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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;World Colonial, post: 2470998, member: 78153&quot;]I believe there are multiple reasons for what Paddy54 described.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, like he stated, dealers aren&#039;t going to make an offer for inventory that isn&#039;t going to sell, regardless that price lists or the Red Book assign it a market value which indicates that it is or might be in demand.</p><p><br /></p><p>Second, the traditional collector base for this material has less discretionary income than they used to have, particularly since about 2007 but also going back to at least 1999 which is when median inflation adjusted income peaked, as measured by US government statistics which I presume at least some here believe are understated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Third, for proof sets and modern commemoratives, the mintages vastly exceed the collector base who actually wants it.&nbsp; In writing my first post here, I once again checked both.&nbsp; As late as 2006, proof sets slightly exceeded two million (<b>for clad</b>) the last year posted where I checked, just over 700,000 for 2013.&nbsp; This to me is a combination of both declines in discretionary income and reduced interest.&nbsp; Additionally, these mintages are for FULL sets with additional supply for partials sets.&nbsp; The silver is somewhat less but still too high for the collector base.&nbsp; Commemoratives are a lot lower but there are just too many of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Traditionally, a lot of both have also been bought by non-collectors.&nbsp; In the late 1950&#039;s and early 1960&#039;s, also by speculators which today is also evident with selective commemoratives such as the 2014 Kennedy half and 2016 gold Mercury.&nbsp; Contrary to what any advocates want to believe, even for these &quot;low&quot; mintage coins, there aren&#039;t remotely enough real collectors who want either anywhere near its current price, much less far higher ones.</p><p><br /></p><p>The reason for the latter and generically brings me to my last reason.&nbsp; It should be apparent that regardless of how many collectors collect these coins now, a disproportionate percentage (as in much higher than other actually more popular but maybe equally widely collected coins and series) don&#039;t have a strong affinity for them because there isn&#039;t anything particularly interesting or challenging in collecting it.&nbsp; I can literally go out and buy every single one of them in one day, except maybe in a &quot;70&quot; or when some other arbitrary criteria is applied.</p><p><br /></p><p>The primary challenge in buying these coins is having the money.&nbsp; This is why most longer term collectors don&#039;t buy them except maybe in isolation and why the turnover is higher or much higher than others.</p><p><br /></p><p>Those who buy them frequently lose interest relatively quickly and move on to something else.&nbsp; This is why both are near the bottom of the preference scale which is exactly where they are going to stay.</p><p><br /></p><p>My narrative also substantially applies to a set like Franklin halves, though the collector base has a larger core following which is reflected in the prices of FBL and cameo proofs.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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