I saw them in a coin shop window: - Half Dollars 1966-1967-1968 (40% silver) at 5€ (6,5$) each (quite good conditions) - Quarter Dollar 1929 (90% silver) at 5€ (6,5$) (very worn, date barely readable) - Large Cent 1851 (copper) at 60€ (78$) (quite good) I live in Italy, don't know very much about USA coins and don't know the American-English coin grading scale. Why that large cent is so expensive?
The prices on the half dollars and quarter seem pretty fair but I think the price on the large cent is a bit high.
The large cent is expensive because it has a relatively high numismatic or collector value compared to the other coins you listed.
I guess that 1850s large cents are usually in good conditions because they stopped circulating in 1857, right? Are they expensive just because they are perceived as "ancient" even if they aren't rare? Early Italian copper coins (minted since the unification in 1861) can be purchases for less than 1€ each if circulated... I think that 25-50$ is a lot for a copper coin that was in normal circulation (they're not silver\gold neither were minted in small numbers for collectors only).
I don't think they stopped circulating necessarily, however, many were saved (like other coins) and not spent. They are expensive because of demand and that is driven by the fact they are old and only 10 million of them were minted. There is more of a demand for many U.S. coins, therefore, higher prices even though much scarcer foreign coins exist. Basically, it all comes down to supply and demand. The supply of early U.S. copper coins may be more than early Italian copper coins, however, the demand is also much higher. Higher to the point that people are willing to pay more for these early American coins. I just started getting into foreign coins and love that they are on the cheap side. In the last month, I have purchased a 1960 and 1966 500 lire coins. They are just beautiful!
Here an interesting discussion about silver £500 coins: http://www.cointalk.com/t218734/#post1590869 I hope you didn't pay more than 10-12$ for one, they're common and worth only silver weight. Italian 100-150 y.o. copper coins are cheap because they are common. They were minted in millions for general circulation like eurocents (or pennies and nickel for your guys) are today. I doubt common circulated eurocents or US cents will be valuable in the year 2150. I though US large cents were very common too since they were minted for general circulation back then. How were 10 millions enough for a big country like the USA? You mean 10 million every year? It's still few.
I only paid $10-$12 for the 500 Lire coins that I have, but will probably pay $20 for a really nice coin. I may even pay up to $70 for a graded specimen. I also think common cents of today will not have the value that 19th century coins do, and will have. That 10 million figure was just for that year. Most other years, for later year large cents, have mint numbers of approximately 2-6 million.
1851 was the highest mintage year. As mentioned most of those later years were only in the 2 - 6 million range. 1857 was only 333,000. And The USA was a big country, but most of the population lived in a small portion of it and the population was also much smaller back then. Still, it wasn't enough. Much of our commerce at the time was still done with foreign coins especially Spanish colony fractionals. it had been getting better though and by the late 1850's we were finally ready to switch over to out own coinage and remove the last of the legal tender status from the foreign coins. (Even without legal tender status the Spanish fractional continued to circulate in some areas until the 1870's.) Another reason for the low mintages though was probably because the price of copper had risen and the large heavy cents each contained over a cents worth of copper so the government was losing money on every coin they struck. Finally after six years of losses they reduced the size of the cent in 1857. (and in 1857 and 58 struck over 31 million of them)
