I’ve been doing a little research on ASE’s and have noticed that 1986 generally sells $5 to $10 dollars higher than other generic date ASE’s. There are a handful of years with lower mintages, but sell less than the ‘86. Is it due the fact that it was the 1st year of issue? (Only checking raw ASE’s.)
It was first year of issue, and more widely sold is what I have heard. Fewer large quantities laying around, too many ruined by non-collectors, in someone's pile, etc.
Yes, that's how it works with first year issues of almost every coin I can think of. I don't even pay attention to dates anymore especially with ASE's as they're one ounce of silver and that's the bottom line in my book. If I was buying silver, ASE's is the only silver I would buy for liquidity reasons and to keep things simple. At my age, it works in my favor to keep things as simply as possible!
So what I do is I typically purchase my ASEs from my LCS, because then I get the random date price for the opportunity to pick my own dates. While I believe what Fretboard said, I just can’t help but at least attempt to purchase my bullion in the lowest mintage years or years which command the highest premiums (like on Apmex for example). So I purchase 1997’s, 1986’s, and generally 1988-1998’s. Of course they charge a lofty premium for 1996’s so I skip those. Here’s an interesting tidbit, when I was at my LCS last weekend, they actually mentioned that they have started charging more for 1994 ASE’s than 1996’s. So, I used to buy 1994’s but now they are carrying an additional premium, at least in my local area, so I stack 1997’s.
