Finally finished my South Korea 10 Won collection. I thought somebody here might like to take a look. Here at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IWxNKls0oY If any of you own these coins, let's see 'em! :hail:
Thanks Siberian! ...But don't you collect Korean coins, too? I remember that I saw some of your N.Korean collection at one time here at CT. Do you ever get into S. Korean coins?
Very nice where did you get the album from? I own a couple 10000 won that feature 1988 Seoul olympic.
Wow!! Congratulations. There are a couple here that I've never seen in unc. Odds are good that when the smaller size was introduced that all the circulating examples of the older coins were melted for their metal meaning the low mintage issues will prove to be difficult in any condition at all. People don't realize how scarce most modern series are in unc. They don't realize it because they think low prices are the result of huge supply when actually it's the result of very low demand. The early 10 won coins sell for pretty steep prices now days because there is a small demand and almost no supply at all. I've been looking for uncs for 35 years and have only a very few. Your set was obvioiusly assembled by a true and very dedicated collector. An "investor" wouldn't have such pristine and well made coins.
The album is a just a generic 1 and 1/4-inch Dansco "World Coin Library Album". The lettering on the spine I did myself with a "brush"-type font stencil and bright gold acrylic paint. The front cover was done for me by a local company called "Litho Tech Custom Cover" in Bloomington, Minnesota, using the same "brush"-style font. This company did all my other album covers that you can see on Youtube, too. If you watch the video all the way to the end, you can see the name and address of the Album manufacturer on the inside back cover. If you've been around coins long enough, you've probably heard of Dansco. The pages are DOUBLE Dancso 37mm pages that I taped together using double-sided tape, so that they could accomodate the "T-size" Airtites that encapsulate the coins that I place in the holes. The last page is a double 32mm page, because the airtites on that page were the "A-size" (because of the new, smaller 10 Won coins). The labeling on the pages was done with Avery clear stick-on labels that I ran off my printer using "Copperplate" font. They're not totally transparent, but it's the best I could do. As far as the 1988 Olympic coins, The Bank of Korea and the minting authority in Korea, KOMSCO, were not very happy about how those turned out: They made WAY, WAY too many sets of them, and in too many varieties of each coin; so much so, that the Bank of Korea had to BUY them back from distributors when they found out that not everybody and his sister on the face of the earth wanted to buy a set. Thanks for the interest! I still wanna see someone's Koreans coins!
Thanks. Yes, that collector is ME. I've been working on Korean coins and ONLY Korean coins for the past 6 years. I've been learning how to judge the condition of coins based on photos and scans, and more importantly, never buying a coin online if you can't see it properly in the photos, and never buying based on the grade shown on a slab. Eye appeal. That's what it's all about. You hit on a thing that I like about South Korean coins: They are actually more scarce than people think. And because practically nobody is into them, (or more correctly, other world-coin people are into EVERYTHING else in addition to S Korea), I can focus like a laser and get really good pickups. For example, that 1969 10 Won coin I found in a VFW basement coin show in a decades-old 2X2. When I asked how much it was, the seller looked at it and said, "What's this that I've got here? Some kinda Japanese or Chinese thing?" and he asked me 12 bucks for it. I've picked up UNC Korean key coins just like that, and on more than one occasion, too! In Korea, I could sell that 1969 coin, raw, for at least $600. There are advantages to being a COLLECTOR of rare but not necessarily sought-after world coins. I'm not into the "white" and "yellow" discs that everyone is into now. I'm finding coin collectors are getting rarer and rarer these days...
There are few true collectors any longer but the numbers are growing. Having to make your own album is symptomatic of the scarcity of collectors. You can buy new and used albums and folders for buffalo nickels by the ton but most moderns will prove tough. Until 1984 Whitman didn't even make a folder for clad quarters and until 2006 no one made a folder for eagle reverse clad quarters. When I was a child you could get folders and albums for almost anything from 1776 to date but they just quit making them for coinage after 1965. I don't really collect the 10 w coins but I've known they were tough for a long time so had the opportunity to buy them for a long time. Actually this was just the opportunity to shop for them since I couldn't find them. Even pretty recent catalogs list these as being pretty common but back in the early '80's they listed for 25c or 50c each. If I could have found a roll of 50 I could have picked it up for two or three dollars but no one was setting aside moderns and you couldn't find any at all. There was no internet, no demand, and no supply. It was a very surreal time to collect moderns. Rare coins were selling for next to nothing but they couldn't be found. This is still going on and there are still many hundreds of modern scarcities that list for pennies. Specialists and real collectors have a distinct advantage and almost always do better in the long run but being given a thirty year head start is just weird. I always wondered if I was just wasting my time and throwing away all the money I spent on it but the cost was extremely low (I spent more on postage than coins), and there was a sense that someone had to save these coins or there wouldn't be any in the future. In twenty years your set will probably be recognized for its rarity. In ten years people will be astounded to learn just how many moderns are rare in nice condition and many more will be tough even in poor condition.
What you say here is quite interesting. I recently purchased an old copy of the periodical, "World Coins" (Vol. 8, August 1971) because it featured Korean coins. The contemporary Korean coins of the time (1959-1971) weren't even mentioned! Nor were they mentioned much in the advertisements. All that is mentioned and featured throughout the magazine, in both the articles and the ads, are world coins from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Nothing recent was mentioned or offered for sale! And, yes, I think it really was an issue of NO DEMAND, which still kind of exists today. However, SOMEBODY was bringing these Korean coins back to the states because it seems to me that the best preserved examples of Korean coins were (and are still) to be found outside of Korea, and exist especially here in North America. That's how it appears to me, anyway. Perhaps GIs and other visitors to Korea were bringing them back? It seems that in Korea there was common practice of cleaning coins among collectors, because I see a lot of Korean sellers online and in Korean coin shops in Seoul who have slabbed coins for sale that have "CLEANED" on their descriptions.
You're probably pretty close here. As a rule of thumb most world coins were primarily collected in the US and this applies even more to post-WW II moderns. There are several exceptions such as a robust market in British coins in Britain that goes back centuries but modernsw were collected nowhere at all. The few that exist today were often brought back by visitors who happened to be coin collectors. Those brought back by non-collectors are usually worn and have a far higher attrition. In the case of Korea these were probably brought back by servicemen for their own collections or on request of family members. Attrition on these coins is extremely high because many still list at very low prices and even the high priced issues are just assumed to be common. On the rare occassion a rare coin comes into a coin shop it is likely to just go into the junk bucket if it's modern. Dealers usually won't even "waste their time" looking up a coin like a '69 10 w so it ends up selling three for a dollar. It ends up getting used as play money by children on its way to landfill. Most of the nice unc circulating Korean I've found have come out of collections. Frankly I hjave a lot of doubt that later dates are a great deal more common than the earlier date moderns. In almost all cases they sell much cheaper but I don't see them a great deal more often. This applies to the Korean coins as well other than most post-'85 issues.
