Are there 500 1971 Mint Sets Available?

We're about to find out because there is this much wholesale demand right now. My guess is it will takes weeks and weeks to fulfill this bid.

The '71 is an interesting date because it has had a very high attrition and slightly lower mintage. But perhaps more relevantly all of them are hazed and/or tarnished. Most retailers won't ship such coins so odds are there is this much demand for the coins in them. And this means probably half dollars. These can be restored with a soak in acetone usually but nearly a third of the phillies and 15% of the denvers will not be in chBU after a soak.

I don't think this order will be filled because by the time the market can supply these there will be even more demand. This is likely to push bid prices higher and lead to a two tier market where choice sets are priced much higher than typical sets.

It just might get interesting.

There are very few entities with this level of supply and most such entities are preparing coins for retail so will not sell sets at bid. 75% of these sets are already destroyed and the attrition is actually increasing because the coins need to be stabilized or they'll never be recoverable.

 

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I would think so, the guy on TV is always selling years of mint sets.

 

I'm not suggesting 500 '71 mint sets don't exist. I'm suggesting that the guys on TV who sell 1971 mint sets for about $8 each aren't going to have any sets at all to sell wholesale for $3 or $4 each. The '71 is one of the tougher ones to acquire so when they sell sets there are no '71's left over.

These don't seem to sell especially well but I wager they aren't cutting up many mint sets to sell the parts. Lots and lots of proof sets are cut up but not mint sets and especially not 1971's. They sell so few mint set pieces that they can be accounted for by just the destruction of bad and otherwise unsaleable sets. People don't realize there is no wholesale market for these coins. It looks like there's a market because everything has catalog prices but the real market is not what is apparent. The real market is just a flow of mint sets from original buyers to wholesalers who eventually end up destroying them. Most of the leftovers end up in circulation.

 

There's a market in 1924-D cents. No matter what grade you want you can make a few calls and find rolls of what you need. Higher grades, of course require more effort. Indeed, if you're a buyer you can easily locate the coins and acquire them from dealer stock and eBay one or a few coins at a time. But this simply isn't true for 1971 cents. According to Redbook the 1971 is a common $5 coin in MS-65 or par with the 1968. But where you easily acquire '24-D cents for a fraction of Redbook you virtually can't acquire nice Gem 1968 or '71 cents at all. It's not because they don't exist but because they are very scarce (far scarcer than something like a a F '24-D cent) and there is no demand for them. The few collectors who want just have to keep looking from mint set to mint set. The '71 is scratched up, the '68 has carbon spots, and the '84 has rough surfaces on a bad planchet.

A similar thing exists among mint sets. Buyers have the idea the sets are common since they advertise to buy at very low prices and the sets flood in. There's only a small tendency to get bad sets and most are as "pristine" as they come now days. Nobody really wants the sets or the coins and they end up being sold in parts to the general public, beginning collectors, and used in promotions outside the hobby. These don't so much need '71 mint sets as they need inexpensively acquired coins. Only the collectors need the specific sets.

Over the years this has resulted in a tremendous drawdown and few have noticed there are no longer boxes and cases of mint sets in the back of every coin shop. Most shops just try to keep one or two of each date and even this paltry supply might be stressed a little bit.

There is no market in mint sets either. It's just a flow and would require the entire trickle to which it has tapered for a few weeks to fulfill such a large order. Meanwhile while the demand for the coins in '71 sets is still tiny it has been growing for decades and, no doubt, still is.


Curiously most of the coins in the 1971 mint set are tougher coins in nice chBU. These coins were badly made and are usually heavily scratched. Then there is the fact that none of these coins were well saved in BU rolls which also tended to be poor. Most dates of cents and nickels were put away in substantial numbers but the '71's were far more lightly saved. This results in more pressure on the supply for the date since more are being cut up by collectors. There will also be lower supply because significant quantities of the coins surviving in the sets are too poor to sell as chBU.

 

There are a few exceptions to these general rules. There are entities, for instance, that acquire 1971 mint sets to search for Gems and varieties and it's unlikely they are destroying the rejects. But my guess is they aren't stockpiling them either and rather shipping them out for 20% back of bid rather than stockpiling huge amounts of rejects.

I guess we're going to see.

 

Fascinating take, as always, on a facet of the clad-era coin market. It begs the question "if supply is drying up for a commodity that nearly no one wants, does it really matter?" That's not meant to be snarky, BTW.

I suspect that in the future, maybe 50+ years (?), these may become conditional rarities and more sought after. I hope so, but it won't matter much to anyone reading this today.

 

I beg your pardon @LakeEffect, I'm only these many years old (He is handing up 3 fingers) so I will still be here, I think, if you believe me that is.

 

Who is looking to buy 500 1971 mint sets and where did you get this info?

 

No, of course not.

But it does matter that the demand for specific coins in the 1971 mint sets is growing and some dealer is going to step in and service it. All of the attempts I've seen to date have been a little feeble and half hearted but they are early and they are going to find some of these will move. Many circulating moderns were tough in nice attractive condition when they were issued and all are far tougher now. ...literally orders of magnitude tougher in most instances.

This should manifest as the mint sets drying up first because they are virtually the only source of many if not most modern circulating coinage.

There is the nature of demand to find supply. They are strange attractors in addition to working for one another by bringing things into existence. There were very few individual wheat plants 5,000 years ago. Today there are almost no nice attractive Gems on the market for some dates. A little demand will find supply because the coins still exist.

Perhaps I should just say collectors can be very passionate in looking for what they want. Demand creates supply and this goes several times over in collectibles; anything that exists can come under pressure by collectors. In a real sense high prices result from the highest bid not met no matter how many exist.

 

I found the 1971 coins boring and depressing. With the silver out of the half dollar, the Proof set looked like a sorry mess. I am a Proof set fan. I have a yearly set from 1936 to date, but the 1971 is one of my least years.

As for the mint sets, I remember the coins that were in most of the sets from the 1970s and '80s as junk. The mint filled them with low grade coins that made the word "ugly" see kind.

 

From experience, the TV and online big retailers, minus Littleton, have super low standards. If the P and D cellophane is in the envelope, and it doesn't look like it was dunked in coffee, they'll take it.

I'm sure someone can fulfill it. Bid is so outrageously low on those that I'm sure there are quite a number of players with 100+ quantity. From there, all you need is a few people to fill your entire request.

 

Here's my 1971-P,D uncirculated set! What can I get for it? I'll throw in the 1971-S cent too!

 

1971-S proof silver "brown Ike"

 

1971-S uncirculated silver Ike

 

1971-S proof set.

 

I'll let my heirs think about what to do with them, but while I'm here I will enjoy them.

 

Hey, I got one of those. Bought it in 1985 for $3.95. I don't remember why.

 

I'm sure they wouldn't mind if i say but will just say it's a large well known east coast retailer.

 

The 1971 is the very worst '70's set overall. It has several coins in it that are highly elusive in Gem. The cents were common but now a lot of them can't be cleaned up and the Philly is toughest with the san fran not too far behind. The philly dime is tough. Most of them clean up OK but they're tough in Gem. The'71-D isn't tough in Gem but you can forget the D/D. The philly quarter is scarce in Gem. There are only several thousand nice attractive '71 quarters in any condition. The '71 half is tough but can be found with effort. The Denver is deceptive because even though Gems abound really high end Gems do not because of marking on the shield.

But the "best" thing about the'71 set is so many of the coins will be elusive even in MS-64. If you can't find Gems it's a long way down to chBU.

 

I believe they've lowered their buy standard a little recently but this is just on the basis of the fact they actually buy sets that are always tarnished or hazed. They wouldn't advertise if they weren't buying any. Certainly in the past every coin in every set had to be up to their very high standards. I'm sure they aren't accepting substandard sets.