When Will Today's Common Coins Be Valuable?

I've given a lot of thought to this topic, and have pretty much given up collecting moderns as a result. I buy a proof, silver proof, and unc set every year, and call it good. There were just way too many coins minted to ever drive values to meaningful levels.

Off the top of my head, I'd say you need to go back to the early 1930s to find a coin of significant value due to low mintage (31-s lincoln comes to mind). Others are either bullion, errors, or condition rarity. Shoot, a 1902 indian head in MS-60 is hardly worth $20. Yes, there's a big difference between MS-60 and 67, but then think of relative mintages. The 2009 nickel had ~40 million produced at each mint, and it's the lowest mintage since 1951. 30 years from now, young collectors will be cursing that year because they can't find it in circulation, so they'll go to a coin shop and pay $1.00 for it instead.

So in addition to lousy designs and bad customer service, the mint is destroying the hobby by taking away investment potential as well. I'll stick to pre-WWII, thank you.

If I ran the mint, I'd randomly pick a coin every 3-5 years and manufacture a key date. I'd just plan ahead of time that the 2017-D quarter would only have 20,000 minted, just to create interest.

 

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They'll never be worth too much , unless a billion are somehow destroyed . IMHO .

 

You may be right.

Of course it's a virtual certainty there are far fewer nice well made Unc 1982-P quarters in the world then there are nice well made Unc '31-S cents.

But if you want an '82-P quarter there are millions in circulation and you sure won't find a '31-S.

One other thing you'll never find in circulation is an uncirculated '82 quarter.

So you can pay over $100 for a '31-S cent or you can pay $5 for the quarter. I know which one will fit better in my quarter collection.

 

I missed the post.

Yes. My opinion could hardly be more biased. I've been a big fan of these coins for many decades. One thing I wouldn't have predicted when I started is that they'd grow into such a great collectible.

 

Thanks.

 

Cladking rocks and is the 'super hero' of modern collectors.........

 

I see alot of Today's Common Coins that are Valuable the 2008-D Jefferson nickel is at $300+ in MS66FS, the 2009-P/D in MS66FS are well over $100 ea. You just need to pick the right ones and hold on.But thats just me.

 

I see alot of Today's Common Coins that are Valuable the 2008-D Jefferson nickel is at $300+ in MS66FS, the 2009-P/D in MS66FS are well over $100 ea. You just need to pick the right ones and hold on.But thats just me.

 

Type2, how can that be? I can buy a unc set from each of those years and get a gem specimen for far less than the prices you suggest.

 

the penny was dropped in Australia in '92. Canada stopped its own penny in 2012. prices didn't go up, although the last year was stockpiled and prices for this last year did go up.

 

The uncirculated sets are satin finish coins and are designated as SP by the TPG's. MS designated coins are regular business strikes that are much tougher to find in the higher grades.

 

When the Devil puts on a parka, probably.

It's the single most misunderstood concept in...well...any collectible market.

Supply AND Demand.

By definition, the supply of "High Grade Common Coin X"...isn't going to change significantly. There's not going to be a massive influx of MS67 '98 quarters any time soon, nor is there going to be a sudden rush to crack them out of slabs and melt them. The number available will remain, in any practical terms, level.

The only thing, then, that can possibly change the "value" by a factor of 10 is demand.

What you're asking, then, is when are 10 times as many people suddenly going to want an MS67 1998 Quarter in their collection.

Um...probably never.

The mere passage of time doesn't confer any special properties upon a coin. The day it becomes 100, 105, or 1,298 years old, it is not suddenly "worth more" than it was today. Shoot...I recently had a big pile of rocks dug up out of my yard to put in a pool. Some of them were MILLIONS of years old, and I had to PAY someone to take them off my hands.

There's a gazillion quarters of its type running around, and nothing driving any significant reduction in their numbers. Eventually, there might be some appeal for "new" collectors who've never seen the type, but then, as now, there will be a majority of them who simply wish to fill a whole in an album, and aren't willing to pay a premium they see as excessive just because "some old grading company said it was an MS67".

 

Although I agree with those who don't expect to see high values on modern coins, at least not in the time I have left on this planet, but it is impossible for anyone to predict how the market will react at any given point in time.

For example, a friend of mine is selling some of my odds & ends on FleeBay for me. One is a 2001-D Kennedy, NGC MS68 business strike. It is a Top Pop with 5 graded by NGC and 40 by PCGS. Numismedia lists it at $93.75, and the auction closed at $213.50. To show you how ridiculous the market can sometimes be, he also listed a Somali "Guitar Coin" NGC PF69. This coin cost me just $10 about 6 years ago, and it sold for $51.

Chris

 

I'm not sure where to start here so may ramble a little.

Your logic is sound for the main part but I believe your perspective is too narrow. Of course you're right that for a large increase in price there must be a large increase in demand. But you are very wrong about the supply and attrition. The 1998 mint set sells for a song and many of these sets will be destroyed through carelessness, improper storage, and intentional destruction to spend the coins or remove a specific coin for a collection. I’d guess close to 20% have been destroyed just since the end of 2010 when the price of the mint set collapsed. Almost nobody at all collects these coins so all those destroyed sets were not saved. And herein lies exactly the reason there will be a spike in price; almost no one at all collects them. It’s ridiculous to predict a 100 fold increase in demand for silver dollars or large cents but a 100 fold increase in the number of modern collectors would hardly cause a stior in the overall scheme of things but would drive the price of the ‘98 quarter straight through the roof. Two years ago a Russian 1969 5k was considered a very common coin that would never be worth anything. There were virtually no collectors so no one really knew if it was common or not; they only knew that moderns are common. Today there is the tiniest handfuls of collectors. It’s too early to even tell how many but it must be well under 1000 and the price of this coin is now $895. Nobody collects moderns so when demand appears there is no supply. US moderns will be no different. Sure there are some in the US because this is such a wealthy country that a few of everything gets saved. Those mansions have to be crammed full of something. But take my word on it; they aren’t filled up with modern US coins and I’d know it if they were because the coins would be around, and they most assuredly are not. Try finding some rolls and you’ll see I’m right.

If there are only a few dozen collectors just how much will price spike when there are suddenly 100? 1000?
100,000? 10,000,000?

Time changes everything. This is the nature of time and life. The more time people use something the more nostalgic they become when its gone. You say the old quarters aren’t gone but this is once again a matter of perspective rather than reality. There are now 55% states and parks quarters in circulation and every single day that percentage continues to increase. Every single day that goes by is another day that the old quarters in circulation wear more and get thinner and thinner. Every day it gets longer and longer since anyone saw a nice shiny eagle reverse quarter. And every day there are more people collecting moderns. There’s no rush yet and the demand shows up only where the supplies are thinnest but every day there will be more and more nostalgia and sentimentalism about the good ole’ days.

 

Back in the last century I used to travel around looking for gem quality coins at coin shops, banks,and anywhere else they might show up. Everyone agreed it was nuts to put any effort into "common coins". I'd tell them that the coins weren't only not common but were in many cases quite scarce. Of course they tell me it didn't matter even if they were scarce since no one would ever collect them. I'd counter that they are US coins and collectors have always collected US coins (at least up until 1965).

Look at the prices for these Gems now! A few collectors have found that very high grade coins are scarce so the prices have soared.

Now my contention is even lower grade moderns aren't nearly so common as they are percieved. Some of these even in nice attractive MS-64 are elusive and it wouldn't take much demand to show how elusive they are. I'm talking here about coins that are far scarcer than a '50-D nickel but sell for a tiny fraction of the price.

It cost a lot of money to set aside a quarter in the old days. 25c was a lot of money and it was a safe bet that it would be lost to inflation if it had no premium later on. I was willing to gamble on the high grades but I wasn't willing to gamble on the lower grades so much. Just because these coins are more available, don't assume that they have "saved themselves".

 

Which would matter if we were talking about 1998 Mint Sets.

Amusingly, the market doesn't set its prices based on what one collector guesses has happened.

I'm sorry, you're not being vague enough here...

"Almost no one" collects the rocks in my back yard, either.

Um...what?

Let me make sure I've got this right. Nobody is collecting common date modern mint sets, because if they were, they'd be hoarded in mansions, and you'd know about it.

Did I follow that?

Interesting.

It doesn't seem to have changed many of the commonly available ancients that, due to the lack of demand, can be had for < $10 in junk bins at dealers and shows around the world. I suppose that too, might change...so, I suppose if you want to argue that the 98 P Quarter will explode in value 2200 years from now, i probably won't contest that assertion.

It also doesn't seem to have had any impact on common date wheat cents or IHCs. Heck, it hasn't even had much impact on common date silver coins...there's a handful of Barbers and WLHs in every $100 of junk silver...and has been ever since silver crossed $6 an oz.

I've got dozens of pieces of artwork by my kids...each one is one of a kind, and will never be made again. Supply can't GET any thinner than that.

Where's the demand??

Oh..that's right...the real world doesn't suddenly demand things just because they're hard to find. The real world demands things when they possess some sort of value, or have some sort of significance.

Plain old run of the mill 1 in a trillion coins with no valuable content don't fit that category...and never will.

 

http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/amphoracoins/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=2935

this one is nearly 2000 years old and sells for $100 so extrapolate from there.

 

But we are.

To a very real extent the supplky of moderns is the mint sets and to an even larger extent the supply of quality moderns is the mint sets. If you want an uncirculated 1979-D cent then you have a lot of options. They are in the sets, rolls, bags, and singles. There are countless millions though many have been released to circulation since they were first saved. Roll coins come nice and finding Gems isn't difficult. In this case the mint set coins are actually not good. Only about 1% are Gemmy and you can do better in rolls. But very high grade clad was hardly ever even produced. Oftimes they didn't appear in circulation or were prohibitively rare. Rolls weren't saved so even if they weren't rare it would make little difference. MS-67 quarters in rolls would be rare if it were any other date than '98-D. This date came nicer and was saved in larger numbers but still there will be more in the mint sets than in rolls probably.

This is an educated guess. I've watched these markets for years and know how they behave.

This is a very simple concept; if people were hoarding coins they would be seen. There can't be a massive conspiracy for everyone to stash away large numbers of coins and keep them all hidden. The real world doesn't work this way. If there were lots of '98-D quarters you would see rolls and bags.

Millions of wheat cents were saved in rolls. Moderns haven't been saved.

You're starting to get it.

And modern coins everywhere are exploding in price. Maybe coins don't get their collector value from silver. Maybe a coin doesn't have to be 1500 years old or exactly 208 years old to be rare and desirable. Maybe they get their value from supply and demand and you're wrong about the supply and the demand.

 

Possibly never since they're ugly and made of junk metal.

 

Medoraman, in another thread, mentioned that he collected certain Chinese coins and that these same coins, which were plentiful and cheap years ago, are now expensive and hard to find. The collector base in China has broadened in a few short years and demand for coins is 'up'. The same could happen with 'moderns' as a rising group of collectors in that area seek coins of higher quality which are diminishing in numbers. I can see Cladkings point.......