The 2027 U.S. Red Book is here!

I'll always enjoy flipping through a physical book more than looking at a webpage. Call me old-fashioned if you must.

I got the 80th edition edition, or whatever it's called, that looks like the old red book (red with gold lettering) even if it is still the size of the 2026 book.

 

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That's the one I have! Place I bought it from was selling it for barely more than the standard edition, so I couldn't pass it up. It still doesn't fit with the older books... it's exactly the size of the 2026 book, but at least it looks the part. I don't know if that 500 copies is true, but well, happy with my purchase!

Oldest book I have is the 2nd edition (found it for $1 at Goodwill!) and would love to try to finish the collection some day. I'm far from complete though... I have 1948, 1963, 1972, 1976.... then every one from 2006-2027.

 

Mine arrived today.

 

Congratulations! I already finished reading mine, so you're a little behind lol. They have added for the first time ever coin roll prices, which was interesting.

 

That is interesting, especially since roll collecting peaked in the early 1960s. Seems like that would have been the time for the Red Book to cover them. I wonder if they believe roll collecting is coming back?

 

Roll speculation might be coming back. I never have viewed roll buying as real collecting. That is especially true if the value going away if you break open a mint sealed roll to look at the coins.

The silliest thing were those little bags of State Quarters which once sold for a fortune, like several hundred dollars. You could not look at the coins because if the bag was opened the value went away.

Were you a coin collector or a bag collector?

 

I wonder how they can put a value on rolls, since "unopened bank roll" is such a prevalent scam on ebay.

 

I noticed a number of changes.

 

I don't have the book, but I'd assume they meant the Mint-issued rolls. For many coins, you can buy a roll straight from the mint.

 

I think people will speculate on anything. Or nothing at all (hi, Bitcoin!)...

 

They have prices in this year's book for the US Mint rolls, but most of the prices were for coin rolls with BU coins filled by dealers or other private sellers.

 

Back in the day (60+ years ago), dealers obtained rolls of Mint State coins for their long term inventory at or near face value. Over the years they sold those coins at the going market price. It’s the source of many of the 20th century BU coins we have today.

Perhaps the most famous example of this were the 1950-D nickels. A couple of dealers got control of a significant part of the mintage. They astutely controlled the distribution of the coins and kept the market price high. A 1950-D nickel retailed for $35 in the mid 1960s. That was like over $350 today. The coin lists for $26 in MS-65 in the current Red Book.

The roll craze too hold with speculators in the early 1960s. It helped launched the Grey Sheet. It was calming down when I started buying coins from dealers in the mid ‘60s.

 

Original rolls of modern coins can be quite rare because people quit saving coins this way in 1965. A lot of original moderm rolls were very very poor coins in the year of issue and now those coins are often tarnished (especially cents).

This market has been getting hotter and hotter for more than a year now and I'm not sure who the buyers are but some of them are dealers paying high prices for rolls so they can retail the coins individually. Singles sales at retail has been a fast growing market since covid.

All this new demand is creating a market that hasn't existed at all since the government squelched it in 1964 because they blamed coin collectors for the coin shortage. Many moderns are scarce in the "chBU" because rolls weren't saved and now the mint sets are almost all gone and mint sets are the primary source of modern rolls.

 

The first mint issued rolls were the 1999 quarters. Most of the coins in these rolls are nice enough to call chBU. Pre-1965 rolls are from bags but most bags in those days contained a mixture of chBU and substandard coins with the ratio of junk : choice : Gem varying between dates and mint marks. In those days mint set coins were made just like the circulation coins but the mint attempted to use choice circulation issues. Modern mint sets were made to higher standards so even though circulation issues could be terrible the mint set coins abound in chBU and Gem.

Original rolls are all highly desirable but some of the pre-65 issues and many of the post-'65 issues will contain all or mostly all poor specimens. If you open a bad roll no one will want it. Don't underestimate the importance of this because some rolls will be almost universally bad like 1984 pennies.

 

I noticed the other day that APMEX had some pre-65 silver in original bank wrapped rolls, for a large premium. I thought about picking one up, but then I realized I don't really play that game.

 

Would someone who has a copy tell us what exactly it has in there about rolls? Is it just the mint-issued ones, which seems like would be a more knowable item, or does it go back to the pre-1965 stuff, which to me seems like a crap shoot as far as what's in there. If the latter, it makes me wonder if they'll start valuing unopened VaultBox stuff.

 

So I guess we have those greedy, plotting dealers to thank for nice 1950-D nickels being cheap and plentiful.

"Thank" - as in, anyone looking to buy now should be grateful, but anyone looking to profit from their "investment" made decades ago is likely a bit sore.

 

Well, I didn't buy one in 1950 (mainly due to not having been born yet) and when I decided I needed one, only cost me $20, so no real complaints here lol. It's not that rare... it's the rarest, intended for circulation, Jefferson nickel, but 2.6 million isn't exactly rare, and so many people saved them that it's easy to find in high condition (there's probably more uncirculated examples than circulated ones!). I have 2 of them, currently, one for my Dansco type set, and one for my Jefferson nickel set.