Affordable Now, But How About In The Future?

And a great many of those that started the set, both young and old, never finished it. They lost interest long before the ten years ended. Now granted in some of those people the fire has been lit and is now only smoldering. But it won't come back for a long time. Most young people that have the mental quirk that makes them collect are exposed as youngsters then it dies out until it is rekindled in the 40's or so after their career is established, the house is paid for and the kids are out of the house. They now have time on their hands and disposable income. The one good thing the state quarter program did is it exposed a lot of young people. The hobby will start reaping the real benefit of that in about another twenty years. But still only a small fraction of those exposed will ever come back to the fold.

 

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This pretty much describes my personal experience with collecting, and I agree with this in general.

I collected as a kid back in the early 80's, but I knew nothing about the coins and history of them, except they were cool looking, and old - well, a 1950's penny to me was old back then. My 8-yo looks at my coins from the early 1900's and thinks they're "sooo old, almost ancient" . The interest died out as I grew older - teenager, high school, sports, college, etc, obviously other things on my mind. However, luckily my Mom kept collecting (more like hoarding, but that's OK) over the years and just stashed it away. When I cleaned out their house, I found it all but at the time was just starting my own family, and put it in the basement. Fast forward almost 7 years to now, and I'm in my late 30's, kids and family established, and I broke out all the containers to start looking through them. Then, it clicked and I was hooked again, and now that I have the money and a little bit of time, I'm back in with a passion.

I'm hoping the same outcome with my kids. They'll probably lose interest like I did in their teenage years, but I'm going to keep collecting, and hoarding things like the state quarters, ATB's, and whatever other "collectibles" they come out with like my Mom did, so that someday they might discover all this again and get back into it. Only they'll hopefully have an advantage of starting with a fairly large collection which I can tell all sorts of cool stories about how I slaved to get them and keep them in good condition for them and their kids...

 

Yes, exactly, both of you! I started when young, lost interest, then my interest was reignited in my early 30's. I started again with state quarters, then some moderns, but now my interests have turned to Lincoln wheat cents, Draped Bust cents, large and half cents, and ancients.

As me and the growing number coming behind me start to expand our numismatic interests, will we price certain coins beyond the average collector?

 

Some coins, yeah probably. However, I don't think that's too different from now, just look at Morgans and Peace Dollars. I believe that's a good example to use, because there's a very wide range in pricing for the series'. There's melt value ones, low MS with mass-attainable pricing, and then there's the real nice, high end ones which contain plenty of specimens that are well out of most folks' budgets.

I think the key is desirability, and mintage numbers over time. There were certainly lots of Morgans for the time, and (this is my pure speculation/belief, I don't have numbers to back this up without doing the research) I believe comparable ratios of coins to people for that time period, just like there's probably a similar ratio of modern collectables to people today. Over time, lots were taken out of the public's hands (melting, etc), and the numbers dwindled, making the remaining ones (at least the lower mintages to start) that much more desirable. Then again, there's so much of a storied past with those coins, I think that helps to drive the demand for them, which I'm not sure if there'll be such a background driving the moderns (yet).

I think you're asking a good question, but I think it's a very difficult one to answer at the moment. I kinda think it's just like what happened to Ikes. They really didn't take on as a collectible, but I personally am starting to really like them, and am hoping that over time more folks will discover them. Subsequently I'm hoping they will turn into a better collectible, with prices driven by popularity instead of inherent silver content, as is the case now.

 

Aside from condition rarities and significant errors, I can't see any coin minted after 1955 becoming difficult to find MS examples. As such, I can't see any of them carrying much of a premium. Earlier coins such as Seated and Capped bust halves, which are affordable in XF and AU grades, should see an increase if they ever change the Kennedy half. Similar story if the mint changes the Roosevelt dime, Mercury, Barber and Seated dimes will increase in value.

 

I think these are pretty good answers. There have been pretty good responses throughout the thread and thank all who have contributed and all who may yet contribute.

 

IMO, having so much access to coins over the Internet has accelerated
marginal decline in utility. This link is a surpurb example of what that
is: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp
This is the main reason I believe there is an even brighter future for world
coins-they at least mitigate marginal decline in utility in that you don't
have to look at the same motiff twice, possible for the rest of your life.

And it's a big world. Franken grading can't be everywhere. :devil:

 

I agree, but a lot of it has to do with more people collecting now due to the internet. To me, we all have a choice to make, either collect what we CAN still afford today or stop collecting. I do not see things becoming more affordable in the future.

 

So, I'm wondering if this will accelerate over the next 10-20 years? If so, do current collectors just start buying as fast (especially lots online to complete old series) as their budgets will allow and then sort through it all later?

 

I see condition-rarity as being the only money-maker in moderns. And not stat quarters and crap... old clad coinage (Think late '60's, in high grade... 66, 67, 68) and high grade (65 or better, minimum) Ikes.

 

Each Quarter told a different story, So modern commem's would be a good guess since they are different and affordable

 

First Spouse coins!

 

I think Ikes have the most potential because of the interesting history and because high grade eye appealing coins are very hard to come by. They appeal to more than just coin collectors because of the Apollo 11 insignia on the reverse. I simply love them....:thumb:

 

Doug, you mentioned in another thread back in 2004 that all the signs for a bear market had come to pass and that bear markets usually last about 8-10 years.

When do you think the bear market started and do you think it will be an 8-10 year run?

 

For crying out loud... a coin you tried to sell for $9 million is not affordable!

 

If I get what you're talking about here, you can't base the coin prices of 10-15 years ago on the coin prices of today, even in "bear" or "bull" terms because the underlying fundamentals that drive the market are vastly different today. In 2000, the average American worker made $20/hr... We'll probably never get near that again (adjusted for inflation) thanks to globalization and erosion of labor union support. When you see the top end of the coin market doing well and the bottom end stagnant or lagging, that is directly reflecting the market itself.

 

Believe me, your dealer was the rare exception to the rule.

To get my first bag of 1982-P quarters was an herculean task. My bank simply refused to help. I had tracked down the origin of some nice gemmy coins I found in circulation near the end of 1982 to my own bank but to get them to sell me a bag I had to track down every error they had made in my accounts for the past six years. They were all less than a dollar and worked out to about 25c in their favor but to correct them on their books would require enormous effort. When presented with this they introduced me to the vault manager. He told me he had called numerous cohorts in the Chicago area and not one of them had ever heard of setting aside clad coins. He said they got a rare call for pennies and nickels and even had tales of half dollars but never dimes or quarters. He thought I might be a little tetched on this basis.

But this brings us back to the coins your dealer set aside. Only about 10 to 14 die pairs are represented in a bag and these coins will spread about a tenth of the dies' life. The odds of even a single nice coin in a bag (Philly 25c) in 1982 was only about one in ten. Of course if there was one nice coin there were likely to be at least dozens and possibly hundreds. In other words there's only a one in ten chance that your exception to the rule dealer got any nice coins in his bag.

It's entirely possible that there are small hoards of nice coins of this date out there but I've seen little evidence to date. There are only about 80,000 of these coins in existence and if random then only about one in two hundred is well made and not badly marked. I'm assuming at least a few people sought nice specimens (like your dealer) so the incidence is actually higher. But the '82-P doesn't appear in souvenir as gem and the '83-P is scarce from this source.

I advertised to pay $40 each for all these coins as Gem all through the mid-'90's and most of the stuff I recieved was just junk and I recieved very few coins. I only actually bought a mere handfull of coins. In those days the entire roll listed for only $25 so this should have been lots of incentive for people to look at their rolls.

I've been trying to count these since 1983 and, quite frankly, I believe that 1000 might be an exaggeration of their availability. I would call it a fairly liberal estimate.

My bag? I really lucked out. These coins were from the exact same source as the Gems I had found in circulation (the same die pair occured in it) . Most of the coins in the bag were junk and three die pairs didn't produce a single decent coin because they were worn out and off center But there were about nine or ten other die pairs that were all pretty decent and there were at least a few nice coins from them. But the nicest pair was early die state (between about 2,000 and 40,000 coins) and it was well-centered and properly installed. Most of these were very lightly marked or virtually clean and all the detail was at least half way struck up. I would only grade most of them as MS-64 but I'm sure they'd do better if sent in since this is a very tough date. One of the coins stands head and shoulders above the others and is probably from the first couple hundred strikes. I'd grade it solid Gem and it might be the only solid Gem '82-P in existence. So long as these coins are ignored we won't know because some people who actually have the coins won't send them in just to make a few bucks. This coin is my collection piece anyway and ain't goin' nowhere.