1970 Read Book

That was all the choices ? What about FINE, EXTRA FINE, GOOD, etc. ?

 

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Yes, of course they had those too. What Larry was trying to say is, they didn't put numbers on them. UNC didn't mean "60", BU didn't mean "63". The words just were the words. They had the basic scale of the circulated grades as well, but those didn't associate with numbers either. F, VF, EF... that was it. There wasn't VF-20, 25, 30, 35 like we have now. It was VF.

 

In those days the average collector was at a big disadvantage. It was tough to know if you were paying a fair price. At the same time it was easy to cherrypick a dealer on varieties. Everything changed with the internet. Collectors and dealers became smarter.

 

A 1907 Ultra High Relief Saint is listed as sold for $18,500 for a "1961 New York sale."

 

I'm not sure prices would be that much lower for many coins, not as big a change as if you had the 1980 Red Book. With gold fixed at $35/oz for both 1970 and 1960, silver rising a bit but not much, you pretty much had numismatic demand driving the prices, not bullion (as would be the case from 1970-1980).

 

One thing I remember as if it was yesterday was in 1964 and 1965. In 1964 silver coins were made and still circulated. There was no clad.

In 1965, it was all clad. Bad money drives good money out of circulation. In a few months silver was obviously disappearing from circulation. I used to get silver dollars in change or at the bank but that stopped.

I went to the local coin shop. It was about 12-14 blocks from the house. I wasn't allowed to do that but I'm now 11 so I did anyway. The first thing I noticed was silver dollars. Morgans and Peace Dollars that I handled last year were now being sold for $3.50 each, regardless.

The ones with better dates were over ten dollars. Silver dimes, quarters, halves of 90% and even a few Nickels were higher than face value. At the time I didn't know why Nickels were higher but they were in the forties. They were obviously war Nickels with silver.

Even the new Kennedy Halves with 40% silver didn't circulate. They were snatched up and tucked away by many people. By 1970, prices had doubled in many cases and other silver coins were even higher than doubling in price.

Yes, I remember it well. My belief was and still is, as I lived through that period as a young impressionable boy, that the demand for these pieces was not tied to the price of silver in the early years of clad coins. It was all demand.