Finn, I stand corrected.....even though coins had taken big hits by 1990....it was only the 1st leg down. As with most assets in decline, it took a few years and more legs down to bottom out with much bigger declines. Check these out..... From My Media Resources: An 1878-S Morgan (common date but not sure of grade) sold for $34,000 in early 1990. Even if MS-68, that price is super-high. I have an MS-67 and I know it cost about $700 a few years ago. By the Spring of 1993, we had seen these collapses: In May 1989 Bluesheet assigned a value of $555 to an 1880-S Morgan silver dollar certified as Mint State-65 by NGC. May 1993 that same coin is valued at only about $75. In May 1989 Bluesheet value for a no-motto Liberty Seated half dollar graded MS-66 by PCGS was a whopping $39,000. 4 years later.....only about one-third that amount. In May 1989 Bluesheet assigned a value of $4,060 to a Saint-Gaudens double eagle graded MS-65 by NGC. Today, its value is about $1,200. Let’s first consider the case of the 1880-S Morgan. The price declines of common-date Morgan dollars have been every bit as dramatic for MS-66 and MS-67 specimens as they have for MS-65 pieces. In MS-66, the price has plunged from $1,400 to $200, and in MS-67 the drop has been from $3,950 to $680.
You're right. I misread it and replaced "GSA" with graded/certified. Price declines for gradeds from 1989-93 were huge, though.
I had a B&M shop then and tried to convince collectors/investors that $500 for a common date Morgan Dollar in MS65 was way overpriced. But they thought they were going to go up more. Couldn’t get them to get a 63 or 64 Saint for about the same price for the world.
In May 1989 Bluesheet assigned a value of $4,060 to a Saint-Gaudens double eagle graded MS-65 by NGC. Today, its value is about $1,200. I buy every Saint for 1.200 Bucks happily.
I think the price of gold was about $400 back then. So you were actually paying a rich premium as prices were "sticky" to the downside. With gold at the same price or a bit lower, you could buy Saints alot cheaper in 1998-2000 during the Tech Bubble.
@coinfreak according to Rusty Goe (a coin dealer and expert on Carson City issues) the 1885-CC in MS-65 (by any service) appreciated in value at 9.8% per year between 1997 and 2007; so extrapolating that to today, and accounting for the current market trends, I expect that you could see a 10 to 12 percent per year increase for NGC or PCGS GSA Graded Coins.
The problem is that, as GDJMSP and other vets here note, coins are so volatile that you can have 10-20% annual appreciation for a decade followed by a crash and years of stagnation. When measuring asset returns in financial markets....we use rolling time periods to eliminate timing bias. Starting the 1885-CC return calculation in 1997 and ending in 2007 definitely skews things.
Since 2007 ? Or going forward ? I think extrapolating any price increases for any asset class is very speculative...for coins, even more so.