Featured Is the Coin Market Softening??!!

I have been looking at sales prices achieved over the years and 2014 appears to be a good year for sellers, especially for run-of-the-mill gold coins because of the high price of the base metal. But although the base metals have been fairly stable I recent times, I find that I am able to pick up some fairly desirable coins at 20-30% less than in 2016-7. In exceptional cases, the price of very rare or high grade coins has appreciated, but this represents a small minority IMHO.

The three coins below are a glaring example. They are in no way sloppy examples of their era, I think. However, I placed advance bids because of the time difference in my country of residence and actually won 3 out of 5 coins, in my sleep, at 30-40% less than estimates and at least 20% less than what I paid for another MS63 Seljuqs of Rum AV dinar less than 6 months ago. A fluke or a disturbing trend??

Was it my lucky day or is it because of a general feeling of nervousness throughout the globe!! If the trends and strategies of collectors were changing, it cannot apply to such a vast population of collectors in such a short period of time. Since I don't intend to sell them in the short or medium term, the only comfort I can take from this is that I'm adding to my collection for less money .

Russia 1879 2 Kopeck MS64RB





Russia 1879 2 Kopeck MS64BN





Islamic Dynasties, Seljuqs of Rum (The Three Brothers) 1249-59 AV Dinar MS63....not bad calligraphy for a 750+ year old coin, I thought

 

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yes.. at this point I cant reason, I 'm packing up all my silver and gold for a better day...

 

If you read the David Lawrence website there is mention of the coin market typically slowing down for this time of year.

 

On the US side, we’ve seen a definite decrease in the prices for Peace dollars.

 

There was an article I read last week. Cannot remember whether it was in NN, WCN or Numismatist. But it said that prices were lower recently.

 

So everyone should sell their world coins and buy US coins!

Maybe we need a WUR (world to US ratio) corresponding to the GSR.

 

But that is not surprising. US coins have been hugely overpriced. Double Eagles, Morgans, etc can cost $$$$$ even though the population in high grades runs into hundreds if not thousands whereas a rare business strike or proof sovereign with a handful of known examples will cost perhaps 20-25,000.

The point I was trying to make in the OP is that in the case of the above coins, none of which are US coins, the US buyers seem to have deserted the auction.....perhaps a sign of losses on the Dow.

Bad for the sellers but good for me!

 

A lot of world coins are hit or miss in an auction format unless it's an elite example, which in a lot of ways is the same as the US market.

 

I’ve observed for the last 2-3 years that coins that are not the upper end of their type (not year) for world coins have been quite soft. For slabs, that includes anything that is 2 or more grades below the top grade given for the type.

My opinion is that two main reasons are the lower tendency of younger people to accumulate (it must be special or else it’s not worth having) and also the fall of eBay as a coin source. Slabs are primarily a US thing and eBay was a huge portal for trading mid grade coins under reasonably priced auctions. True auctions are probably now 1/3rd of what they used to be in ten years ago so buyers have moved away.

The upper end though is still quite strong. It is very similar to the US coin market...

 

Buyers moved away because so many sellers moved away. Has nothing to do with auctions. Many buyers sold as well and so many sellers were chased off a lot of material dried up which made a lot of buyers stop checking.

 

So just for giggles where do you see the US coin market going?

 

I have been tracking the 34 s in mint state for years now and I see it gaining almost every year. Maybe some weakness in common year mint state coins but I haven’t been tracking them as close.

 

Case in point.....I bid on this half guinea a couple of days ago and forgot about it....was shocked to hear I had won it. Yes its beat up but its still 4.1 grams off 22k gold and the bullion price is about $160 or 115pds. I paid 15% below melt value....ridiculous right!!

Heritage sold an ex-jewellery coin in very poor condition for $276 way back in 2010. Some things don't make sense.

 

I think the way to go is concentrate on either very desirable/popular key date coins in the area/country one is interested in or alternatively go for really high grades. The serious collections have to belong to wealthy individuals and they will pay the extra buck(s) for the best, the biggest and the brightest. They are fairly immune to recessions and downturns.

Unless of course, one collects just for fun

 

Thanks for your opinion. I went to my local club show this weekend and spent some time with some of the dealers that are not from my area and some of the older ones who lived through the eighties as a dealer. Many of them compared the market to that of the eighties and think that we are at bottom or close to it. They too thought we’d be side was for awhile with a return to a bull market. Two of the five that I spoke to mentioned similar issues with TPG’s one of which had no slabbed coins to sell and they thought that the issues with the TPGs might make the so called bottom last awhile.

 

World crowns, high end, have become out of reach in European auctions. I see prices double or triple in some cases.

 

The regular news hasn't mentioned this hardly at all. I do see some references to this in that the ANA Summer Meeting [2018] is featuring a class on helping US coin dealers deal with tuff times. Also I think it was Jim Bisognani recently wrote that there were decent prices for proof Barber half dollars compared to 15 years ago.

However, it seems to me that decent US stuff has done nothing but go up strongly.

I collect foreign coins of certain countries as well as some ancients, but once in a while I throw a bid out for interesting US pieces. I only got one major US in the past 15+ years and that was an odd-ball. I haven't seen any weakening of the prices for nice US material at all. My collection is probably 95% Certain World + Ancients & 5% USA.

One area of interest in which I never was able to get anything was in Liberty Seated dollars. I wanted to buy a nice early Seated dollar in non-fugly mint state and avoid the common bag years of 1859-O and 1860-O. I recall one dealer showing me a nice unc semi-PL dollar of 1844 priced at $5,000. I didn't know at the time that this was better date! It wasn't slabbed as this was just around the time that slabbing became common w/ US. Unfortunately I bought a beautiful slabbed 1842 PCGS/NGC-63 half dollar at the same show but passed on the dollar.

The 1844 dollar appear to be visually identical [from memory albeit] to a semi PL ms-63 which sold on Heritage for $14,000 in '05. There is one 64 which brought $41K in 2013. Current price for a PCGS-63+ is $17K on the PCGS site. Thus not only have US coins not gone down at all, but prices are much higher than what they were 20 years ago. Granted circulated 1922 Peace dollars may not have moved much but all the better US coins have.