Mint sets vs Albums

Will future resale value decline by opening mint set packaging and discarding it to place your coins in albums to save on storage space ?

 

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To a collector of mint sets, yes.

Realistically, there is a very small premium for the mint packaging. Modern mint sets are produced in large numbers. Collect and display them how you prefer - the value difference is negligible.

 

Yes I would think so.

 

If you review the values of Mint Sets, for example in the CDN, you will find that most have not increased in value very much, if at all. So, the OGP adds very little, if any, to the value of the set.

Suppliers have plastic pages for the sets in cello, storage boxes for the sets in the OGP, and of course, you can put them in individual 2x2's with or without the cello. You can do whatever is most convenient for you.

Chris

 

Define "future". If you mean a couple of years from now or less, no. If you mean 30-50 years from now, well I can't say for sure but, I would pay more for a 1966 mint set all together then all the coins individually. Keep in mind that sometimes the whole is worth more then the sum of its parts.

 

It would have to have a MAJOR error or variety, much like the "No S Proof Sets". Right offhand, the only one I can think of is the 1970 "Small Date".

Chris

 

If you break up the set and sell individually, you would make more then selling the set as a whole. Of course there is much more work and fees involved.

 

Modern Mint Sets (1965-today), regardless of OGP, simply have zero upside. None.
20 years. 30 Years. 40 years. It simply does not matter.

Those folks that collect mint sets/proof sets in OGP will find out what I am saying when they go to sell their collections.

Now, for the beginning coin collector with a simple goal of collecting 1 or 2 of each set ever made, it's a great goal! But, having a "great goal" is simply NOT going to increase the value of what has been collected. Primarily because it's the "individual's" goal, not the collecting communities goal.

For example, I have a goal of collecting a complete set of Kennedy Half Dollars from circulation. Is it a good or great goal? Sure. Will the collection have any appreciable value? Probably not.

I entertained a similar "Mint Set Collecting" goal beginning in the early 80's which was well before the Internet and TPG's and Coin Forums. 30 years later, the money I had spent on my collection was all but lost when I resold what I had collected. NONE of the sets appreciated at all and most (the non-silver sets) actually declined in value over what I had paid.

It is a very hard lesson to learn and IMO, OGP is a very, very small tick on the actual value scale.

Do it because you like to do it but understand that they will not appreciate in value and as such will be really, really poor investments in term of money, Not in terms of time.

 

Original packaging will someday be at a premium to the coins but when that day comes gemmy coins and Gem coins will have a much higher premium. I cut the coins out just so I can stabilize them in alcohol and spend the inferior and ugly examples.

There's a huge amount of potential in these coins and the only reason they have such low value is the widespread belief that they are common so very few collect them. The reality is most of the post-1964 nickels are actually scarcer in nice attractive BU than the '50-D nickel. The clads are even scarcer.

 

I've got significant paper profits doing the same thing. Of course the difference is I chased down the finest examples I could find while saving only the gemmiest coins. Indeed, I didn't stop with just the mint sets and I also chased down nice examples of everything made for circulation including varieties, errors, and coins not appearing in mint sets. I even latched on to a bag of very gemmy 1982-P quarters and have the best 287 of them in my safety deposit boxes where I keep everything. Anyone who thinks that just because a coin exists in mint sets it is common in nice chBU is going to be in for a rude awakening if these coins ever get collected. Try finding a nice choice '69 quarter or a gemmy '82-P made from good dies and you'll see these coins are scarce.

Over the decades most of the mint sets have been cut up and destroyed because there has been solittle interest in them. When the demand materializes someday there won't be mint sets to fill it and they certainly won't sell for pennies any longer.

 

It's been this way since about the mid-'80's. Some of these sets sell at a very steep discount to the coins they contain. There are numerous reasons for this but would be profiteers are well advised to study these markets before cutting up the sets. Many of the coins in the sets can't be sold as BU because they are too ugly or too scratched up. Some are notoriously bad like the '76-P type I dollar. Nearly 50% of these are too poor to sell as BU. The wholesale price is in the $3 range and the Denver is $2 but you can get the whole set for less than $5.

 

Thanks for the responses.

I was thinking of consolidating each denomination in the sets with there own album to make it easy for viewing & access to enjoy instead of taking them out of there boxes everytime but i heard the boxes add value and theres more money in parting them out these will most likely go to a family member in the future say 30 years or so maybe i will keep the boxes and coa separate until them Thanks y'all .

 

I think............that both you and I will be long gone before this ever occurs.

 

I've thought it was imminent for nearly 40 years now so I could be wrong... ...still.

There is something very different now though and that is the demographics, the huge numbers of new collectors, and the extreme attrition that has accumulated in mint sets. Demand has been inching ever higher since 1980 and the number of mint sets (supply) plummeting. The '08 recession brought a lot more supply to market but as these are worked through there aren't many left to replace them.

Yes, it could easily be another five, ten, or even forty years but I have no doubt that it is coming. People just have no concept of how little demand would be required to absorb the entire available supply. We have seen the status quo in moderns for so long we don't appreciate that it is hanging from a thread.

 

You gave me a great idea cpm9ball i can put lens set in album or frame when sharing the history etc .

 

I think we have seen this to an extent with what the very best moderns have started to fetch. With that said everyone seems to assume that if it is still in a set and not graded its middle of the road at best. There could very well be some opportunities here for picking sets with top notch examples of certain things, however for moderns it seems with very very few exceptions for dates the real premium lies in a single premium coin not the set itself.

 

This is another problem with the desirability and value of these sets; people do assume they are picked over and to a degree they are correct. An even more serious problem is that many of the sets are corroded now and this applies to almost all dates but especially those in the bad packaging 1968- 1984 and more especially those in the worst packaging 1968- 1971 and 1974- 1978.

If you go around and order 100 1969 mint sets from 100 mail order sources you'll get an ugly accumulation of picked over sets. Most will have corrosion problems and Gems will be extremely few and far between. This will be very expensive now days as well.

So the experience of searching these sets will reinforce the perception that they are picked over but the reality is different. The reality is that the largest source of these sets on the market remains even today sets that are taken into the local coin shop when a collector dies. These are often the first time the set has been on the market and these sets are usually not picked over at all. Indeed, they tend to run a little nicer than average since many mint set buyers bought five sets and sold all but one or two and these would sometimes be the choicer sets.

There is a perception that mint sets are picked over but the reality is there just isn't that much interest in them and if you talk to your local dealer there's a good chance you can be the first to pick over his sets. Of course now days the dealers know to watch out for the varieties and some will even nab the Gem Ikes but, for the main part, the sets are not picked over but rather they arte just as bad as allthe sets the mint made. Collectors have too high an expectation for these. There weren't any MS-69's made and even in 1969 you'd have to look at thousands of sets to see an MS-67.

Frankly I'm happy to just find a nice gemmy coin once in a while in some of these sets. Sure most '89-D pennies are Gems but you'll look long and hard for an '84-D in Gem. '69 quarters were made awful and half a century certainly hasn't improved them.

 

One of the best bargains in coin collecting today are out of the money slabbed moderns. If I had known in 1972 that I'd be able to buy some of the best moderns for only $20 or so I'd not have bothered to do all the work of chasing them down.

Perhaps I should also mention the reason that most mint sets are not picked over. Since the coins are worth more out of the holders when large groupings of picked over sets come together they are almost always cut open. There's just no mechanism for picked over sets to accumulate on the market.

 

This is not an offer to sell, but I have a whole suitcase full of various mint sets I have been trying to get rid of. If I could get my money out of them they would be gone in a moment. The problem being: You buy them all or you buy nothing. I find that most collectors who save them have little funds and these are within easy reach to obtain. To wait another 40 years, for just the possibility that they would become popular; is not worth my effort.

 

Mint sets are fun. But, like others have said, probably not a great vehicle for future profit. For a while the state quarters series saw a major spike in value, but, like most crazes, that only lasted as long as the craze. Subsequent sets don't seem to have inspired any feeding frenzies. Everything seems to indicate that they won't, but of course one never knows. I buy Mint sets usually as cheap souvenirs for mint visits so I have a few scattered sets from various countries.

I thought I had also heard that sales had trended down for mint and proof sets in general at the US mint for the past decade or so. That could go both ways. If no one wants these sets anymore then their rarity won't matter. It takes more than rarity to sell something - it takes demand. When rarity and demand meet then you have thunder. But just because some of these sets may be "rare" in the future for one reason or another doesn't necessarily mean they will have any value. People have to want to buy them.

Which brings up something that confuses every non-coin collector I know. I show them a Roman coin that's approximately 1,000 years old and in decent shape. Then I show them a 19th century cent in better shape but some 900 years newer. Then I ask them what they think I paid for each one. Everyone, and I mean everyone, says "that Roman coin must have been really really expensive!!" Then I shock them with the prices I actually paid for them. The Roman: $20. The 19th century cent: $150. No one ever understands, but it's fun to watch them try.

We know why, of course. Rome, like the US mint today, produced bajillions of coins and many of them remain very easy to find up to the present moment. Though of course I don't actually know this, but my feeling is that US coins will have similar accessibility well into the future. There are simply billions upon billions of them. Add to that their general lack of precious metal content (assuming it remains non-precious, of course) and things don't look promising for future gains. They are fun, though. So keep having fun.