1967 Kennedy half realizes $12,600

30% are destroyed or degraded

Among the survivors;
25% are MS-64 or unattractive for other reasons
40% are MS-65
35% are MS-66
5% are MS-67 or higher

About .5% are cameo or heavy cameo and there's some correlation with grade and degree of cameo.

This is just my experience and the way I grade the coins so your mileage may vary.

In the old days you could find a nice cherry in about 40 sets and a nice attractive coin in about 20 sets.

Now days I think you'd have to look at 40 sets just to find a nice attractive one and 200 to find a cherry.

 

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I'll give you this. SMS material is rather out of my area of speciality. I'm making the argument because they are already supposed to be the finest quality. I also DO at the same time, see where baseball is coming from regarding modern bias. Valid point.

 

They are not proofs. They are SMS coins. There's a difference.

And yes, they are generally high quality.

However, DCAM is *exceptionally* rare on SMS coins.

And there is a huge difference between a 66 and a 69.

I'm not saying Endeavor's coin isn't nice - it is nice. But it is worlds apart from the coin which started this thread. I might think someone is crazy for paying that much for it - but there really is no comparison here.

 

Mint set collectors believe they are proof sets and proof set collectors, mint sets. Nobody at all wanted them.

The mint called them Special Mint Sets and used various techniques to manufacture them. As a rule they are struck a single time by specially prepared dies on specially prepared planchet with extra tonnage. But there was great variation in production techniques and a few might even be true proofs.

 

No further argument.

 

People don't like moderns and more people don't collect SMS than almost anything else. People would be simply amazed to see the strange and wondrous things that come out of SMS's. Some of it is astoundingly beautiful and some is simply ugly but altogether different than what you can get anywhere else.

A lot of classic collectors seem to be offended when a modern brings a high price. I don't have an opinion in all cases but there are lots of rare moderns and what people choose to do with their money has always astounded me.

 

From 6 inches from my face, I can't tell the difference between and MS67 or MS68 Morgan, but the one costs thousands of dollars more than the other. The entire hobby works this way, there are huge price differences based on minute improvements in quality. It isn't limited to the current example in this thread.

And if you think that ground beef is better than prime rib, filet mignon, or any other prime cut of beef, that simply shows your inexperience in that arena. So you've spent your entire young life eating cheeseburgers, whoopdie doo!

 

This was the point that I was trying to make earlier in the thread.

 

Probably even more than that considering a decent number of the better sets have been broken up for grading.

 

I am very well aware of that, and I believe that such a huge increase in price for such a tiny increase in quality is nothing short of silly. But if someone has the money to waste to be comforted at night knowing that they have the “finest known” or a “pop 10/1,” then all the power to them. It’s their money after all. I won’t be any competition.

Don’t get me wrong. ANY MS/PF-69 is a pretty, high-quality coin. But I would never be able to justify a 69 when it costs 1000x a perfectly lovely 66 or 300x a gorgeous 67.

No, my sense of taste is very weak. As such, it is silly for me to pay up for high-quality food when I physically cannot sense an appreciable increase in quality. I just trust others when someone says something tastes better than something else.

It’s like asking an old visually-impaired gentleman to tell the difference between a 66 and 69. He physically can’t, but he’ll trust the TPG that the 69 is indeed better than the 66. And if being able to see the increase in quality is important to him, rather than the fact that a minute increase exists, he would logically go for the 66 over the 69.

And most of the flavor of a cheeseburger comes from the extra that a steak does not have.

 

Do not feed the troll.

 

This is not a 1965, but a 1967 which is the most common date for dcam/cam coinage. PCGS has certified 249 DCAM pieces and NGC 418 UCAM coins. It is collectible and worthy of a premium, but I am inclined to agree there is not enough of a difference to justify the 25,000x premium but to each his own. Is there a world of difference? Perhaps, but it isn't galaxies or universes away.

 

I wouldn't say that baseball is a troll. We may not always agree with his opinions, but he is quite knowledgeable.

 

But what about when you go to sell that steak to someone else a few years down the road?

Oh, wait. Never mind.

 

Or the coin spots in the holder? The guarantees no longer cover spotting IIRC.

 

It isn't what he said but the way he said it.

 

You just proved Physics point.

249 DCAM from PCGS, with 2,045 CAM, and 2,666 that didn't even make cam. So out of the ones people thought were the best to grade about 5 percent got DCAM.


But what do I know, I'm apparently trolling by using actual facts.

 

I guess it depends on your definition of "exceptionally rare" or "rare." Collectible? Yes. Somewhat scarce? Maybe. I still don't think it is remotely close to rare in an absolute sense (other than condition rarity), but we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

Less than 1 percent of a mintage is exceptionally rare. If you want to go by the rarity scale congrats if you can afford to only collect 1804 dollars and the like as basically nothing else is actually rare in that sense.

Then again I'm just apparently trolling so what do I know.

 

Not true. There are many affordable issues with small mintages. If you look to world coinage, there are many, many more. You are conflating expensive with rarity or scarcity. Many rare or scarce coins are expensive, but not all of them.

Many proof 19th century coins have mintages below a 1000, and gold coins like common date proof quarter eagles with mintages under 200 can be had for $3k-$4k for lower graded pieces. I consider that somewhat rare especially with pieces lost through attrition. Some classic commemoratives have smallish mintages and are very affordable. I previously collected Liberty Head proof nickels (not remotely rare), but the ultimate condition rarity availability was a 1906 DCAM gem CAC nickel that was the only DCAM or UCAM certified by either NGC or PCGS in any grade. It fetched a lowly $1,400 or so when it sold if I recall. All of these coins are affordable to anyone with disposable income saving for a short period of time. None of these are anywhere near being as expensive as the 1804 dollar, but I would consider them all at least scarce and proof gold rare.