Three of the Most Overpriced Coins in my Opinion

[coinman1794]

BillJones: NGC has yet to grade an MS-65 or higher '69 quarter. What is the relative value of of an MS-65 and an MS-68 for this coin?

 

Sorry, Clad, but when it comes to ultra high grade modern coins, PCGS has got a lock on the high priced coins. If NGC ever did slab an MS-68 1969 quarter, the noise from the snores from across the street in PCGS land would be loud enough to wake the dead. The only thing that would break the spell would be if one of them could cross it to a PCGS slab, then it would not be an NGC coin any more.

 

...that's why such coins are good for collectors. NGC is very tough on moderns, regardless of the perception, and NGC moderns are a great value for people who want high-quality, certified modern coins and don't want to pay the PCGS plastic premium. If I was the proud new owner of a 1969 NGC-68 25c... well, then...I would be proud . PCGS people can sleep all they want, but if they do, I will be the one awake and open to the fact that I have a nice coin, regardless of the plastic casing! And, if I try to sell it, I will tell everyone how nice it is and why it deserves the grade it received, anyway. I don't like to sell holders.

[bigjim-migration]

Jim, sorry I think it is a very fair statement. You are correct they often sell their sets and move on to more "classic" coinage. One of the reasons might be they have have burned on the original money they spent and are now more informed.

 

I wasn't bashing registry collectors or the registry, just pointing out that many of them jump right on the first made 70 and end up paying way more for it than they receive when they sell. That is the theme of this thread, "overpriced coins".

 

I really didn't take the post as bashing. I just thought it painted with an awfully broad brush. I agree, anyone who jumps "right on the first made 70" deserves anything that happens to them in most cases. That population of 1/0 isn't going to stand long.

 

As for the bulk of the modern collectors, I doubt if most of them will simply sell a set of really nice coins when they finally move on to other interests. Investment isn't necessarily the game.

 

As for paying for the plastic, not everyone who collects...especially on a small scale...has the ability to hit the major coin shows. This is big boy stuff. And we've all seen coins in a dealer's case where the grade is a bit of a stretch. A coin in plastic CAN be worth more than raw simply because more collectors who are not fully expert in the knowledge of just how much a small spot will degrade a certain coin can trust the judgement of someone who knows more. The plastic becomes important when you believe you can trust the grader. That's why a PCGS-slabbed coin will be worth more than one slabbed by ACG. There is more general trust in the grade.

 

It's easy to devalue the importance of the slab when you've been in the game for years and decades. I purchased my first coin for the purposes of collecting only four years ago. I'm not yet comfortable with my skills at grading a coin. I feel I stand a good chance of getting a lot less argument over grade if a coin is inside some NGC or PCGS plastic.

 

Do I shun raw coins? Of course not. But the ones that look good to me get carried up the street to NGC for a better opinion than mine. In that sense, I guess I am buying some plastic. But I'm also buying a lack of aggravation. I don't feel like constantly having to justify an MS68 I scribbled on a 2x2 to someone who might think it's a 67. For $9.90 for a modern I can dispense with a lot of hassle. More people will have more faith in the grade it earns if it earned that grade at NGC or PCGS. Just a fact of life. For a lot of us, that still makes the coin worth more.

 

Now, to the specific matter of overpriced slabs: has someone REALLY paid that $2,500 I see in the Coin Universe price guide for a 1999-P SBA$ PCGS PR70 DCAM? Yikes!!!

 

Thanks for reading. I have a tendency to ramble.

 

[pmh1nic]

Cladking

 

I think what you interpret as the bashing of moderns is not necessarily a bashing of moderns in particular. It seems to me that the main point of contention in these discussions is the premium place on the very, very minute things that differentiate that pop 1 MS-68 from the pop 50 MS-67's and pop 500 MS-66's and the pop 100 million MS-65's. IMHO 95% of a coin's value should never be based on a one point difference in grade REGARDLESS of what coin we're discussing, modern or classic. The fact is this type of premium is more often associated with moderns and when those premiums are critized it's interpreted as modern bashing.

 

Again this is my opinion and people are free to buy what they like and spend their money how they please.

[dragon]

pmh,

 

There are actually quite a few coins (not just moderns) where a one point difference in grade can make the price jump into the stratosphere. An excellent recent example IMO is that NGC graded PR69 Trade dollar be offered for sale at $280,000.00, about a 1/4 million dollars of that coins asking price IMO is primarily due to one little grade point. I could site numerous other examples, but that one seemed the most blatant at the moment.

 

dragon

[cladking]

 

I think what you interpret as the bashing of moderns is not necessarily a bashing of moderns in particular. It seems to me that the main point of contention in these discussions is the premium place on the very, very minute things that differentiate that pop 1 MS-68 from the pop 50 MS-67's and pop 500 MS-66's and the pop 100 million MS-65's. IMHO 95% of a coin's value should never be based on a one point difference in grade REGARDLESS of what coin we're discussing, modern or classic. The fact is this type of premium is more often associated with moderns and when those premiums are critized it's interpreted as modern bashing.

 

Again this is my opinion and people are free to buy what they like and spend their money how they please.

 

This is a coherent and reasonable argument. While I don't fully agree with it, at least it is understandable and a logical answer is possible.

 

If all moderns had a grade distribution like the one above it is likely the pricing structure for them would be much different. There is probably some Lincoln from the Denver mint in the early nineties which actually had a distribution like this when it was minted. (Don't forget the 7 billion in grades below MS-65).( about 7 billion and 97 million of these went into circulation.)

 

This would be an extreme example in the other direction but consider a coin like a '69 quarter. Most of these were made in grades which would charitably be described as MS-60. Figure around 120 million+, maybe 30 million in MS-61, 15 milion in 62, 5 million in 63, 2 million in 64, 1 million in 65, and 1/4 million in 66. Probably a handful nicer. People did not collect these coins in 1969. There were a few people interested in speculating but they liked the much lower mintage on the 69-D. Speculators were not going to the bank and buying rolls to save out the nicest pieces. They were ordering the coins from the bank and stashing whatever they happened to give them. Very few of these coins were set aside. You can not find the rolls today. Ask any dealer for rolls of eagle reverse clad quarters and they'll likely laugh because there are so few of them. Those which do exist will be '98 or '65 rolls. You'll sometimes see a roll from the late 70's or early 80's. But you will not see a roll from 1969 and if you do it will invariably be the Denver issue.

 

Today virtually all of these coins are in AG to F- condition in circulation except for about half of them which no longer exist due to attrition. (About 1 million of these coins started going into collections in 1999).

 

In order to find an MS-65 '69 quarter in a roll, you'd have to find about three average rolls. But as stated you can't find even one roll. Yes, I know you see this roll listed on rare occasion somewhere. Each time I've seen such a roll it was composed strictly of mint set coins.

 

Sure there were a couple million mint sets produced but few of these coins will grade over MS-63. The attrition on mint sets has been staggering. These sets sold under face value(plus Ag value) for much of the 70's and 80's. There was no interest in them and people couldn't be bothered to spend the coins. Today the sets are in hot demand but there are not large numbers left. Even nice choice examples of this coin are elusive. Gems are decidedly tough. (NGC has yet to grade a gem). It's impossible to say with certainty if there will ever be much demand for clad quarters but with this date it will not be a simple matter of buying a slightly lower grade coin because there will not be very many slightly lower grade coins till you hit VG. Not that the coin is rare in unc, but many of the MS-60's are very unattractive. Most collectors would prefer a nice VF (which is also scarce).

 

The '69 quarter is not the best regular issue modern and will not be the most expensive in any grade (maybe XF or AU),

but it is the one most different in distribution from your suggested spread.

 

There are other moderns which probably lack an undergrade altogether(or at least they are extremely rare). Coins like a 70-S nickel appears as a superb gem rarely, but I've never seen a gem.

 

Blanket statements about moderns have invariably proven to be wrong. Each coin is as individual as a snowflake and each date/mm/denomination is also different. Statements which are entirely accurate about one coin may be totally off base about a seemingly identical coin.

[Tradedollarnut]

about a 1/4 million dollars of that coins asking price IMO is primarily due to one little grade point.

 

At least $200k of that quarter of a mil is definitely the result of some rather good drugs! I gotta get me some of that stuff!

[pmh1nic]

Dragon

 

That PR69 being offered for $280,000 has 1 coin graded PR68, 11 graded PR67 and only about 200 graded from AU-58 to MS-66 (NDC population numbers). That's no contest when compared to the millions of coins in the same grade distribution for the moderns being discussed. And even the $30,000 to $280,000 spread (that's if the coin actually sells for that much) is not even a 10x grade rarity premium.

 

Also, you will not find numerous examples of classic coins where 20x ~ 100x one point grade rarity premiums are realized.

 

Clad

 

We can speculate a long time regarding how many of these 1969 Quarters may have survived to this date in MS-64 or 65 condition but there were almost 2 million 1969 mint sets issued. Even if only 10% survived to this day and only 10% of the coins those surviving sets would grade MS-65 that's still 20,000 coins. There are no classic coins with a surviving population of 20,000 coins where 10x or 20x one point grade rarity premiums are realized.

 

Again, the issue isn't really a matter of modern versus classic but trend towards paying huge premiums for a one point difference in grade. That trend is almost exclusively seen with respect to modern coins.

[cladking]

Pmh1nic; Your numbers likely aren't too far off. I'd guess the surviving population will be somewhat lower than that. Of course many of these will not be graded. There is much less need to grade moderns than other coins. There are rarely unseen problems with the raw coins and they haven't had many decades to pick up rub or be dipped numerous times. Most moderns are exactly what they appear to be. If one is selling the coins or putting them in the registries then of course they'll need to be slabbed. There should still be care exercised in buying these coins since at some point there will be doctored coins and the like and any coin being sold out of a slab that costs a lot of money has to be suspect nowdays. One should exercise care and know something about grading or buy only slabbed even with moderns, though finding these raw is the greatest.

 

The point being that it's not so much supply which determines collectibles prices as it is demand. If only a few thousand of these get slabbed and a significant percentage of the emerging generation of coin collectors desire the coin then these prices may seem laughably low in a few years. Remember that a 50-D nickel sold for $125 in today's money and there were a couple million of them.

 

My contention is not that people should buy these coins because they will be valuable. Even if one could know this, investment is not a good reason to buy coins. Nor do I contend that people should buy the coins because they're fun, historic, artistic, etc, etc. I am merely saying that many people are having fun assembling these sets from pocket change and that if history repeats itself then a price collapse will be the least likely outcome.

[Tradedollarnut]

Remember that a 50-D nickel sold for $125 in today's money and there were a couple million of them.

 

.....and that if history repeats itself then a price collapse will be the least likely outcome.

 

Hmmmm. Shouldn't you pick a better example to illustrate your point?

 

[cladking]

Well, there were a couple million of them! It was certainly overpriced.

 

...and keep in mind that a 1964 50-D nickel is worth more than eight times what a 2003 MS-65 '69 trends for. That makes it more than one hundred times as many for eight times the cost. If the '69 is going to crash it's going to have to go a lot higher than $15 to do it.

[BillJones]

NGC is very tough on moderns, regardless of the perception, and NGC moderns are a great value for people who want high-quality, certified modern coins and don't want to pay the PCGS plastic premium.

 

I'm not sure about how many modern coins you have seen in NGC holders, but some of the pieces I have seen have been very disappointing. I can think back to the time when the Sackie dollar came out and a local dealer had several rolls slabbed thinking that he would sell them to tellimarketers or whatever for a profit. The grading was, well, not consistent and to be nice "very disappointing."

 

No one wants NGC to succeed more than I do. If PCGS ever did get total control of the high end coin market it would be a disaster for collectors and small dealers like I am. At the same time I have to call them as I see them, and from what I've seen NGC has shot its self in the foot with some of its modern coins. Some NGC moderns, like the 1967 Nickel in MS-68, Cameo from an SMS set that I sold recently are great. Others, well, the less said the better.

[coinman1794]

 

I'm not sure about how many modern coins you have seen in NGC holders, but some of the pieces I have seen have been very disappointing. I can think back to the time when the Sackie dollar came out and a local dealer had several rolls slabbed thinking that he would sell them to tellimarketers or whatever for a profit. The grading was, well, not consistent and to be nice "very disappointing."

 

I just got a submission of 6 Sac's back from NGC today! They were very strict and conservative on them.

 

When the Sacs first came out, the grading services had to adapt grading standards to fit them. NGC's standard was definitely too loose; in fact, about 1 to 1 1/2 points too loose! In 2000 is when the 2000-P NGC MS69 sacs were all graded. Every one of those I have seen would grade MS68 at NGC today. I believe it was that same year (or early 2001) that they realized the problem and drastically tightened their standard. I don't think another has been graded since because of the change in standards. My point is that they had a problem early on but it has been fixed for a while, and I have been very happy with their consistency and quality since.

 

Although they did shoot themselves in the foot, I think it was an understandable occurrence to get it wrong when the design first came out. NGC had a standard and PCGS had a stricter standard. It just turned out that PCGS' standard was more in line with marketplace expectations, and NGC followed suit by adapting their standard.

 

They fixed the problem early enough that they can make a come-back, in my opinion. I know that a lot of people aren't collecting NGC moderns for the sole reason that they can't find any! Very few coins are being submitted and they aren't collectable for that reason.

 

Also, I haven't seen many early NGC State Quarters 1999-2000, but the ones I have seen have been accurate. And, I know from submission experience that the ones graded since about 2001 have been very solid. (Hey, I have two freshly graded NGC quarters too!)

 

So the bottom line is, whatever the problem was early on in the modern coin sector at NGC, I think it has been fixed for a while. The way to tell the old grades form the new is - with the exception of reholdered coins, all the new-holder pieces where graded after the change in standard. If people submit coin to NGC, I don't think they will be disappointed!

 

Incidentally, I will probably offer these freshly graded coins in the marketplace some time this week! If you want one, keep an out! I guarantee these coins won't disappoint you if you buy one of them!