My 91yo fil has asked me to dispose of his accumulation of mostly junk silver, the first batch went to my b+m shop at a good price. Now he shows me a Franklin mint "first ladies" set consisting of 40 medals in silver, each slightly more than an oz. There were 2 versions, his being what I saw described as "rare". My question is, is there any collectable market for this stuff or is it just bullion? I see 2 on ebay asking in the $2,500 range which is way over melt. Thanks.
Forgot to mention he also has a bunch of 5,000 grain silver bars with presidents on them, same question. Also, how many oz's in 5,000 grains?
Probably not worth much more than the silver they contain. Franklin Mint likes to advertise many of their products as "rare," which sometimes technically they are, but it's not rarity that determines an item's value, but its rarity proportional to its demand. And while there's probably some collector's demand for these, probably isn't enough to give these much value above their silver melt. A few dollars over at best. Still they are kind of nice, and I wonder if this is how the US Mint got the idea lol... P.S. Keep in mind that just because someone on eBay is asking $2500 for a set of these doesn't mean they'll actually get it. You don't want to look at what people are asking on eBay to figure out the value of an item; you want to look at concluded auctions to see what the item actually sold for. If anyone actually sold these for that price, that's a good measure of consumer demand and can help you determine the value, and what you can realistically actually sell it for.
You have the right idea. Watching Ebay is sometimes the only way to get an idea about any value above bullion.
The vast majority of Franklin Mint products and secondary market transactions are intimately tied to bullion content. They trade typically a few percent less than bullion to a tiny bit above bullion. You would be better off looking at completed ebay auctions where the sale has gone through to get an idea of value vs. what someone is asking for in a BIN.
I was going to post similar to Tom, when it come to franklin mint it is almost always melt or just under melt they carry little premium in the coin world. However I have bought sever FM coins in the past and usualy with a fair bit of premium over melt. In those cases it was simply because "I" really liked the coin (Best example I can give is my 1.4oz .925 1st US satalite medalion. I love the artwork of the obverse, but would have much prefered a reverse that wasn't just "text" about the space program. All in all FM products are generaly not a good investment unless you can buy them under melt value.
