Are post 1800 World Coin Prices in Decline, Stagnant or Otherwise? A Survey.

Over on the U.S. Coin Discussion Board there is a vibrant conversation from dealers and collectors stating that U.S. Coins prices (mostly post 1850 it seems) are either stagnant or in decline. It appears that the PCGS CAC certification has also come into question. I believe from the survey in a different thread on this Board, PCGS and CAC do not have a substantial following among World Coin collectors.

I have often had a difficult time with price discovery when it comes to World coins despite searching for latest auction results, E-bay, Heritage, acsearch, etc.
What has been your experience?

For reference, I collect Irish, Canadian and Japanese. I find Japanese coins are holding up quite well particularly in the Japanese auctions. For Canadian I have not seen much movement unless the coin is a "trophy". I participate in several Canadian based auctions. As for Irish coins, well, it is a bifurcated. The market for really nice coins comes at a high premium especially from one particular dealer who has the inventory.

Your thoughts, please?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Thank you Doug. Your response is definitely thought provoking. I presented the three collecting categories as merely examples of what I collect. I wonder if the community can provide additional examples and importantly which sources they have used for price discovery.

For example, I use Canadian Coin News Trends for Canadian coins. The publication can at times be misleading. For Japanese coins I use auction results from some of the Japanese coin houses and the annual Japan Numismatic Dealer Association (JNDA) catalog. For Irish coins I use several websites.

Lastly, your comments on how world coin prices have increased by 4x, 5x or even 10x since 2003 intrigues me. The only examples I have observed are Mainland Chinese coins, which I do not collect but watch.

I do visit the New York International Numismatic Convention annually. I am always fascinated by fellow visitors and dealers.

Your comments are appreciated.

 

GD, who has been buying those world coins keeping the bull market alive ? Dealers and auction houses MUST know who the buyers are (they do for art).

 

I don't follow Irish or Canadian coins but Japanese coinage have been too undervalued for a long time. Prices were absurdly high back in the late 1980s till the bubble broke. It is only the last decade where prices are corrected to its appropriate value. I personally don't see the value see dropping much any time soon.

That said I should have bought a koban and Oban when I had the opportunity to do so...

 

World coins are very popular and many with lower mintages are so much more affordable than US coins with similar mintages/survival numbers, etc.

I'm on Instagram and I add a lot of world coin collectors, there are a lot, ranging from beginners with cheap coins all the way up to those that spend quite a lot. Many of these collectors are in Europe or Middle eastern countries.

I collect world crowns and thai coins, thai coins have seen a huge jump in price in the last few years, world crowns are popular and always sell well. If you put crazy asking prices, your coin will sit there forever, however for those priced well or just put on auction, there are always lots and lots of bids.

 

Many thanks for the continued comments. I think we are all learning from each other based on our individual experiences. I look forward to more comments.

 

Great story....got a link to the NN article ? Can you repost it if no link ?

For me, I have enough fish in the sea with U.S. coins so I'm happy swimming in that pool.

Curious..you sold 100% of your U.S. coins ? Even the classic top-of-the-line stuff like Saints ? A global collector would probably include the U.S. among other countries, and the Saint-Gaudens is IMO one of the nicest coins EVER produced.

 

I began a Canadian coin collection about 4 years ago or so, especially large cent, late 1800s to early 1900s. I buy from a number of sellers but most of my purchases are from Canadian sellers. I felt an upward price pressure over the years, which I feel was caused more by exchange rates between the Canadian and US dollars than price inflation. I imagine exchange rates impact world coins generally for US collectors since it tends to involve more non-US sellers.

That said, allowing for exchange rates, prices have remained steady from my experience. I don't see the softness in foreign coins that I see in US coins.

 

My main collection is Austro-Hungarian 1849-Present. I've seen steady increases in price over the better part of the last decade for sure, and I would say the biggest increases in value have been 19th century world coins.

There are still areas where the coins are extremely undervalued, like post-war aluminum for example, where the prices do not increase commensurately for extreme condition rarities; many other such niches as well. Prices have not yet caught up with these coins because their true scarcity is not yet broadly appreciated.

 

GD, you DON'T collect coins at all ? Wow....

But thanks for being a monitor here and contributing your wisdom. All the more gracious of you considering you really don't collect at all anymore if I read your post above correctly.

 

Well, the interwebs certainly made going global on coin collecting a lot more favorable IMO.

I 'restarted' coin collecting in the early 2000s...childhood Whitman cent folders being my main thing as a tween.

Then, as an adult I started looking for bullion, and living overseas wanted a variety to reflect that. From bullion to coins. From Japanese pocket change (literally) to a Japan Dansco Type, and madness since then. And far past Japan. In any case my collection could NEVER have been accomplished without the internet.

The timing certainly fits for the hobby on a world basis getting stronger. There will be bubbles and busts along the way I'm sure. I missed the Japanese bubble, and the JNDA prices have been stagnant. Great coins go for great prices.

That said, I can have a rarity of something (the post war aluminums @Jaelus mentions) with a mintage of a hundred or so. Can be had for a song compared to what a US rarity would go for. In this case I'm thinking of French Territories an example (piefort, essai, aluminum late 1940s).

Will the latter half of the 20th century ever be 'fully valued'? Hard to say. I'm guessing even with the extended market reach of the internet there is still the 'demand' side issue. Fine by me. I can have some very interesting coins for relatively little cost.

 

I think your question is malformed. There is no "world coin market" as such. Each individual country's coins sink or swim on their own, in my experience.

Besides what others have said, I have seen upward pressure in Russian/Soviet coins. India also seems to be getting more interest, increasing prices.

Why is that a surprise? How long has there even been a coin market as such? Maybe 150-200 years? And you'd consider it unusual that there's been no bull market lasting 8-10% of the entire time there's been real market?

 

I think as an outsider to the series that Canadian coins overall have NOT shown big increases in the last 20 years and agree with the comment that only the "trophy" coins have significantly appreciated.
Many other world series have taken flight (upward), even the FM coins are showing upward movement of scarcer issues.

 

Thank you all who have commented so far. I intended to start this thread asking a broad macro question. I has evolved further to examining coin prices tor certain geographic area which is fine as well. Many of you have significantly more experience than I. After reading the posts under U.S. coins, an equally broad area asking a similar question, I thought we could examine the results for world coins based on each respondent's experience.

If I understand the responses so far, the trophy coins as a category continue to do well. Aluminum coins specifically from the WWII years are considered undervalued. No particular country stands out as gaining significant ground over the past ten years nor has any country's mintage suffered price deterioration.

Let me know what you think.

 

Nope. Not as a blanket statement. Gem+ grades only. The coins are plentiful, but most are in very poor condition. The catalogs don't account for grade, so some coins are $1-2 but it may take years to find an MS66.

Aluminum coins in general are underappreciated. Though there were certainly some coins made from aluminum in the very late 19th century and early 20th century, the metal wasn't really used as a mainstream coining metal until around 1940 due to the difficulty of refining the metal. At the time, they were considered new and cheap and people wanted to collect the silver coins they replaced. Decades passed without collectors really caring much about the cheap aluminum issues. Now some of these aluminum coins are going on 70-80 years old, and with a very low number preserved in collections at the time of issue, choice specimens are extremely hard to find.