I bought a bunch of coins at my local coin shop a few weeks ago and a lot of them had really high prices written on the 2x2s. My shop didn't add these prices since they were all sold at junk bin prices, so I figure either the previous owner added it or that's what the previous owner paid for them. I feel like a lot of these prices are laughable and I took this picture to illustrate the point, but to make sure I checked the price listing first. Krause and NGC have the price at 50 cents in VF, jumping to $20 in XF, $32 in 60 and $45 in 63. That's an awfully big jump. But I can't imagine anyone paying those kind of numbers for this coin. What do you think?
The early dates of that 2$50 and 5$00 series do command a bit of a premium in high grade, but nowhere near what Krause suggests. Here's a lot of higher end 1963 and 64 2$50s that sold for $4 and change a piece. I feel like it's one of those things where if you were in Portugal, you might be able to get a much better price for them, but here in the US where most people collect by type, there's not as much demand for them.
Portugal is one of those markets where there are a lot of true coin-esseurs (and I say this as a great honour - I mean very well-read, very interested, very 'plugged in' and very competitive collectors), and this, paired with currency / market instability in the 1980s and early 90s let to a lot of wealthy people paying an awful lot for quality coins representing grade scarcities (much like the Italian market). This pushed prices too high, and the bubble burst in the early 2000s, leaving something of an early West Germany syndrome of much too high catalog values that editors seem reluctant to revise down. As @TheGame mentioned, these are better coins in high grade, but nothing like $30 - I used to get $10 or so (ie 33% or cat) when selling retail - at a junk bin price, you did well.
I do love Portuguese coins but in my experience none of them approach the price guide prices. Like there are a bunch of 50 centavos and 1 escudo coins from the late 1920s, 30s and 40s with really high book prices but I struggle to sell them on eBay for more than a few bucks. Side note: I paid a bundle for this one because I really wanted to complete the series and this is the key date. But none of the other key dates approach the price of this.
Lots of series are like this. I find a coin already in the US usually is cheaper than one still in the source country. Its weird, but it works this way so often I simply consider a quirk of the coin market. Great for world coin collectors, not so great for sellers. I bought a group lot once with a coin listed as $800 on the flip. I was curious, assuming someone had looked it up wrong, but no, it was correct. That was the Krause price for it. I think I paid like $110 for it along with a few thousand friends in an Ebay group lot buy. The coin was clearly shown on top of the photo..... Where is it at today? I think in a world coin bag somewhere.
I collected these 4 Portugal coins and put them in my "Coins with Stars" collection... Sorry my flip phone camera takes very bad photos.
That year was minted for use in Azores I think and would explain the low mintage, high value. Always wondered what the story was behind this. Why were they only struck only for Azores and why were they even needed at the time?
I don't know but coins only for the Azores appear time to time in Portuguese history. I have a lot of different coins for there.
