Today's Wall Street Journal as an interesting piece titled "The Million-dollar Penny". The article talks about the higher end of collecting as an investment vehicle. Interesting. Let's see if the link will work: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703811604574533732182243424.html
Yet ordinary collectible coins—the nickels, dimes and quarters that are nice but not great—have fallen in value by as much as 30% over the past year, say coin dealers and auction-house executives. I stopped reading that article when I saw the above. Naturally such articles are like the weather reporting people that have little to no idea of what is going on here on Earth. I'd like to take that writter to some coin shows. However, similar to the weather reporters, that writter is making some big money salary regarless of what he says.
I know I'm not seeing 30% lower prices. It might have been helpful if the writer explained a little more what segment of the coin market had fallen that much. Or maybe a source for that statistic. My policy is to never take investment advice from a Journalism major.
This line in particular...... "the company's 20 graders are handing as many as 12,000 coins a day, double the level just after the financial crisis hit last year." Makes me wonder if they are really grading or just running them through...
Maybe they have one of my old management professor as a grader. It was rumored since the 70's when he was coked out , that he flung tests and quiz down a row of stares and would grade them according to the stare the copy fell on. When approach by two students with similar copies and answer but different scores he would simply say ; Welcome to university. He was one of the smuggest , most arrogant jerk ..... Une vrai dose fatale
And the PCGS3000 is down 67% since 1989, and down almost 7% this year. Over the past three years it IS up, by 3%. Over the past 10 years the rate of return has been about 2.5% so it hasn't been keeping up with inflation. Also the MS grading scale didn't really come into use until 1970 so the data from 1970 to 79 is all speculative, and the slabbing didn't come along by PCGS til 1986 so the data from 79 to 86 is also somewhat questionable. So if you look at the PCGS3000 just during the period PCGS has been around and which therefor has the most accurate data, you are just about at break even after 23 years. A 5% per annum ROI. Oh And I didn't see any mention of the 28% capital gains tax you pay on your profit from coins. So the after tax annual rate of return on that set of barber halvess was 4%
