I remember when collecting cent rolls was a big thing. Some of the older date rolls still have a nice value.
I've always touted key dates for appreciation. Just be sure what you're buying is really a key date either in terms of mintage rarity or condition rarity.
I’ll jump on the bus. I too been buying and hoarding coins over fifty years. Like @CoinCorgi, I would have no earthly idea if I would make or lose money if I sold……. However, if my dream were to “invest” in a long term venture I would scarf up every 16-D dime, 09–S VDB cent and 55 DDO cent that I could get my hands on…. These coins have an aura or even a legend about them. I think they will always appreciate in value as a result.
If you smoke, quit, in a few months you can buy that key date coin. I quit many years ago using a patch and a fact sheet. Facts are, do the math, I bought a nice guitar.
This topic definitely got me to thinking. I kinda knew how this was going to go, but I decided to play with the numbers anyway just to see the actual outcome. Which is approximate anyway but enlightening for sure. In 1988 I decided I needed to bite the bullet and acquire the 16-D dime necessary for the complete Winged Liberty set I was building at the time. I had so far held all the coins in the set to a floor of F-12 or better (now many upgraded to Unc.) and I committed to stay at that level through all the keys too. I forked out $1200 for an NGC VF-20 1916-D. Made me nervous to pay that much for a tiny little circulated dime. Fast forward to today 37 years later using the PCGS price guide as a relative indicator, the coin is somewhere in the $4000 range. Give or take. Not to shabby eh? No. I found one of those online stock market calculator things (I can't vouch for their accuracy either) and played around with how much money I would have today with an initial investment of $1200 in 1988. If I had bought: Ford Motor Co. = $8,500 Deere & Co = $61,000 Apple = $983,000 Coca Cola = $1.8M Key dates will always appreciate, but only to the level a hobbyist would accept. Don't expect anything else. You want to make money, do it the old fashioned way and invest over the long haul. Make your money work for you. My dime has returned me $75.67 each year I have owned it. Lousy investment. Still glad I pulled the trigger and kept the set at my self imposed quality limit. Rick L.
Makes me think I didn't do to well by saving all of those Lincoln Memorial cents from circulation and stuffing them into a $10 Dansco album. Gosh...very disappointing. Who'd of thunk?
CPI inflation calculator says your $1200 in 1988 is worth $3360 today. You barely beat inflation. If you invested conservatively at 4% you'd have $5200 today. 5 year CD rates in 1988 were over 8%! Coins overall are a bad "investment" in my opinion. It's a hobby, not a place for your nest egg.
Then if you make any money on a few of them you have to pay taxes despite having done so poorly overall and lost to opportunity and inflation. And of course this can apply whether it's pennies or key dates.
At least for my portfolio, I could not acquire enough "key dates" in MS65 and stay diversified. Your investible assets, of course, are your own business. But in general, I agree with most of the other posters. Collect for love, not to try to beat inflation. To illustrate this, consider one of the key date Mercury dimes, a 1921-D in MS65. In 2000, PCGS claimed the retail value was $2850. In 2020, it was only around $3500. It's taken a bit of a jump recently and is now retailing for about $5000, but that's still not enough to keep up with CPI inflation. My MS-64 Lafayette Dollar has done considerably worse. In 2000, it was selling for $2600. Now it's $3250. In retrospect, you can find counterexamples, but the bid-ask spread on collectible or "investment" grade coins is also much higher than on fungible items. Buyer and seller fees combined at auction are often in the 30% range. So paper profits may prove illusionary. The "collectible" coins I made the highest percentage profit on were the initial release of the 5 ounce ATB "hockey pucks." I reserved my sets early and resold them while the hype was at its peak. In one of my eBay listings, I even wrote "I don't think these coins are worth my asking price." The set sold within a half-hour. But that was speculation, not investing.
I have bought stocks, sold stocks without the "new" internet stock advisor, hey, buy and sell your own. Yup, instant millionaire. If you had a choice of Ford or 1916d, hey it's a gamble. There could have been an earthquake in Detroit. Here's a question, why does someone pay 1K or 5K or 20K or even 50K for a single coin.?
Because they've got the money, they want the coin, and they bid more than the other person with money who wanted the coin?
Coins are NOT an investment and even Trophy Coins have had trouble generating more than mid-single digit returns. You simply can't consider this an investment asset class.
Collecting coins under the guise of saving for retirement is irresponsible. Buy coins with discretionary income, and not with your retirement savings.
Well... if you're a reasonably careful buyer, you can expect to get some money back out of your coins, as opposed to money you've spent on travel or entertainment. Just not as much as you spent, most of the time, at least adjusted for inflation. ...assuming you can bring yourself to part with your coins...
As an "investment" of discretionary spending, I can't think of a better ROI than coins (if that's something you enjoy). As long as people are still collecting anyway. I wanted the coin, so someone else will too. Whether I make or lose money, I don't really care - it was discretionary spending. Will I sacrifice travel or entertainment just to save for a coin? No. Parting with them is a big issue. I tend to enjoy a latest purchase for a while and then it goes in the box. Some coins I haven't looked at in many years and often forgot I even have them. It's more the enjoyment of having them, which sometimes seems dumb. When it seems dumb enough, I'll probably sell the ones I've bought and pass down the good ones I inherited.