Occasionally when I'm looking at the Krause World Coin catalog, I'll see a value for a coin that just doesn't make any sense. It will have a high mintage and nothing apparently special about it, but will be priced far above the other similar coins. Here's an example: Spain 5 Pesetas. 1962 mintage is 41 million, value in XF is $1. 1963 mintage is 50 million, value in XF is $15! 1964 mintage is 51 million, value in XF is $1. What am I missing here?
Cannot tell you what you or we are missing here, but a Spanish catalog that I have ("El Euro - La Peseta") says basically the same thing: 1962 (mintage 40 million) is €2, 1963 (50m) is €30; 1964 (51m) is €3. These values/prices listed in the book (for EBC, ie. about XF) may have changed; mine is from 2005. But the trend is the same. Maybe quite a few of the 1963 pieces were melted down later? Christian
With modern coins, and all collectibles really, pricing is all about demand. The difference here is that unlike nearly any other collectible the coins weren't saved relative to their mintages. Most of them were barely set aside at all in the year of issue and they'd be much higher if there were substantial demand but the demand just isn't there. What this pricing is generally showing is what was saved and what wasn't. In other words some rolls and singles of the '62 and '64 issues were saved and have hit the market but not the '63. XF's probably exist in more proportion to mintages so demand not being met by uncs is spilling over to XF. I doubt this is the case here but every date doesn't wear at exactly the same rate. There are subtle design and production changes from year to year that can cause one date to to last much longer in a given grade and cause another date to wear away. Take the '84 US quarter for example. This coin has a very low rim so XF's disappeared long begore all the XF's of much older coins did. The '72-D lasted longer than most in nice condition. It appears to this casual observer that almost all the Spanish moderns up to about 1966 went straight into circulation and started wearing away. A few were saved but atypically these were larger denominations rather than the workhorse 1P coins. Very few were set aside so about the only coins that survived in nice shape were coins carried out of the country by tourists. The vast majority of these are unsightly and worn but some survived in their condition at the time they were carried away. The best tend to be AU. In the late '60's a few people in Spain must have started collections or saving the nicest coins from circulation. The new issues after this time are much easier to find unc.
Yep but Franco "Claudillo" who is still dead. Does make an interesting image. Goes to show the "Good Guys" do not always win.
Often, those coins were released when there was a spike in silver value (which led to more being melted down in certain years) or a war. For example, there are several high mintage years of US Philippine coins that are almost impossible to find now.
In this example, the coin is not silver and it was the same design from year to year so I don't see why this one year would be destroyed or damaged. Maybe like someone said they weren't released for some reason. I saw this sort of thing often when I was looking at the prices of German and French coins as well.
