I read in another post that most believe that Circulated Coins are not valuable because of the fact that they are minted in large numbers. That can't actually be true for all coins, such as the state quarters or Presidential dollars, can it? The reason I ask is, I have had "extras" of all the current Presidential dollars [to date], which I have spent on occasion. Every time I have used them, the cashiers look at them and Always ask... "where did you get these?" as if they are rare. I have never received any in change so, I can understand why they ask. As far as state quarters go, I would think the first 50 were minted in high numbers [I read it was in the neighborhood of 33.7 billion], but the last 6 territorial quarters were not minted in high numbers. Between the D & P mints, there were only 72,800,000 Mariana Island coins minted. Thoughts?
First of all, welcome to CoinTalk! Second of all, those who don't collect, of course, don't understand or pay attention to what is what, so when someone asks what something is or where you got them, you know the reason why. It is correct that most common coins are minted in large numbers, but sometimes, to those little kids who collect the state quarters with their grandparents or other family members, finding a certain coin that completes the collecting is just like a roll searcher finding a Bust Dime in a roll of pennies...
Dollar coins do not circulate to any great extent. So whenever someone (other than a coin collector who knows better) gets one they think the coin is rare because they have not seen many of them. The truth is that huge numbers of the coins were (and are) minted and they will never command much of a premium (except the truly exceptional coins that are not generally found in circulation).
72 million may sound like a lot in comparison to the other mintages, but how many will ever be demanded from collectors? 1 million maybe? That leaves 71 million too many. Be careful with relative mintages, and think about age and absolute numbers. Do you know you can buy a US half dollar with only 10,000 ever made for a few hundred? They are that cheap since not many people collect seated liberty coins by date/mintmark. I am not saying territory quarters put aside BU might not be worth something in 30 years, but there still will be millions of them.
As for those dollar coins, I think it's a regional thing. I never get them where I live, but I recently visited New York City and was getting them left and right in change.
I spent a half dollar today (1995-p) at my local post office. Clerk looked at it and said is this a dollar coin? I should have said yes but I said "flip it over, it's stamped half dollar on the other side". She said she hadn't seen one in many many years. I thought the post office was famous for giving out dollars and halves.
A lot is supply and demand. I have a very rare UK coin - a 1934 "Wreath" Crown (5/-), of which just 932 were minted. Now, it's worth probably over $3,500 ... but US coins with [much] larger mintages in a similar grade (gEF, probably EF58-MS60 in the US grading scale) would go for 10x or more that price! So you can't just go on mintage (it's an indicator, but often nothing more). The Crown is very attractive, though - and I have no intention of selling it any time soon - rather, I want to get the full set (1927 - 36, except for 1935) - I have 4 already, just 5 more to go.
I understand, that was my point about some coins being low mintages but still not worth much in relation to higher mintage coins. Its not just how many are still surviving, but what demand there is for them. Even though the halves I referred to have fewer survivors, there aren't many collectors of them. About the same time the mint made a over 850,000 cents, but those today in the same grade are worth 5 times as much. Supply and demand are the only reasons our little bits of metal are worth anything more than melt value.
I think they're also reasonably available in Boston for use in its subway system. I know that stamp machines tend to vend these coins as change - which is a good supply of them - more so than the banks, who tend to look at you funny if you ask for dollars (or halves, for that matter!).
The price is determined by supply and demand, so in general a low mintage is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a coin to have a premium over face/scrape. Take the 1916 D dime versus the 1927 S quarter, both with mintage around ~ 300,000 and from around the same time period, but they differ in price by an order of magnitude. People say the current coins with large mintages will never have a premium. They may be incorrect, as demand may get large enough, but how many coin collectors would there have to be in order for a modern coin with a mintage of 77 million to have a premium? And if there were ever that many coin collectors, think about how much higher the truly rare coins would be worth. In summary, if you are putting away modern common coins in the hope of getting a premium in the future you would be missing out on much bigger gains on rare coins if the scenario ever played out.
New coins that are MS69 or 70 are well worth saving, because in a few years all you will see is VG or Fine in circulated coins. A collector will pay a premium for the higher graded coin no matter what date.
