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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;World Colonial, post: 2510727, member: 78153&quot;]In the US and a few other countries, it is predominantly an &quot;investment&quot; buying culture which accounts for the higher prices or price level.&nbsp; This should be evident because the correlation between the price level versus income and wealth levels is statistically very weak.&nbsp; &quot;Investment&quot; buying not &quot;real&quot; collecting results in participation by more affluent buyers.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the US, I believe (but cannot prove) that the more recent negative price trends Doug mentions are first, a reduction in speculation (aka, &quot;investment&quot;) in most asset classes.&nbsp; This is for the more expensive coins with the qualifier that the crash after 1989 was a popping bubble. </p><p><br /></p><p>And second for &quot;collector&quot; coins, most Americans are becoming poorer or a lot poorer and have been since at least 1999.&nbsp; I know this statement is very unpopular but I see no reason to believe otherwise for the foreseeable future either.&nbsp; That is, for as long as it will matter to anyone reading my comments now.&nbsp; The economic position of the typical American is going to continue to decline, though as in since 1999, it won&#039;t be without interruption since their will be temporary periods of improvement.</p><p><br /></p><p>The distinction between the United States and most other markets is that the US is a &quot;mass market&quot; due to the size of the buyer base and the scale of financial buying.&nbsp; The &quot;market capitalization&quot; (using the same analogy as a stock market) of US coinage is a huge multiple of any single other country and presumably more than all others combined.&nbsp; So though compared to other asset classes it isn&#039;t worth much, it still takes a large number of buyers to support the price level in the aggregate, even though prices are set at the margin and most coins don&#039;t have many buyers individually.&nbsp; Due to this scale, there is a lot more correlation to economic conditions than practically anywhere else.</p><p><br /></p><p>As to the prices of individual US coins, if you look at them and compare it to their relative merits versus other coins (mostly world coins but also within US), it should be evident that it is disproportionately <b>hyperbole and marketing hype</b>.</p><p><br /></p><p>The last time I checked, there were 91 individual coins in the PCGS &quot;Million Dollar Club&quot;, excluding die varieties.&nbsp; There are also a large multiple worth six figures and an even larger multiple worth five figures, including coins in each category but just in lower grades. </p><p><br /></p><p>Are all or most of these coins really that significant?&nbsp; My answer is that other than the price and that so many US collectors have an inflated opinion of their merits, the answer is no.&nbsp; Most of the time, whatever the significance, it should be apparent that the price is more significant than the supposed merits, the latter which are often (grossly) exaggerated anyway.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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