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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cherd, post: 1469439, member: 24754&quot;]There has been some discussion about coins as investments lately, and everyone has their opinion about whether coins make good investments (typical opinion is that they do not make good investments). But, lets assume that you were going to purchase a coin or coins purely as investments, what would you buy? I&#039;m not asking because I&#039;m interested in actually pursuing the endeavor, it just seems like an interesting mental exercise and opportunity to learn about opinions on the matter. </p><p><br /></p><p>The strategic way of going about it would be to determine which coins are undervalued in the current market. We all know that what ultimately determines a particular coin&#039;s value is supply and demand. Supply can typically be considered fixed with older coins, therefore, fluctuations in coin prices will be due primarily to changes in demand. I haven&#039;t been involved with coin collecting long enough to have a feel for market shifts based on collectability of particular series. Are there attributes of certain series that make them more or less collectable than others? Do you foresee the demand for certain series or coins increasing in future?</p><p><br /></p><p>I have been kicking around ideas about methods for determining which coins are undervalued. There are many factors to consider: Popularity of series, Age, Mintage, Portion that have survived, Number of high grade examples, etc, etc. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the TPG population reports, which would probably contain the most important information. Therefore, I am left with a mintages, price guide values, and a limited general knowledge for making my determinations. I figured that a simple place to start would be to compare coin values to mintages. Mint state values get a little crazy, so I used the AU50 prices listed in the grey sheet. I also just considered the general issue variety and ignored errors and less common varieties. Here&#039;s a plot of price verses mintage for 1800&#039;s half cents and large cents:</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH]184670.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Based purely on mintage, the portions of the lines that trend toward the lower-left are undervalued and toward the upper-right are overvalued. According to this data, Braided Hair half cents are the best buy while Classic Head and Draped Bust large cents are the worst. Of course, this representation ignores a lot of important factors. For instance, large cents are more popular with collectors than half cents. And, maybe a buttload of Braided Hair half cents survived in high grade whereas others did not (Is this the case?). Prices in general seem to nosedive around the 18-teens and 20&#039;s. Does this correlate to a period when people started considering coins as collectables? I suppose that this would increase the number of high grade examples that survived.</p><p><br /></p><p>So how would you guys go about making your determinations? What kind of quantifiable data could be obtained for making a calculated ranking? And/or what is your gut feel for undervalued coins based on personal experience?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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