Reading my books ive been hearing of stories of people cornering certain areas of the coin market. im wondering how hard/easy this would actually be to achieve.taking the 1856 small cent as an example say. This has a mintage of 2000 coins, i reckon someone with a good bit of money could easily corner the market in this key coin.If the slowley started purchasing all available, and continued to do so, removing from the market say 30-40% of them over a few years.The price would then rocket as few would be available at which point the purchaser could start to off load his coins at prices vast to what he bought them at.The price after off loading so many would start to fall a bit of course but never back to the former level, as the people that bought at high level and the people holding them would mostly now be un-willing to sell at a big loss. Im sure there are examples of this happening,maybe even between dealers manipulating the bid/ask price by doing phantom sales between themselves to manipulate the price guides and market. I know through traditional auctions this practice goes on which is known as ringing, where a lot of dealers that frequent a auction house will colude together to not bid against each other to get the goods at substantialy less prices, after which they then hold an auction between themselves with the members of the ring all spliting the diffrence between the sell price between themselves and the buy price of the ring.The uk government prosecuted quite a few dealers that were found to have done this and auction houses are always on the look out for it.Very hard to make a conviction though. Does anyone have any stories of similar in the coin buisness.
Remember in the late 1970's when the Hunt Brothers out of Texas were trying to corner the silver market? They had a good run...then BOOM, silver fell from over $50 per ounce to levels below $10 an ounce. I remember those days because the local pawn shop had full page advertisements that stated, will pay you 2000% face value for pre-1964 dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollars...then 2500%, then 3000%, and up and up! I was a paper boy and through two plus years of collecting money, I saved rolls of common date silver coins (1960 to 1964) really worth nothing until silver started taking off. When the pawn shop ad hit 4000% payoff, I took in my rolls of qaurters and dimes (I didn't see halfs or dollars as I collected money door to door), and cashed out. Wow...they gave me $4 for a dime and $10 for a quarter. I thought I was rich! I bought a brand-new top of the line Schwin bicycle, felt on top of the world, and had extra cash in my pocket. My Dad told I was nuts becuase silver was going higher and it did...but not for long, for soon after that silver market came crashing down. Could it happen again?...maybe, but it would take lots of searching and serious dollars...maybe more so than the actual coins may be worth after they get acquired.
When selling back in I would (speculate) the alarm would be raised rather quickly through on-line affinity clubs and emails.
well if there is going by that coin a mintage of 2000 only how many would there be available in high grades? be lucky to find 100 high grade ones left in the worlld i think.
The coin market is kinda funny in a way - for the coins with the lowest mintage numbers are those least likely collected - in other words not that many collectors are even trying to find examples. This means low demand and that means relatively low prices. That's why the idea of cornering the market doesn't work. There have been plenty who have tried it in the past - never worked.
This topic got me to thinking, and because of a certain person who will go unnamed, I think I'll try and find a nice gold ducat from the Netherlands with the guy with the long-jons. Never know, someday the market just may be cornered. Mind you, I'm only looking for one, as I don't want it said that I collect such things.
I know of a British coin that is currently quickly being cornered by a wealthy collector who is buying up every one he can find, but i'm sworn to secrecy on that one. I myself would fancy buying all the 1693 and 1694 sixpences i could get my hands on.
would be one way of collecting ehhh instead of doing date runs or series just collect one coin of a date. who needs variety when you could have fun watching everyone moaning about where theve all disapeared to.
ok heck why dont we corner the market in 1952 sixers,could do that realy cheaply.just sucking them up everywhere before the coin community figures out whats happened
