Is it time to focus on clad coinage?

I might be getting a little off topic here but it's something most people aren't aware of and is at least tangentally relevant.

I got interested in world base metal coins from looking through junk boxes in the '70's for silver coins. I memorized all the silver coins so I could pull them out but over the years I started noticing that a lot of the world coins that were supposed to be common either weren't seen at all or were never seen in nice condition. The first such coin I spotted was a '57 Greek 1 D. I looked everywhere and just couldn't locate the coin. By the mid-'80's I had long lists of things that I searched for. All the soviet coins were included but especially the Soviet moderns which started in 1962. I corresponded with some Moscow coin club members. Coin collecting was discouraged in the Soviet Union because it was considered a waste of time so this club was pretty small. Coin collecting was not very big. But none of these people collected Soviet moderns and very very few had any interest in the Soviet coins as they were collecting the old silver czarist coinage. A little of the early Soviet coinage was silver and most coins from that era had a little interest but I just couldn't get any of the moderns despite offerring very favorable trades.

This was true in other countries as well; you couldn't even get the coins back in the days they were current.

Most of the Russian mint sets were shipped to Europe and the US and dealers couldn't give them away. Just like all moderns US collectors considered them common and they too were seeking the old silver coins. Dealers would cut up the foreign mint sets and drop the coins in junk boxes. Sometimes I'd find them soon enough that they were still nice. Most of the time these coins would eventually end up in poundage which has a staggeringly high attrition. The coins sold by the pound tend to get used up as play money or as a curiousity or eventually left in the reject bin of an automatic counting machine and then tossed in the garbage. I've heard stories of barrels of low denomination world coins left out for the trash man.

Old collectible coins exist because someone took the effort to set them aside. If they hadn't been then all the old coins would be degraded or long gone. In fact with old coins lots of them were saved "accidently". They were used to back paper money or lost and refound. This won't happen with moderns. Many of the moderns have already been destroyed because the issuer changed currencies and recalled the old coins for destruction. This will impact very high percentanges of the high denomination coins. People simply don't save coins worth a few dollars when they are being demonetized. This means that many moderns weren't saved out in high grade or low grade and they're gone now. There aren't any "accidental" hoards because these have no "intrinsic" value. Any base metal coin that gets lost will probably be highly corroded if it is ever found. Nobody collected them so there aren't any collections of them.

People see piles of lightly worn French coins or see hoards of millions of low denomination Hungarian coins and deduce that all moderns are common. It just doesn't work that way. There might be millions of 1972 Finnish 1p coins and almost no 1971 coins. Greek 1959 10l coins might be "common" in unc but the 2D is scarce. Old Fijian silver can be found all day long but the modern cu/ ni can be impossible in any grade. The silver Japanese 100Y coins from the mid-'60's is common but the cu/ ni from the late-60's is almost impossible.

Each year that goes by collectors and the market become a little more sophisticated and it is starting to sort out the wheat from the chaffe. What we'll come to find is the vast majority of moderns will be scarcer than the older coins and that's just as true or truer for US moderns and especially clad.

 

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I am finally back online after losing power for a while due to Hurricane Irene. :stormy: It has been entertaining/informative to read through all the posts, and I do appreciate all the responses. IMO, people should collect what makes them happy. I have my fair share of silver coins, but the clads are really inexpensive right now as most people are focusing on PMs and the timing seems right to buy if one chooses to do so. There are some really nice BU clad coins that are selling close to or at face value or even less than what the mint initially charged for a mint/proof set. Even though most 1965+ modern clad coins are high mintage, it seems that high grade specimens may actually be quite rare and that may be the area to focus on. As many here know, I am a fan of varieties and the clads also offer a very good opportunity here as well (i.e., Type B quarters, Type 2 Ike, etc.). I also think there is some interesting historical significance to these coins that may be overlooked by some people. If financial transactions ever become exclusively electronic (and we seem to be moving in that direction), these clad coins will be hoarded for sure. As soon as the postage stamp becomes obsolete, I am going to the bank and buying all the clad coinage I can fit in my car. Interesting, with most businesses losing power near me, I actually had to use cash (including coins) to pay for food, gas, etc. for a while. These businesses were very happy to take that cash payment. I would hate to see what would happen if the power go out for an extended period of time. TC

 

The Modern Clad Coinage Market is what WE make of it folks. It is ours to make or destroy through neglect.

Anybody that has spent any time at all browsing through clad coinage, whether its Roosevelts, Washingtons, Kennedy's, or IKE's, knows that there are specific limitations on "quality of strike" and "coin condition". Each of the above coin series which is typically pulled from one's pocket is certainly only worth face value, at most, but those coins of exceptional quality which can still be found in Mint Sets and original rolls are definitely worth tucking away since they represent what the coins looked like as first issued which, IMO, is what "Brilliant Uncirculated" is all about.

All coins are certainly assessible for collecting regardless of what they are made of and junk circulated stock only has value for its specific metallic content. There is no disputing that fact BUT, just because a coin is made of currently inexpensively available materials does not mean it should not be considered for collecting. After all, its the coiners art which is being collected and preserved so why not preserve the best looking piece?

The current run on the silver prices has most certainly put limitations on the buying and searching habits of a lot of budding numismatists. I know that I personally have to think twice before plunking down $120 a roll for 40% Silver Kennedy's to search, so I could only imagine the frustrations felt by so many truly interested collectors that are on limited budgets.

The alternative is clad coinage which can still be searched for some very good collectible examples. Who knows, folks might come up with some unknown die variety or some exceptional example that could sell for thousands? You never know until you actually look. I recently had the opportunity to purchase a roll of late 60's early 70's quarters for $12. That roll produced the highest graded 1970-D DDO-001 Washington that PCGS has ever graded. It's Grade?

AU-55

It's price?

Well above a grand.

Those MS67 clad's reported earlier may only be worth a couple of hundred today, but in 10 years, it's possible that they could be worth significantly more which IMO is a good collecting investment.

That fella with the No S 1975 Dime didn't do too bad on his investment either now did he?

 

That was probably an old friend of mine who sold the coin. I don't want to mention his name since he might prefer to remain anonymous. We talked several times about the potential for clads way back when and one of the coins we thought might be a steal was the '75-P dime. This coin is interesting since it wasn't saved in rolls and mint set quality is all over the map. He sold me what might be one of only a handful of 1966 proof quarters. (at least it appears to be proof) In those days there were all sorts of oddball clads floating around. The oddest one is a 1964 clad quarter.

Now that a clad has sold for so much perhaps some of the other stuff will start getting offered for sale. It's a buyers market out there but there are a few real collectors for these real coins and not everything is even available. There are not enough coins to make the sort of mass market that exists for some older US coins at current pricing levels. Even much higher prices can't create uncs out of VG's. The coins are gone or degraded and nothing can change it.

 

Remember folks, this is a hobby - it is not the Tea party, the Coffee party or the Pooh party. Relax.

 

Every time I see auction results like that, I wonder if it wasn't staged by interested parties.

Would work something like this: Dealer "A" dealer "B" and dealer "C" all have a lot of similar material, all of it slabbed, all of it sent in huge lots to the grading services. Like most modern coins, the grading service doesn't even look at the coin, they simply decide 10% will be MS70, and the rest MS69 unless they have some obvious flaw. They slap them in slabs, then send them back to the dealers. Next, dealer "A" takes the nicest looking, and "rarest" coin and puts it in a leading auction house event ran concurent to a big show. Dealers "B" and "C" then step in to bid the coin to outlandish levels. Say, $300,000 for a common coin with some triffle of uniquness. The auction closes at that level, and the 3 dealers agree to split the commision owed the auction firm 3 ways. They have now spent about $15,000 each to promote a whole new area of specialization that hertofore didn't exist. And just by coincidence, they also happen to be sitting on tens of thousands of very similar coins, all of them slabbed, and ready for the buyers who were "blown-away" by the previous auction results. The only thing necessary going forward is marketing and suffecient hype. Call me a conspiracy nut, but in the world of business (and not just the coin business) that sort of stuff happens all the time).

 

How do you collect clad? Coins that are already slabbed, mint rolls, mint sets, or all of the above?

 

In my case, none of the above. I have grabbed my favorites such as the 1972 Ike type 2's and type B quarters out of circulation. I now do have some slabs.

 

All of the above when possible.

My Dansco Set was pulled from pocket change. As a new quarter would come out, I'd either put it in the Dansco or in a 2x2. I should have set more aside but since I was a simple collector I did not.

 

I usually recommend mint sets as a starting point. For most date clads you'll find a nice attractive specimen after looking at eight or twelve sets. Some are fewer and some more. But collectors should watch all the coins in the series they choose and one can learn a lot by looking at the coins in circulation. Besides the education there are some coins in circulation that are available nowhere else or are excessively rare anywhere else. Dealers try to stock these coins in recent years so this is a good place to look. Finally are rolls and bags. These are more appropriate for more advanced collectors now days since the cost is so high and rolls can lose most of their value once they are opened. In the old days the coins were cheap but never available now they aren't so cheap and rarely available. Collectors need to know what to look for before putting down a premium of five or ten times face for coins that lose that value after being looked at.

If you want a gem collection there's never been a better time to just look for clads on eBay. Most of the MS-65 clads are coins that were sent in hoping for a better grade and some of these are very scarce in their own right but demand is so low that scarcity isn't reflected in the price. Highly desirable clads can be picked up for five or ten dollars. This is why you need to lok at circulating coins and mint sets though; so you know which ones are tough in gem or higher grades. You certainly wouldn't want to spend $10 for a nice gem '72-D quarter when you could buy 4 1972 mint sets each of which contains a gem Denver quarter but a gem '71 quarter for $10 is a steal and might be very difficult to improve if it's nice.

Like all collectibles there aren't any short cuts to learning the ropes. I can tell you what a '71 has to look like to be worth $10 but you have to learn to see it yourself. One of the many beauties of moderns is that you do get to look at about as many coins of a date as you desire. If you can't find them in unc then just look at the ones in change.

 

I would, but I might get in trouble with the moderator

While your story has a probability higher than zero of occurring, I'm going to guess that it's negligibly higher than zero (maybe 1 in a quadrillion chance). And, there is nothing in your "conspiracy theory" that is restricted to clad coins. Thus, it's just as plausible a scenario for any coin...or collectible for that matter.

If you are referring to ASE or AGE bullion then this assessment is pretty close to the truth IMO. But, if you are talking about business strike modern coinage you are way off of the mark. There are a handful of MS70 Lincoln Cents (all satin finish coins from 2005-2006, less than 100 total), only one MS70 dime (also satin finish) and only a handful of MS70 quarters (less than 50), and only 1 MS70 Kennedy half ever graded by either PCGS or NGC. It gets old hearing people say how every modern coin is graded MS70 -- simply put, they are NOT. And, outside of the satin finish coins of 2005-2010, there are almost no MS69 modern coins also (the Lincoln Cent is the most common but still quite rare in the MS69 grade).

People who seriously collect moderns know what coins are hard to find and conversely what coins are readily available in high grade. People who don't collect moderns like to justify their dislike/disinterest of the modern coins by poo-pooing on those who do and regurgitating information that is simply false. I happen to collect the Sacagawea/Native American dollar series.

Question: How many 2007-D Sacagawea Dollars have been graded MS68 or higher by both PCGS and NGC combined?
Answer: None

That is just one example of a modern coin that isn't available in super gem. There are many many other examples of scarce condition rarities amongst moderns. This is surprising to most people considering there are generally a few thousand graded examples, and most of those have been "cherry-picked" for submission. I'm not disavowing the possibility of an MS68 existing, but even if a few do exist, they are condition rarities for sure. You may argue now -- is there really a difference between an MS68 coin and an MS67 coin? -- and again, I will say, for those of us who seriously collect a particular series, the difference is night and day.

 

I've been collecting these coins for nearly 40 years and watching the markets intently for 30 years. I've been promoting the coins for nearly a quarter century now. There are no hoards of these coins.

Anyone trying to assemble hoards would have no choice but to use the same technique I did and it couldn't be done in a vacuum. Sure someone could drive city to city trying to find gems without my knowing but most dates couldn't be found this way because there weren't enough gems made.

Sure there are a few small hoards here and there but I've never seen one for sale. There are a couple on the east coast and probably one in the far west but I'd wager that even in aggregate they won't increase the pops in many dates by more than 5 or 10%. This is the nature of rare coins; they are hard to find. Remember 25c was a lot of money to tie up in a coin that everyone thought was junk that would never have any value. If someone had a $1000 bag of 1969 quarters in 1980 he lost $180 in interest alone. The coins couldn't be given away in those days and no one had them then and they don't have them now. Now these go for $100 a roll if you can find one. In the very unlikely event you find such a roll the odds are better than 90% that every single coin in the roll will be junk. The odds of a true gem are extremely remote.

There are no hoards of mint sets either. Yes, it's possible some big wholesaler ghas been stocking up planning a promotion but the logistics for this would be staggering and so would the cost. In order to have a few gems of everything you'd need nearly a million dollars in idle inventory and then you'd have the herculean task of sifting the sets for the coins that can be sold at substantial profit. Much of the million dollars will prove to be just pocket change unless there's a sudden huge shift into moderns which no one is predicting. You simply aren't going to be able to sell something like a poorly made and scratched up 1976 half dollar for many years yet and much of the inventory will be coins like this. It would likely become known if someone were doing this anyway.

People need to forget hoards. There simply aren't going to be a bunch of no-S dimes being found and there aren't and never were hoards of business strikes.

Perhaps in the future someone might do this but it's improbable there are any major hoards at this time. I've got what's in my safety deposit boxes but I also have things like 1969 Russian 5k's and my collections in them. What you see is what you get and you simply don't see much high grade clad... ...never did.

 

cladking and I have always been on the same page. His collecting is more diverse than mine because I only collect Lincoln cents. However, what he is saying is the truth and, if you become a serious modern collector, you will find these things out for yourself.

From the Lincoln perspective, the moderns are almost completely ignored. Finding TRUE well-struck, gem coins is VERY difficult. I hear from people and dealers all the time, "there's billions of them", yea....this is true. However, 99.9% of those billions are junk, LDS/MDS, spotted and poorly struck. Finding clean, well-struck EDS coins is a HUGE challenge. It doesn't matter if you have 20 mint sets, 100 rolls or bags....finding those primo coins is going to wear you down into submission. Then I hear people say, "well, I'll just buy slabbed coins"....here's the news, almost all the slabbed coins do not meet the primo critera regardless of grade. The TPG's really do ignore things like die state and they often forgive light water spotting or poor stikes. For example, the steps on the Memorial cent, I've seen slabbed 67-68 coins with mushy, ill-defined steps....but it has luster...so it gets the grade. Sorry, IMO, the TPG grades on most moderns fall WAY short by my standards.

The bottomline, moderns have been vastly ignored by collectors and dealers alike. Finding the true diamonds in the rough is a lot more difficult than most think. Like cladking said....they are truely rare. Finding those coins is very, very difficult for the discriminating collector.

 

It took me many years of collecting moderns to warm up to the one cent coins. This is because I always had the notionthat most US modern coin collectors would want to collect in gem or near-gem. By this I mean coins that are nearly fully stuck with minimal marking or just slightly shy of this high standard. One cent coins tend to be pretty common in gem and near gem because they are better made on average than other denominations and most dates were saved in substantial quanties. The higher quality especially applies to many of the earlier cents. It always seemed that saving these was a waste of valuable safety deposit box space.

Over the years though one finds that the availability of these is highly variable and the availability of the top grade coins to which BadThad is referring can be extremely low so each year I find myself spending more and more time searching these. A few of the dates are even going to prove elusive in gem. People imagine something like a nice gem '79-D cent is common and it's no scarcity but try looking at mint sets and finding a clean example. Not even 1% are very clean and roll coins tend to be far worse. Sure this is a common date roll since it was well made but finding any moderns at all that are well made and clean in rolls is very difficult. I haven't seen enough rolls of this date to have an opinion but if it's like most from the late-70's you can figure well under .2% will be clean and a lot of these will be poorly made.

Extremely nice cents with full steps and no marking and pleasing fields are not common for any date except the late '80's Denvers.

While a lot of cents have been set aside there aren't a lot of collectors doing it in a systematic way like BadThad. This means a lot of those rolls that come to light later on are going to be spotted and there will be some dates that are very elusive. A roll of scarce cents sit right in someone's garage next to a roll of very common ones because no one knows the difference. A lot of cents deserve protection and some don't.

 

The problem with OBW rolls is that many have been improperly stored. I've opened a huge number only to find corroded coins. When I do get a nice roll, the coins are usually MDS/LDS and carbon/water spotted and/or beat up from poor handling. I reject the vast majority of coins because they do not meet my standards.

Not sure about you cladking, but the 90-D and 91-D were a couple of VERY tough years for Lincolns for me. I have a couple of nice ones but I think I searched 100k to find them. LOL

 

A lot of the rolls are damaged. Every single coin in a large percentage of rolls is simply destroyed by improper storage. Most of these rolls were pretty poor to start with so are no great loss. The zinc dates tend to be worse even though they're much newer so if you project this forward a little it leaves pretty few nice coins. The '84-D is going to be a bear in nice condition as even nice attractive coins will be quite unusual and in just a few years there won't be any nice examples left in circulation of this date.

The '90-D and '91-D I don't find especially tough in the mint set. They aren't common like the late '80's and the superb gems aren't quite as nice but these really aren't that tough in the mint set. I know you have exceedingly high standards for strike but the mint set coins are extremely well struck. Denver quality in the '90's mint sets is spotty but generally fairly good. The cents from the late '80's are so well made that many of them look like branch mint proofs. Many of the '89-D's are so "hammered" that the copper is stripped right off the sides of the letters on the reverse.

Mint set quality tends to mirror roll quality but some dates diverge to a very large extent. I don't pay nearly enough attention to the roll coins but, like you, it's because I tend to need strike quality first. Finding good quality strikes in mint sets is very very easy for all dates and denominations since the coins are struck under higher pressure at lower speeds and with new dies.

 

Yea, the 84D is a tough, tough coin. That's another one I've fought. I need to do more mint set searching for 90D/91D it sounds like. I've always felt it's kind of like cheating though. LOL

Nonetheless, most of the mint set Lincolns are spotted with carbon. I've found many better coins in rolls and searching than I've found in mint sets. Some of the years would require looking through hundreds of mint sets just to find one without spots.....when you do, there's a huge hit....never fails. LMAO

 

Finding gems in mint sets really is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Don't get me wrong gems can be extremely challenging and even impossible for some dates but almost every coin is well made so it's mostly a matter of finding one that's clean.

About a third of '90-D or '91-D cents are fully gem in mint sets and choice gem runs about 10%. Superb gems are fairly "common" at about 4%. Higher grades are tough but do exist. Many of these are also PL but they tend not to be as PL as earlier issues.

You'll come out way ahead for some dates looking at rolls and way ahead looking at mint sets for others. But almost everything appears as a gem at least once in a while in sets.

It's easy to get a rythmm going looking at sets. I can check about ten sets a minute if the dealer just has small quantities. If you have large quantities you can do it even faster by taking them out of the envelope and looking at all the red packets and then all the blue. You get better at recognizing gems this way too since they just "pop" when you come to one. It just takes a little while to put them back in the envelopes. Most dealers will let you "mix and match" so each set will have a couple gems. I always pay a little extra for the priveledge and straighten out his sets in the process. I'll take the sets with no envelope and be sure all his sets are complete. It's a win/ win situation. Look for the bigger dealers who accumulate stuff like this. It's best to hit them right before they're going to ship it off so you get the widest selection and save them a little shipping weight. If dealers know you're looking they'll save it for you. There's still no competition for most of these so you might have a lot of sets to pick through. The big wholesalers have people who go through them but they miss stuff so they aren't a waste of time. The closer you get to the sets that walk in the door the better the quality. Most of these sets come from the original purchaser and are not choiced out. Look for lots of five and fresh envelopes. A first name on an envelope is a good sign. Be sure to check for varieties since these can pay the premiums for the gems.

Just like in rolls everything comes in runs.