I was able to recently obtain a 1969 Redbook and was looking through it and thinking how nice it'd be to go back in time to be able to pick up some nicer dates at a fraction of their cost today. I put 1968 in the thread title since the 69 Redbook was printed in 68. In fact, there's a handwritten notation of 12/68 in the inside cover of this one which I assume is the original purchase date. Here's a few of the incredible prices of some select keys and semi-keys... (with today's value in parenthesis) 1793 Chain Cent -- Fine -- $850 ($23k) 1877 Indian Cent -- VF -- $270 ($1200) 1909sVDB Lincoln -- EF -- $167 ($1000) 1885 V-Nickel -- F -- $95 ($700) 1916d Mercury Dime -- EF -- $300 ($5800) 1916 SLQ -- EF -- $650 ($8700) 1836 Gobrecht $ -- VF -- $900 ($12.5k - 2020 Redbook) 1893s Morgan -- EF -- $525 ($9000) 1929 Half Eagle -- Unc -- $1500 ($31k) 1928 Hawaii Half -- Unc -- $450 ($2000) Granted, two or three or five hundred dollars was a lot more money in 68 than it is now, but if one could have had the foresight to pick up a few of these! Just looking at the Chain Cent, that's a 2600% increase. Quite a return on investment.
Oh course, buying in Today's dollars at 1968 prices always seems like a good deal. However, let's see what else you could have bought: DJIA at 943, today it is 26,156. Wait, there is more! Annual dividend returns are about 2-3%, let's call it 2.5%. Reinvesting these over the last 52 years would have made you about another 17,283 over the years, meaning if you invested 943 your return would have been 43439, a return of 46 times your money, or 4600% increase. The key is to not spend money, but invest money in assets that either kick off an income stream or appreciate, or both. I am not at all saying buying good coins versus wasting money on lobster dinners and vacations is a bad deal, far from it. Just putting it into perspective of OTHER good ideas.
Agreed. I would never buy coins as an investment. There are much better investment vehicles. But if I'd been around in '68 and bought these coins as a collector, they would have been a good investment. But ignoring the investment question, some of these coins were simply "cheaper" in 68. For example, the Chain Cent was $850. I checked several websites and they all agreed that $850 in '68 was the equivalent of approximately $6K today. But the coin today is $23K. So that coin was a fourth of it's cost today in real money. Still, dropping the equivalent of today's $6K on a coin in '68 was not something the average collector could do.
Remember in 1968 minimum wage was about $1.15 an hour. so, that chain cent which looks like a bargain would have taken you 739 hours of work to pay for it. Or: nearly 18 1/2 weeks of pay. @ gross without considering taxes.
I'm not sure whether I'd become aware of coin collecting by then, but it wouldn't have been long after. And I was getting an allowance, too -- as I recall, a quarter a week.
The return on the chain cent is only 7%/year. Good but not spectacular. Stocks would have done much better. Barry Murphy
You mean kids dying in a never ending war? An epidemic of an unknown strain of flu? Riots in the streets after a black man is murdered? Kinda sounds to me like we DID go back to the late 60's.
Not interested in trying on my bell bottoms--and no, they wouldn't fit anyway--but it does make me want to dig out my copy of Easy Rider and rewatch it. On reflection, Easy Rider was 1969 instead of the OP's stated 1968. How about watching Bullitt?
Here’s a little perspective. I was sitting in a college accounting class, and one of the older guys (in his mid 20s, but he seemed older to me since I was 20) commented that one of the local accounting firms was paying “good money” … $9,800.00 a year. My first job in 1971 paid $9,000 a year plus an extra $900 or so for over time. That was a little above the national average. When you take out the taxes, rent and meal money, that did not leave very much for coins. I used to save $100 a month for a "rainy day" and have $50 to $75 a month for coins.
Another thing to consider is that everything was raw then. There were no certified coins. You had to know how to grade coins, and you had to be able to spot counterfeits or work with a dealer who was honest and knew what they were doing. Sometimes you had to pay more than the Red Book prices to get the right coin. I learned those things via "the school of hard knocks." That's why some people think I am such a difficult fellow when it comes to criticizing coins from problems. A few dealers point out problems before you buy something, but not many. When you are trying to sell them something, they will knit pick you to death for problems, real and imaged, to drive down the buying prices.
I think of 1968 in different terms: of turmoil. The assassinations, the war, the civil strife. It was a tough year for America and the world. But it wasn't all bad, as many of you old enough to remember 1968 will attest. I got a baby sister that year (I was a mere ankle-biter myself, so while I have memories of 1968, they're pretty vague). People were happily collecting coins. And the world didn't end, and the country didn't collapse, though there were some cracks. That's how I think of 1968. We've been through tough times before. This too shall pass. (OK, so that's not really a numismatic stream of consciousness, but it is cautiously optimistic for the long term.)
Can’t compare prices in 1968, and now. One could buy a well-equipped car for $3000, and the average price of a house was $15,000 nationwide. Now, the average car costs $32,000, and the average home sells for $226,000. Inflation has changed costs and values across the board.
I wonder what the 1968 or 1969 values are for a 1909-S Indian Head cent. Leno LaBianca, the coin collector who was murdered in 1969, had one, grade unknown.
I was still in graduate school in 1968 and living "high on the hog" because my wife was working and all the money I got from a fellowship and an assistantship was tax free! In 1971, when I got back into coins, I went into a coin shop that had a counter covered with Saints priced at about $70 apiece. If I had only known then what I know now.
According to the 1968 Red Book, the range was $70 to Good to $315 in Unc. In 1969, the numbers were $67.50 to $300. The prices for Indian Cents hit the skids in the late 1960s though the mid 1970s. I know because I lost my shirt on the set I built when I was in high school. The coins in the set ranged from Fine to Mint State. The 1877 was a Fine (today's VF-30) and the 1909-S was an EF. The Unc. price was for a brown or R&B Unc. coin. Mint State grading was not the hairsplitting affair that it is today. It was Brown, R&B, or Red. That was it.
johnmilton, thank you for the information. Leno LaBianca's 1909-S Indian Head cent is still out there.