Rising Ike Prices for quality coins

Would love to see pic's of your collection

 

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To use an old campaign slogan..."I like Ike"...maybe more because of his WP origin and military/presidential history, plus his ID of being on the last wagon-wheel-size circulating, so-called "silver" dollar.

 

Some of us old timers remember him. I was born a year before the end of his first term and vaguely remember him at the end of his Presidency.

 

The only thing I hold against Ike is that he allowed the politicians to dictate the strategy regarding "Market Garden" that allowed that little wimp Monty get his way and cost the lives of many soldiers.

 

which house?

 

That would put price pressue on 1973 mint sets.

 

Building a high grade set of business strike coins has always been tough. Not so tough with the silver and proof issues. With PCGS the jump from 64 to 65 is a giant step. It's not easy to learn how to grade them. The blanks had a lot of chatter marks that took a really strong strike to remove. I would almost bet that most gem quality coins came from mint sets.
It's also important to remember that the business strikes and the silver issues are graded to a different standard. Fun series to collect.
If the prices have gone up, that is good news to me.

 

I've cherry picked thousands of these since 1973 long before anyone else was and it's one date I've never found a really nice example. Even MS-66's are few and far between.

There is a great deal of correlation between the best coins found in mint sets and the populations of high grade Ikes. I can't prove it by the '73 and, ironically, all '73's are mint set.

 

Just a point on the "one of the biggest" ever struck...Ike's are same as Peace, Morgans, Trade and all the way back (save for Gobrecht and very early dollars, which were a bit bigger, plus the ASE's of course), if I recall.

 

Great comment baseball21, I agree. Thanks

 

All primo coins! Well struck Ike's are really beautiful.

 

??? what?

 

The incidence of Gems I've seen in mint sets closely parallels the population reports of the grading companies. Dates with twice as many Gems in sets have twice as many in the pops.

The '73 is the exception to this rule. I have never seen a top notch '73 P or D in a mint set. Even though this date should be correlated since all '73 P and D Ikes come from mint sets, it does not fit well.

I've seen a couple nice '73-P's and a '73-D but they are not as nice as most other dates. This is likely coincidence in part because all very high grade Ikes are scarce so the numbers involved are low. Because the '73 are mint set only it's even possible that other collectors were searching high grades before me but this seems unlikely.

Another factor is that this date was always expensive and Gems are scarcer so I probably searched it less diligently than other dates. In any case I can't show that there are as many Gems in the '73 sets as the pop reports suggest. It's a very tough date in MS-65 and higher.

 

This strongly suggests that most of the high grade coins come from mint sets. There is a weak correlation between the incidence of nice mint set coin and nice circulation issues for moderns so nothing is certain. I have it on good authority, reports, and anecdotal evidence that some of the highest grade Ike do not come from mint sets.

I could go into reasons I believe this exists but suffice to say Gems are where you find them and one of the biggest reasons there are so few moderns is that people didn't set them aside. Even the few that were initially set aside had a tendency to find their way to the bank over the intervening years because they had no value and there was no interest. Coin dealers told heirs to take them to the bank and frequently cut up mint sets to hand out as change or for deposit. Even though billions of coins were minted and millions of mint sets most of the coins are gone now and Gems had little more chance to survive than poorly made banged up junk. The only difference is that there were so very few Gem and so very much junk.

 

There was no 1973's for regular cuirculation?

 

If you had a couple thousand nice choice original sets still in sealed mint packages there's a very good chance you would not have a top notch P or D.

 

Correct.

 

people buy coins at whatever price they see fit to doesn't matter what books, charts or other sites say it boils down to what price range do the buyers have in mind for coins

some have high price ranges, some middle price ranges and some low price ranges so it's a guessing game for sellers to figure out which range will buy and which won't

 

Obviously your implication that demand sets prices in collectibles is exactly correct.

But anyone who thinks you can get an MS-66 1973 P or D Ike for $10 is highly unlikely to ever own one. This was easily doable back in the '70's by merely checking set after set after set until you found one and buying the set for $10. But in those days every dealer had a nice pile of '73 mint sets and every one of them was pristine. Now it's difficult to find these sets, most are picked over, and many of them are tarnished.

A few thousand sets would yield various top notch coins and you could quickly find the sets. For the same thing now you'd need about 10,000 sets and you'll find them a few at a time.

 

what makes this a ms66? ttps://www.ebay.com/itm/1973-Eisenhower-Ike-Dollar-ANACS-MS66/283435804049?hash=item41fe172591:g:f0IAAOSwdzVXirb5