terms.  Sets were often available for a dollar over face or less.  I suppose fewer are bought like this now days though since '75 sets wholesale at more than double face value.  

There are not a lot of these sets left and 1975 is one of the dates that are hardest to keep in stock.  

[Henri Charriere]

On 4/11/2024 at 4:32 PM, zadok said:

...give me a list of 10 modern coins, legal tender, lets say after 1964 that r not rare varieties that u believe will appreciate in value, lets say double/triple in the next 75 years....

See the NGC Menu.

Finf:  "About the NGC Registry."

Scroll all the way down the very end.

Look for: These Coins Are Going to Soar."  (Follow the arrow pointing due East.)

(And stop making yourself scarce.)

[samclemen3991]

Actually Clad King I was making a reference to what may happen with clad coins in the future.  Guess you would have to be around in about 125 years to see the answer to my question.  Good information in your post though.  As I said, there are numerous factors that differ between the ages.  James

[Henri Charriere]

Editorial comment

I have been, and continue to be, quite impressed with some of the assertions you have made in past posts.

The information you volunteer is not something that is readily available available in basic, or even disparate sources.  It is almost as if you took it upon yourself to investigate these things personally -- and quietly, without fanfare.  There are observations you have made, and continue to make, that are irrefutable.  I mean, how would I begin to verify the veracity of what has happened to proof and mint sets?  They were produced, but I never knew a single one had ever been busted up or cut up except when I would spot coins mounted in lucite holders.

If what you've been saying is true -- and I have no reason to doubt it -- "Moderns" may very well turn out to be "hot," or in demand some day. I cannot say I had ever given this development serious consideration before. Does make sense, though.

[Coin Cave]

2005-2010 business strike coins (excluding State Quarters).  Any 1965-1967 DCAM SMS coins.  1982-1983 Business Strikes all denominations.  1968-1972 DCAM proofs.  I think those coins all have future potential.  Even more potential of value added to clad coins are high grades and variety attributions.  Full Step and Full Torch designations for some years are non-existent.  Come to think of it, there are some pretty rare Full Step nickels prior to 1964.

I just don't get the aversion to collecting clad coins.  There are plenty of coin series prior to 1964 that are just as common as clad coins.  Either you collect coins or you collect metals.  

[cladking]

On 8/21/2024 at 10:04 AM, samclemen3991 said:

Actually Clad King I was making a reference to what may happen with clad coins in the future.  Guess you would have to be around in about 125 years to see the answer to my question. 

I would expect if and when moderns finally get hot they will fall out of favor as a mass market about ten years after coin production ceases in this country.  When few coins are collected there simply will not be sufficient demand to keep many coins at high levels.  But just as the scarcest old US coins will always have some demand so too will the scarcest US moderns.  The type and source of demand will be so vastly different it's difficult to predict the specific coins but I seriously doubt even the rarest 1969 dime in AU will get much attention in the far future.  But there could be demand for things like testing to ascertain the origin of the metal or other information in the coins.  Such things would apply more to ancient coins no doubt.  

I would hardly expect coin collecting to be a mass market in a future with no coins.  I wouldn't expect mass melting of any coins already considered to have numismatic value either unless they are worth more as silver or gold  or still circulating when coinage production ceases.  

If you want to "invest" in coins with a very long time frame I'd suggest ancients or rare mid-grade silver from the 16th to 19th centuries.  Modern very low mintage world gold could have its day.   Obviously investing for such a long time frame is even less good than investing for shorter terms.  Coins, including moderns, will still make a great collectible in the far future when they will probably be out of favor but they will still be a bad "investment" as well.  

[cladking]

On 8/21/2024 at 8:20 PM, Henri Charriere said:

I mean, how would I begin to verify the veracity of what has happened to proof and mint sets? 

All my evidence is statistical and anecdotal.   To use such methodology many assumptions are necessary.  

But there is far more evidence available than many people know because the evidence comes and goes and I've been closely watching the coins in circulation since 1957 and the coins we call "collectible" since 1968.  It's impossible for me to show the mint sets today are, for the main part, not picked over from their issue date but they still aren't. I can't prove that almost every clad roll on the market was assembled from mint sets but this I can demonstrate.  Of course I also can't prove, or even demonstrate, that most of the mint sets are gone now but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that a paucity of demand is pushing up their prices.  I can show things like the current similar price of '73 and '74 mint sets is an aberration since the biggest single price in both sets is the ike dollars and the '73 ikes with a lower mintage were available only in the mint set.  If the low mintage '73 is worth little more than the '74 than there simply can't be a big overhang of rolls and bags of '74 ikes.  Ironically '74 ikes were heavily saved relative other clads of the era!!  This implies the ongoing source of both dates is from mint sets and experience tells me these are not only mostly gone but few have been saved.  This is because modern coins are much more "consumed" than they are "collected". They are sold in thousands of venues and largely to the general public who often have little numismatic interest in them.  They want a "big old silver dollar" rather than an attractive 1973-D ike.  They are often not being taken care of and many will not survive meanwhile many dates like the 1975 have already not survived because the mint set packaging is unstable.  

One of the assumption I make is that the general public is far less likely to wreck a proof set than a mint set because the coins look "more special" and they are in a hard plastic case.  This would be consistent with the much greater number of proof sets in dealer stock and with the fact that dealers buy these from the public in smaller batches.  You won't see something like one or two of each mint sets dating back to 1965 walk into a coin shop.  They come in in large bunches of relatively few dates and often in unopened packaging.  Despite far lower mintages of later date mint sets they still come in much more than the older sets because the older sets are gone.  They are quickly distributed and consumed.  Such has been the fate of most mint sets sold on the market for the last half century.  The sets are gone and most of the coins that had been in the sets are either circulating or they circulated until they, too, are gone.  

I'm a big fan of anecdotal evidence because it is often the only valid evidence.  If something can be measured or experimented on it would be common knowledge.  Just try to remember getting good samples is key to using this kind of evidence and as with all things you must try to avoid proving your assumptions.   

 

One bit of anecdotal evidence is inescapable.  Back in the '70's every coin shop had massive piles of mint sets.   Today it can be quite difficult to locate even a few dozen of many of the dates like the 1969 and virtually every one of them will have hazed and tarnished coins.  The difficulty of locating sets and their still low price (the coins in them have gone from face value to three times face value) simply suggests there is almost no demand at all.  

[cladking]

On 8/21/2024 at 8:55 PM, Coin Cave said:

Even more potential of value added to clad coins are high grades and variety attributions. 

There could be a lot of value in varieties.  Where coins are made in large numbers it is only natural to seek out coins that are "different" such as very high quality, varieties and errors.  As an example fewer than .001% of Denver dimes in '71 mint sets are repunched mint mark but have very little interest.  Meanwhile about 11% of 1970 mint sets contain the sm dt cent and it goes for $40.  Most mint set varieties appear in one to three percent of the population yet even the best of them like the '68 DDO dime fail to get much interest.   It's higher mintage varieties that attract interest like the '74-D DDO half dollar.  Meanwhile nice coins in good condition that are even scarcer go begging because the market is looking for "pop tops". 

[Moxie15]

@cladking I think you are only partially correct, or maybe only state part of the reason.  Higher mintage means higher availability and a better item to market heavily and successfully. Look at Morgan dollars, for nearly a hundred years they have been marketed very heavily and the public told how rare they are and they have become very popular with collectors investors and less knowledgeable buyers. By any standard no date or MM are truly rare, yet people have heard the hype so much that many think if they find one they are rich when most of the circulated ones are worth little or no more than silver. So, yes, there is a large part of the market looking for 'Top Pops"  but much or the market is looking for well known marketed items. 

[The Neophyte Numismatist]

I have read this thread so many times, because the idea of finding a coin that increases significantly in value (especially with a relatively low cost basis) is intriguing.  I do agree that some moderns may be big winners.  But, I do not think that holding a pile of random moderns will hold long term financial benefits (and in fairness this is not what @cladking is saying at all).  The sheer volume of modern issues makes finding future value a needle in a haystack.  This is coupled with the fact that there is no historical data on which to base decisions.  

I am not an "investor" in coins, so maybe I am not as impacted as other who may read the thread.  But, I would advise any newbie reading the thread that for every coin that "gets hot" multiples will fail to do so.  Like the rest of the hobby, this will take copious amounts of study (and even then, one may lose).  If one thinks they can stockpile moderns today and be rolling in riches later... they may be in for a cautionary tale.

I do wish everyone luck. 

[cladking]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:35 AM, Moxie15 said:

So, yes, there is a large part of the market looking for 'Top Pops"  but much or the market is looking for well known marketed items. 

I meant that the modern market is focused on pop tops at this time.  A lot of registry set collectors have no idea how scarce some of these coins are in just off of pop top.  Almost nobody is putting together sets of just nice "common" Gems so their scarcity goes unrecognized. 

People tend to all do the same thing.  In the '80's everyone was collecting morgan dollars and they are still very very popular.  In the '70's nobody cared much about very high grade but around 1980 it became the "in thing" and still is.  People love every new Beanie Baby until they don't any longer.  Clad might never be widely popular but surely it can still become a mass market.  It already is at the grass roots level with millions of albums and folders being sold and a million mint sets made each year.  States quarters and silver eagles are also mass markets but circulation issue coins are barely collected at all.  

[cladking]

On 8/22/2024 at 9:54 AM, The Neophyte Numismatist said:

But, I do not think that holding a pile of random moderns will hold long term financial benefits (and in fairness this is not what @cladking is saying at all).

I'm sure you are right.  

If you took all the moderns from the US and the world they would make an enormous pile.  There are literally millions of rolls of memorial pennies going all the way back to 1959 and only a few dates are dramatically underrepresented.  Only a few dates are almost universally tarnished in these rolls.  Only a few more dates can't be found much nicer in mint sets.   There are very large amounts of many moderns and say what you willfully 25% of Tennessee quarters survive in BU rolls or as nice attractive VF or better in circulation. There are countless billions of collectible moderns from all over the world and very few people have any desire to collect such common coins.  This is why hobby pundits discourage collecting.  But more importantly trying to invest in moderns is far worse for many reasons but chief among them is that investors will always end up with piles of common coins.  If you try to attack any investment buying only what's available you are likely to lose but coins are worse.  

Most price discovery is just the interplay between supply and demand but where there is tiny demand and unknown supply all prices are grossly subdued.  Nice attractive Gem sets of all moderns are actually quite challenging.  They aren't going to cost very much but will require quite a bit of searching.  I don't know what they would cost if more people were looking but I do know the coins would be orders of magnitude more difficult to find.  It is probably very important to remember that most of these coins were very poorly made and were not saved in rolls.  A large percentage of non-Gem moderns are simply ugly so any demand for Gems would spill over into "near-Gems" and "very chBU" even though these coins tend to have major flaws in their production and handling.  

 

It is an interesting situation.   Somehow people have the idea they can just go out and buy a few rolls of original 1969 quarters and search them to get a few nice Gems, maybe even gradable.  But the reality is there are probably fewer than 100 original rolls in pristine condition (maybe a lot fewer) and the odds are there are only a few coins in all of these rolls that are even MS-64.  They were poorly struck by heavily worn dies and then they got banged up.  This is one of the biggest reasons they weren't saved to start with; they were almost universally ugly.  If you could find a nice original roll you might get it for only $25 and even this might not be a good "investment" because packaging may never bring a premium and even a "nice roll" is not going to contain Gems.  Of course it's not impossible.  The mint probably put about   a million Gem '69 quarters in circulation but this is where almost all the survivors will be found today, heavily worn and cull in circulation.  Only about 35% of the date survives at all.   

[powermad5000]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:35 AM, Moxie15 said:

By any standard no date or MM are truly rare, yet people have heard the hype so much that many think if they find one they are rich when most of the circulated ones are worth little or no more than silver.

I beg to differ some on this subject. While not "rare" by numismatic standards, some date and mintmark combinations are difficult to get, especially in higher grades. As for worn ones, I can name several off the top of my head that I will ONLY be able to acquire in a worn state due to the fact that uncirculated specimens are simply too expensive for me to ever own unless I win the Powerball or the Mega in the billion dollar range (typically only get about half for the lump sum non payout method). 1893 S, 1894 (P), 1893 O.

I don't think Morgans are a good coin to use as an example in this discussion of moderns. If you take the 1893 S Morgan with a mintage number of only 100,000, you cannot use this as a comparison to a 2021 D Crossing the Delaware Quarter with a mintage of 1,169,400,000. Moderns stand in a different class than any of the silver mintages due to melt, especially when speaking of the market for moderns to one day be "hot". If coinage in this country in the future stops to be produced, and the remaining currency demonetized, I would think collecting in and of itself would eventually die out with only a small amount of collectors continuing on. It is bad enough Gen Z has little to no interest in this hobby on an overall (I don't need to get specific responses how "My Gen Z brother/cousin/sister/nephew" is into it. There will always be a few. My point, a few. Not the whole overall.

I sort of kick my own self for not keeping up with my "keep one of every one that comes out" thing I was doing early when I was a kid. I would probably have some really good specimens for face value. I do check all my cash register change for good specimens and have come across a few. There are some I have had slabbed. But, do I see people scrambling and coming at me for those? No. Do I see it happening in the future? No. Do I see people trying to get their hands at the rest of my classic coinage? Definitely. While none of us can predict the future, I fear what is coming behind me when I am gone. Other than everyone checking for a 1982 D small date, I don't see them beating on the door of the local coin shop looking for a 2010 P Roosevelt dime, especially one in AU. To me, the only moderns that will be sought for and worth any premium are the same ones as today, just those in very high grades.

[cladking]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:19 PM, powermad5000 said:

If you take the 1893 S Morgan with a mintage number of only 100,000, you cannot use this as a comparison to a 2021 D Crossing the Delaware Quarter with a mintage of 1,169,400,000.

Quite true but 100,000 is almost exactly the mintage of the 1971-D type h quarter.

I wager the attrition n this coin is far higher than the attrition on ANY morgan dollar.  There are likely not even a dozen specimens in Unc and not many more in AU, XF, or VF.  35,000 survive but they are mixed into the coins in circulation and most will never be found.  In these 35,000 coins there are mostly just culls and heavily worn coins.  More than 95% are beaten up AND low grade.   It would take a virtual miracle to get another couple dozen nice F's and the same number of VG's before they are all gone.  

There are numerous tough moderns and there are no old collections that will walk into coin shops for the next half a century like '93-S morgans did and to some extent, still are.  

[cladking]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:19 PM, powermad5000 said:

To me, the only moderns that will be sought for and worth any premium are the same ones as today, just those in very high grades.

I don't really think of registry set collecting as mass demand nor does it constitute a "market" at all.  I have no problem with the pursuit of coins in this manner and would like to do it myself but the coins that go into registry sets are very much made by the services moreso than by the mint.  There's a demand for the highest grades but once they are identified and collected they are no longer part of the virtually nonexistent modern coin market.  

The removal of a few dozen of the finest specimens from the marketplace does not affect the fact that coins like a 1966 quarter is almost impossible to find in non-SMS, non-circulated, and non-ugly condition.  There are exceedingly few such coins in MS-64 and MS-65 and well made.  This fact is masked by the fact that a few more BU rolls of this date survived than most dates but the total population still in BU rolls and already removed and still surviving is far lower than 100,000. But here's the catch; almost every single one of these coins is ugly.  No not just unattractive but bone ugly.    They are terrible strikes from worn dies that were set too far apart to start with and then most were chewed up at the mint.  There is no other source.  And people believe the '66 is as common as grains of sand on the beach because "BU" rolls sell for nothing (about $1 per coin).   With so few in existence the only reason they sell for nothing is no one wants one because they are common and those in know don't really want them because they are all ugly.  They wouldn't even bring $1 per coin but people are hoping to find some MS-63's or ugly coins without scratches that might grade high enough to slab.  This is not the way collectibles markets are supposed to work but this is the way they work when there are no collectors except for the highest grades.  

Edited August 23 by cladking

[powermad5000]

On 8/23/2024 at 7:54 AM, cladking said:

I wager the attrition n this coin is far higher than the attrition on ANY morgan dollar.

Due to the Pittman Act of 1918, it is not clear what survivors remain of any date or mintmark. No record was kept of what was melted.

[powermad5000]

On 8/23/2024 at 8:11 AM, cladking said:

I don't really think of registry set collecting as mass demand nor does it constitute a "market" at all.

I don't think it is mass demand either but it IS its own market. If there weren't competitive registry set users looking for the absolute highest specimens possible, there wouldn't be people willing to go to the lengths in bidding that they do to attain such a specimen and I am referring only to moderns in this instance. I have seen a few auctions blow the price guide price right off the map when two of those guys go head to head for a top pop. The big auction houses know it too.

On the flip side, I just picked up a 1978 (P) Washington Quarter PCGS graded MS 66 for $10. NOBODY bid on it. I figured for $10 I will give it to a buddy of mine for his collection if he needs it and if not I'll flip it because I am not a PCGS fan. Point is, there was absolutely NO interest in this modern quarter and it isn't because it is bad. It is a nice specimen. Sticking to the point you are arguing in this thread, I don't see that same auction 50 years from now being "hot". When you make a point about some odd variety quarter that there are only a few left, it's like any other coin that there are only a few left, or only a few made. They are considered as "uncollectible" because only a few can own one, and they might surface only once in a lifetime if at all. These particular cases are not useful in your argument that large amounts of collectors are going to be frantically searching for a 1985 (P) Lincoln Memorial Cent.

[cladking]

On 8/23/2024 at 2:00 PM, powermad5000 said:

Due to the Pittman Act of 1918, it is not clear what survivors remain of any date or mintmark. No record was kept of what was melted.

You could well be right.  

My understanding though is that only circulated coinage was melted suggesting that it was a representative sampling of mintage less coins lost to attrition and BU coins of generally high mintage dates that had never been released.  It's not impossible that some date had a 65% attrition. 

I just looked at the numbers again and with 270 million coins destroyed there were almost certainly dates that suffered such high attrition.  But my meaning was that high grade coins didn't suffer as high attrition as something like a 1971-D clad quarter.  99%+ of '71-D quarters have been removed from the population of VF or better coins as issued.  Even the '03-O might not top that.  

People saved the silver dollars as they were issued and many spent much of their lives in bank vaults as backing for specie leaving many nice examples of virtually every date.  The early clads were not saved and the FED rotated their stocks of coins so that no coins sat in storage.  They are still being rotated.   This causes the few survivors to all have a similar amount of wear.  This wear and the damage caused by handling equipment for the last few decades also assures that most of these survivors have been chewed up similarly.  

[cladking]

On 8/23/2024 at 2:19 PM, powermad5000 said:

On the flip side, I just picked up a 1978 (P) Washington Quarter PCGS graded MS 66 for $10. NOBODY bid on it. I figured for $10 I will give it to a buddy of mine for his collection if he needs it and if not I'll flip it because I am not a PCGS fan. Point is, there was absolutely NO interest in this modern quarter and it isn't because it is bad. It is a nice specimen. Sticking to the point you are arguing in this thread, I don't see that same auction 50 years from now being "hot".

Yes!  This is the crux of our difference.  I believe that since no demand exists for a coin like this it is simply natural for a small demand to emerge.  How can a US coin have no demand forever?  

Interestingly the 1978 is a tough coin even in Gem and extremely tough in MS-66.  About 2.5% were Gem when the mint sets were issued and I never saw a Gem made for circulation. There were lots of nice attractive coins that went into rolls but I never saw a Gem.  With a larger sample size I probably would have but I looked at fewer than 750 samples.  

This date mint set is usually tarnished today and only about 45% probably survive.  Attrition is caused principally through its low value that results in people cutting them up and spending the coins from 1985 to 2020.  There is also attrition caused by people assembling rolls of ikes and kennedys.  This leaves a few dozens nice Gems in the sets and another 20,000 that can be found and successfully cleaned.  

To give you an idea of how tiny these numbers are consider that the distressingly common 1970-S sm dt cent which have mostly been successfully removed from the sets had a mintage over 200,000 and is worth over $40 today wholesale.  There are even some that came from circulation.  But the '78 quarter in Gem with a tenth of the population can't attract bidders at all and this despite the fact that lower grade specimens tend to be ugly.  

Obviously you could well be right and no one will ever collect this debased junk.  I've watched people busily not collecting it for nearly 60 years now and the status quo may be maintained eternally.  But the drive to collect coins and have what other people don't and for nostalgia is very strong especially in coin collectors.  People are interested in history even if it goes back only to the invention of the net circa 1963 and interplanetary travel in 1969.  Million collect states quarters from circulation and have to paw through all those older coins to get to the next women's' quarter. 

 

I have to believe eventually they will be collected.  Not just MS-66 and MS-67 but all the coins all the way down to VG.   I believe the sweet spot for most collectors will be nice MS-64 and MS-65 but obviously any collector will happily pick up higher quality where the price is right.  Because these coins were made so poorly most collectors will seek coins well struck by good dies whether they seek VG or Gem.  And if I'm still wrong in 50 years it will no longer matter to me.  

[cladking]

On 8/23/2024 at 2:19 PM, powermad5000 said:

They are considered as "uncollectible" because only a few can own one, and they might surface only once in a lifetime if at all. These particular cases are not useful in your argument that large amounts of collectors are going to be frantically searching for a 1985 (P) Lincoln Memorial Cent.

I doubt registry set collecting can ever expand sufficiently to affect the prices of most Gem moderns.  There are too many of them and too few registry set collectors.  

Rather I expect collectors and the general public to discover that nice attractive moderns are quite scarce.  Most have populations between 5,000 and 50,000 but there are several extreme outliers on both ends.  These numbers are not only ideal but it allows many collectors to actually complete sets.  You might be surprised how many are already doing it.  It's not a very large number but it's enough to stress the availability of the toughest coins.  

[gmarguli]

Looks like the modern lovers were right. Some of these coins have quadrupled in value in less than a day.

World's Most Valuable Modern - The $90,000,000 Bicentennial Quarter

Up From $19,000,000 Valuation Earlier in the Day

This was actually a Google recommended story for me. Sadly, it'll get picked up by some news site and some grandma/pa will think they've won the lottery because they got a bicentennial quarter in change. 

[GoldFinger1969]

On 8/25/2024 at 8:05 PM, gmarguli said:

Looks like the modern lovers were right. Some of these coins have quadrupled in value in less than a day.   World's Most Valuable Modern - The $90,000,000 Bicentennial Quarter  Up From $19,000,000 Valuation Earlier in the Day  This was actually a Google recommended story for me. Sadly, it'll get picked up by some news site and some grandma/pa will think they've won the lottery because they got a bicentennial quarter in change. 

I'm not seeing anything, did anything really happen or was this just a scam ?

[gmarguli]

On 9/10/2024 at 1:25 PM, GoldFinger1969 said:

I'm not seeing anything, did anything really happen or was this just a scam ?

It was two  "news stories" on these super rare coins you should be looking for. Looks like the site removed all their stories. I'm just surprised that Google picked it up and redistributed it. What utter garbage that is only going to get people excited about coins worth face value. 

[World Colonial]

On 5/30/2024 at 12:03 PM, VKurtB said:

My son’s generation (center of baby boom 40 years later) could not give less of a 💩 about precious metals being in coins. Who says? He does. The fetish of gold and silver is dying as certainly as demographics roll over. 

Been gone for months but your post is as good as any to start.

The metal content isn't and never was the predominant factor explaining collector preferences, except where it accounts for most of the value which is actually an external economic preference brought into collecting.

This explains much or most of the difference in relative collector preference between silver and clad Washington quarters and FDR dimes.  The relative mintage presumably comes in second even though most collectors probably misjudge survival rates across the quality distribution.  But whether they know it or not, they still mostly don't care about the scarcity difference between (very) common coins, mostly do not care about the quality differences, and don't find most of the price differences material but where they do, aren't about to pay multiples to market when they can't get their money back.

[World Colonial]

On 6/10/2024 at 1:17 PM, zadok said:

...this isnt a supply demand issue in the normal sense...there is an over whelming supply n a virtually non-existence demand, i personally do not ever see this situation changing...compounding this more so is the fact that the x-y-z generations collect nothing....

At the macro level, it isn't going to change because collector preferences are not arbitrary + this isn't the 1960's even if the premises of this thread were otherwise correct.  The collector base isn't going to increase exponentially either.

If the purpose of this thread is actually limited to the specific examples provided by the OP, that's random noise.  All of the examples are either contingent upon a number on a TPG label or some mostly US practiced specialization.  Nothing unusual about it.

In the 1960's prior to the financialization of US collecting, most collectors collected out of circulation or mostly bought the US series which circulated at the time.  Due to communication limitations, there wasn't much if anything else to buy in large numbers.

Today, there is 60 years of additional coinage plus NCLT, plus somewhere in the vicinity of 95% of all coins are available on demand or can be bought with limited effort.  Under contemporary collecting economics, the vast majority are "affordable", if the collector will compromise (somewhat) on quality.

Decades from now, it's a lot more believable that this coinage (1965-1998) will lose even more of its very limited "share of wallet" due to ethnic demographic trends, probable decline in set collecting, and displacement by subsequent coinage.  Same thing for the series which dominated 1960's US collecting.

Collectors aren't likely to find this coinage so interesting to choose it in similar proportion (as they do now) and at much higher proportional prices, it won't be competitive with the alternatives either.  Unless the collector population increases noticeably, the collector base for this coinage will also decline in absolute number, not just relatively.

[Henri Charriere]

@World Colonial :

🐓 :  Looks who's back!

Q.A.:  Howdy stranger.  Welcome back!  

Edited September 21 by Henri Charriere
Add user name.

[cladking]

On 9/20/2024 at 2:17 PM, World Colonial said:

The metal content isn't and never was the predominant factor explaining collector preferences, except where it accounts for most of the value which is actually an external economic preference brought into collecting.

Before 1964 metal wasn't an important factor but even then collectors preferred larger coins and these tended to be silver.  

In the last 50 years most collectors have cared a great deal about whether a coin is precious metal or not.

[cladking]

On 9/20/2024 at 2:46 PM, World Colonial said:

Decades from now, it's a lot more believable that this coinage (1965-1998) will lose even more of its very limited "share of wallet" due to ethnic demographic trends, probable decline in set collecting, and displacement by subsequent coinage. 

At the current time it has no share of the market to lose.  Almost all collecting of moderns is by registry set collectors who seek only the finest.

[GoldFinger1969]

On 8/24/2024 at 9:52 AM, cladking said:

I doubt registry set collecting can ever expand sufficiently to affect the prices of most Gem moderns.  There are too many of them and too few registry set collectors.  Rather I expect collectors and the general public to discover that nice attractive moderns are quite scarce.  Most have populations between 5,000 and 50,000 but there are several extreme outliers on both ends.  These numbers are not only ideal but it allows many collectors to actually complete sets.  You might be surprised how many are already doing it.  It's not a very large number but it's enough to stress the availability of the toughest coins.  

Here's where you lose me.  You (correctly) say (IMO) that you doubt registry set collectors can move the price of moderns.  But you then say you expect the general population to gravitage towards this niche sector.

If collectors themselves ignore this area, why should the general public discover them ?  And part with their own $$$ to buy ?