Best Buys Under $50

Great thread......Always on the lookout for New Orleans barbers. Mid-twenties mm merc dimes (23s, 24ds, 25ds, 26ds, 27ds) in f-xf can be tough. The 27s is interesteing in that vf-au coins are priced at 1/2 the 27d yet 30K less were minted. Tons of mercs have been and will be melted.

 

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Someone said it - don't invest in coins.

We're seeing a lot of examples - the "stars" of the sleeper series. Yawn.

Treashunt uses 2002 as the basis of comparison. Silver averaged just a little over $4.50/oz that year.

If you had just gone out and bought junk silver in 2002 and resold when it was $18/oz, you would have done much better than almost all of the "sleepers" that are listed here. In addition, you can sell silver ANY time - it's liquid.

And what percentage of those sleeper's increase in price is due to the four-fold increase in price of silver? Remove the "silver factor" and you would have been better off with a bank CD. Profit is the motivation here, right?

And how many of the sleepers were sleeping, are sleeping and will continue to sleep?

I would just hate if beginning collectors read this thread and rather than get a varied and rich collection of coins, end up with rolls of the same coin and glue their noses to the gray sheets every month to see how they're doing.

 

Vess:
The only bad comment is the one not made!

We rarely agree with each other, heck, agreement is generally rarer than a 1913 V-nickel.

so, onward and forward to the next comment.

 

I agree totally. Although I have made several suggestions in those same threads I've tried to temper my suggestions with reason.

As a group coins are horrible long term investments. They do a wonderful job at providing a hedge against inflation. But rarely provide for true gain.

But the fact is ever so often a coin does explode (and sometimes implode). Every one of these explosions though can be traced to an event which causes the explosion.

So if you're going to attempt to "invest" in specific coins and hope to beat indexed averages you have to really do some homework and take on some extra risk as most of these investment coins will end up being just coins.

Anticipating what is likely to happen that will forever change the fundamentals of a coin is the key. This can be done. Sometimes it's not hard to know the event is coming but it could be hard to determine exactly when it's going to occur.

Take the 100 year anniversary of the Lincoln Cent. Everyone knew this was coming. I started picking up high grade early date Lincolns 10 years ago because I knew that at some point in the near future they would be out of reach for me. I noticed the price spike starting to occur roughly 4 years ago. Over the last year high grade examples have become incredibly difficult to find.

So do some brainstorming and think about what outside events are probable to occur and because of these events which coins are more likely to appreciate due to them.

 

It really distresses me when someone posts something like that. I'm sorry if my posts made you feel that way -- that was not, at all, my intent. I apologize.

FWIW, when I disagreed with you, it wasn't to say that your idea was a bad one -- as everyone should collect what THEY like - but rather to suggest there are other, long-time forces at work with the pricing of these sets working against their price appreciation.

Respectfully & sadly submitted...Mike

 

That is a very good argument.

As is this one:

Take care...Mike

 

Hey man, don't worry about it. It wasn't strictly directed at you. It's also a carry over from my $5 gold thread where everybody tries to tell me that a mintage of 44k is a lot, when the 86 Liberty $5's were 10 times that, but cost the same or more right now. But since 44k is such a 'super high mintage' it's not a better or good deal and supposedly everyone's trying to dump them as fast as they can. Ok, whatever. You can't look at everything like it will be going down forever, otherwise, nobody may as well collect any coins at all. I'm surprised some people here do, to be honest with you. Every year more coins come out diluting the market, so technically,this should have a downward affect on everything by popular theory here.

I was trying to go with the topic of this thread. Truth be told, I've only purchased what I like and think is a halfway decent deal. I think most of the time, whatever turns into a great investment takes luck. It's very hard to predict. My only hope is that the stuff I buy at least maintains at or around what I paid for it. One would hope everything would go up with time. Even if it takes 50 to 100 years. I may not be around to enjoy it but maybe my kids will.