As so often happens I was looking for other info and this video caught my eye. This was a cool interview you guys might like to watch. It's only 17 minutes. A young collector interviews Jeff Garret, former ANA president and author at the Central States show this year over in Schaumburg,IL. Interesting insights from 45 years of experience.
Interesting and entertaining. Thanks for posting. I got a kick out of him calling them "pennies", thinking of all the purists I've seen on forums criticizing people for calling them that. I had never heard the story of the coin market crashing during a single coin show. That sounds crazy!
There are over 22,000 total S-VDBs that have been graded, just on the PCGS site, with 2,000 @65 and above. I get the popularity angle, but is that scarce? What's the best way to evaluate scarcity; # minted? Wouldn't a proof Indian cent with about 3,000 minted be a better choice for scarcity?
Population is only one part of scarcity. The biggest part is demand. The Lincoln cent is surely the most-collected US coin series, possibly the most-collected series in the world. That empty 1909-S VDB hole is so infamous that even many non-collectors recognize it.
"Scarcity" and therefore price is determined more by the number of people who want one than the number minted or graded.
His comment about the 1980 market melt down was interesting. The trouble was the speculators drove the prices to the moon which forced out most of the collectors. There was a Grey Sheet at the time. Dealers thought they were getting "a deal" if they could buy something for "only" three time "bid." All they ended up doing was trading among themselves. When the merry-go-round stopped, the collectors were out at those price levels, and the market dropped like a stone. The speculators were wiped out in short order. If they had borrowed money to pay for what they had in stock, they went broke very quickly. During that period I collected a set of Two Cent Pieces in EF (Sharp "WE" in the motto) to take care of my collecting "addiction." The speculators didn't want those coins, because they thought all copper coins were going to turn green and any coin that could not be called "Gem Unc." was junk.
Just to follow up on this. In 1980 the “smart guys” told us that there was the "collectors' market" and the "investors' market." The two were said to be separate. The “investors” bought “investment quality coins” while the collectors bought the “boring junk” like “ugly colonials.” The trouble is, who was in the ultimate consumer in the “investors’ market?” If it was wasn’t the collectors, who was it? The answer was “the bigger fools.” When the supply of “bigger fools” ran out at the ridiculous price levels, so did the “investors’ market.”
