Prices for 1877 IHC's seem to have taken a dive lately.......

All you members make cents. Like the feedback.

 

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Can't find how to start a new post. Duh. Can you help Randy

 

Oh my. You are wise

 

I haven't spent more then a buck on a coin. My collection is nothing to talk about. Its just something myself and my grandbabies enjoy. I love coins. I have just received a few Bithday coins from cointalk members and I'm thinking my collection has doubled to about 10. But I'll tell you what. I know where each and everyone has come from. Now thats why collecting is fun for me. Thank you all

 

Yes but not all coins contain silver. Not all coins have bullion value. Yet prices overall are dropping.

 

Great posts from Randy, Trogdor, and a few others in this thread.

As a CFA and CFP with 30+ years of experience in the financial markets, I reiterate: assume ANY coins you buy will go to the face value of the bill or coin...OR...the underlying metal value. It's not likely but this way you will NOT be disappointed.

Any Morgan you buy can fall to the value of the silver in the coin and the same with Saints, which at least have gold backing their value.

Another point on Saints: you can buy common years in MS65 for about 20% over spot bullion gold price, which isn't bad. Gold can go up or down but at least you're not paying a rich premium to the underlying metal value.

In fact, the premium is down from 500-700% in 1989 when MS65 Saints cost about $2,500-3,000 when gold was about $400 an ounce. The SS Central America coins were an even worse investment a few years later.

 

First, I didn't see a price drop on the NGC chart.

Second, if it has fallen, it is simply supply and demand.

 

Precisely...the 100% pure numismatic pieces are MOST vulnerable to premiums dissipating.

 

Check out the volatility in a 1924 Saint from 1979 to the present.

https://www.pcgs.com/pricehistory#/?=9177-65

It's ALL OVER the map and forget about predicting the numismatic value or the bullion value...if you paid a big premium to the underlying bullion value, chances are you lost your shirt except after a huge decline.

 

Lots of good comments here regarding the decline in prices. Thank you, all.

Being a collector of early US coins, as well as ancients, 17th/19th century European and Latin American coins, I can tell you what some of you already know: U.S coins, are, (in my opinion), very if not vastly overpriced. And I say that even though I collect U.S coins which are probably not in the mainstream, and I full well understand the concept of supply and demand.

There are far better values for me as a collector in the so-called 'World Coins' area.
True rarities, with a keen collector following, but with earthly prices.

I have done well with my U.S coins, at least in my opinion. I bought many of them a long time and have been fortunate spotting unrecognised rarities so that my overall balance after 30 years or more of collecting is positive. However, there is no way I would ever spend regular retail prices for U.S coins, the 1893-S Morgan, 1916 dime, 1877 cent, 1909-svdb, encapsulated top grade bust halves, to cite just a few.

Therefore, I am not sorry my 1877 IHC has dropped so much in value - it is probably valued still a bit beyond what it is worth.

 

I was wondering who should be blamed for the inflated prices on US coins....
It's Randy's fault.
Seriously, I think a correction in coin prices has been a long time coming, and although it will take quite some time, I see the trend continuing.

 

I think more and more "collectors" are into a few choice bills and/or coins from various series....not collecting entire series like kids 40 or 50 or 60 years ago.

I collect coins and bills, but look for choice examples for good-looking stuff that has an interesting story behind it (i.e., Saints, Morgans, Hawaii or North Africa bills, etc.).

 

There's a lot of conditioning in the coin market. Some decade or so ago that hype was starting to roll. It flattened out because collectors caught onto it. Adjusted for inflation, I don't see it coming back to where it was.

 

For every point, there is an equal and opposite counterpoint: While US coins have been declining, Russian coins (and several other foreign segments) are currently considered "on fire."

 

As a simple collector, I'm treating it as a buying opportunity. There are things affordable to me now that simply would not have been ~10 years ago, even if I were making a similar income then to what I am now, classic commems among them. I've been holding out on some of the bigger pieces for a while, hoping they'll drop a bit, and I have actually noticed some downward movement in MS63-64 Hawaiians...

Fair enough, but where does that leave dealers? The optimal move for the individual dealer in a falling market seems to be to price things to sell, make less money on each transaction, and make up for it in volume. In other words, keep the metal moving. It seems like that would cause further downward pressure in the market.

Tell me about it! I was absolutely thrilled to get ahold of a Soviet-era mint set from my birth year for $70, when normally they sell individually for $90+! These sets aren't rare, but someone must really want them if they're listed for that much regularly on eBay. Since it's multiple sellers listing them, I'm reasonably sure it's not just etsy levels of market cluelessness driving these listings.

 

Very narrow niche + New Money Wealthy in the home countries of the coins = Rapidly Rising Prices

 

As with financial assets you need to ask....is the decline SECULAR or CYCLICAL ?

A cyclical decline is based on supply/demand short-term factors, the economy, presence of hoards, a couple of collectors loading up or unloading inventory.

A secular decline is based on long-term demographic or other fundamental factors.

Take a look at the chart of the common 1924 Saint-Gaudens I posted above. You had some nice rallies after the prices peaked in 1989-90 but pretty much you had a 15-20 year decline in the price that unless gold goes up to $3,000 an ounce (and maybe more), you will be underwater for multiple decades more.

 

That's a very hard question to answer, as I'm sure you know. Step 1 would be to factor out movement in the metals market by basically subtracting the melt value of the coin. What you'd be left with is the pure numismatic value of the coin. You can then look at what the price guide trends are for, say, a 1924 generic double eagle in whatever grade.

Beyond that, I really don't know how to analyze a collectibles market. Cyclical trends are probably fundamentally driven by how well the economy as a whole does, because one needs disposable income to pursue an expensive collecting hobby. You would also probably want to consider demographic factors of the hobby itself, like the number of collectors in an accumulation vs liquidation phase (how you'd measure that, I don't know -- I'm guessing either a specialized survey or perhaps some source of age information, older collectors being more likely to be in the liquidation phase than younger collectors, perhaps).

It's a tough enough problem that I suspect you could spend a full time job's worth of time on it and still not get very far.

 

I think you answered the question: how much do you value the coin ? It's like art...how much do you value some scribbling and scratches on canvas with paint and oils ? What's the value of the frame, the canvas, and the used paint/oils ?

With quasi-bullion pieces like Saints, you have much less % of numismatic value to worry about.

 

All these U.S. coins that most of you collect....Indian Heads, Morgans, Barbers, Franklins, Standing, Sitting, Kneeling, whatever........they all have either huge absolute or relative premiums relative to their face or bullion value.

Maybe another reason to collect Saints....which can double as your bullion hoard.