What does everyone think about this- breaking apart proof sets, with fantastic cameos, certifying and selling the coins individually?
Personally, I dont mind "others" breaking up the sets, sooner or later, the numbers will catach up and collectors will realize how many proof sets are still left intact, thus ( hope) raising the prices of intact sets. Now, if you are looking at a soley profit standpoint ( many of us do that occasionally), if a cameo coin is worth 10X the proof set price or whatever cutoff you choose, then by all means, it is a great way to fund other collections. Are you more interestd in profit margin or the prosperity of the set? No wrong answer, it just depends on your goals.
What do we think about it? We think that hundreds if not thousands of collectors are out there scrutinizing proof sets doing exactly that every single day.
I think that the number of intact sets out there is a lot less than what people think, with perhaps over 50% of the issued sets for some dates having been broken up over the years. Of course, it's anyone's guess if having the original mint packaging will someday become valuable, or if it will continue to add no or even negative value to the set. Something else to consider is it's the especially nice sets that are the ones broken up, with the lesser sets left intact as they aren't worth the bother. One day we might discover that all original sets containing high end coins are suddenly really hard to find.
I suspect this is an especially bad problem for the mint sets since there are so many inferior coins in them. About two out of three mint sets have at least one nice coin but if you're looking for a specific gem then you'll usually have to look at forty or fifty sets. This means sets with any nice coins are always in danger of being snatched off the market permanently. With large numbers of the sets already gone, what will be left in twenty years except a few very bland and picked over sets. These sets might not be overly difficult to counterfeit but they will be much more difficult than most people seem to think. The real difficulty will be in find- ing the coins so there may not be a lot of profit in it anyway. Proof sets can be counterfeited as well but it may not be economical since there is simply no substitute for proofs. There probably will be a premium for sets but there will be a larger premium for gems. it might be wiser to try to set aside better sets rather than large numbers of sets. Quality sets will probably get an even larger premium over the quality premium.
