With record high gold right now, if one wanted to buy a pre-33 $5 or $10 gold piece what would you buy? My thought right now is that the bullion price has overcome some of the numismatic premiums on some dates. Once hard to find or semi key now being sold at spot basically? Am I dreaming?
Nobody wants to give up the premiums they paid when they bought the pieces, but nobody's going to get comparable premiums if they're trying to sell right now. So I imagine it comes down to finding a motivated seller. Probably plenty of people who figure "yeah, I paid $700 for this half eagle when melt was $350, but $1100 is still a nice profit." I actually bought a (harshly cleaned) 1911-D half eagle near spot (something less than $400) a number of years back. I shopped it around over the following year or so, even sent it to ICG to get it slabbed as genuine. The best offer I got was about $300 over melt, and I decided it was worth more than that. With that good old hindsight, I should've taken that offer, and put it toward more "junk gold" close to spot. Oh, well.
I'm sure you know you are paying MORE for the coins even though the PREMIUMS have faded or been eliminated. It's a bitter experience assuming gold doesn't go down alot. I'd rather have gold at $1,000 and pay a 100% premium but maybe that's just me. What's scary is that if gold contiunes to rise and hits $7,500 or $10,000 next decade even today's numismatic premium coins could trade like bullion, even though they still command sizeable premiums today. Geez, Details MCMVII High Reliefs could trade like bullion at those levels. Scary times !! And weird !!
Probably because depending on the karat composition it would still be pretty expensive to accumulate and most households are more likely to have silver and junk silver than gold and/or "junk" gold.
