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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cherd, post: 1469912, member: 24754&quot;]I agree, the highest grade coins&nbsp; probably represent the best investments. But, I kinda look at problem&nbsp; from a prospective that reflects my collecting interests. I tend to not&nbsp; play the MS## game because the primary motivation behind coin collecting&nbsp; gets lost. When you shoot for collecting the highest MS## that can be&nbsp; obtained, then collecting isn&#039;t necessarily about love of the design or historical&nbsp; significance anymore, it is about probability of a coin leaving the mint&nbsp; in a certain condition. The prices of these coins are also not linked&nbsp; to general demand for the coin type, it is based on the same&nbsp; probability, and based on the number in existence at that grade or&nbsp; higher.</p><p><br /></p><p>The ultimate example would be MS## Lincoln cents from the 80&#039;s, 90&#039;s, 00&#039;s selling for thousands of dollars. These prices have nothing to do with supply and demand for the pennies in general, it&#039;s about getting that one penny out of millions that happened to get through minting and delivery in pristine condition. Where&#039;s the historical appeal of a 2002 cent? Where are all of the people itching to fill that 1995 hole in their penny albums? To me, the MS## game is a pursuit for rich registry set builders, and I&#039;ll leave it to them. However, it is this aspect that makes them good investments, right? <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Sorry, it&#039;s the scientist-engineer in me. I&#039;ve been engrained in working on the premise that everything can be calculated if you can properly characterize the correct factors. But you are correct, when dealing with economic conditions, personal preferences of collectors, etc, the randomness may be impossible to represent mathematically.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>You didn&#039;t have anything to do with the weird hysteria surrounding Morgan Dollars did you? If so, then you did a **** of a job! <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie8" alt=":D" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>I agree, prices are based on popularity. But what I am thinking is that maybe popularity can also be influenced by prices. When new collectors enter the hobby, or when established collectors decide to focus on a new series, then the overall coin prices may influence their decision on which series to collect. For instance, take the Seated Liberty example plotted above. A person of average means may decide to go with half dimes simply because they can&#039;t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on each coin. However, as their collection matures and as they become more financially stable, then they will begin to upgrade the general condition of their collection and/or pursue key dates. If this type of thing happened simultaneously for even just a handful of collectors, then prices could be influenced significantly.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is just one possible scenario that I think could be at least partially predicted by data analysis. Like I said, I&#039;m not actually doing this to develop an investment strategy, I&#039;m just interested in exploring the factors that may aid in determining possible trends.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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