Interesting Article - Looking for Good Coin Buys

Quote:





"Your mixing up apples and oranges here. What does finding a roll of 1969 quarters have to do with the value of a 1969 quarter.

A 1969 quarter is worth 25 cents. Who would make a roll of them? And to say the argument agaist the publics view of collecting 1969 quarters is "emotional" is benegth someone as intelligent as you. Clearly you understand that the ENTIRE value of any coin is emotional. And in a sea of nearly a trillion clad quarters, who CARES if one is 1969, 1989, 1999 or minted yesterday."



I was speaking of a BU roll. There are no BU rolls. The 1969 quarters in circulation are now heavily worn and those of us who can actually touch this junk have found that ALL the '69 quarter in circulation have a lot of wear and most still have weak strikes and are even uglier than when they left the mint. There are a few nice, well made coins with nice even wear but finding one of these in better than F condition is quite difficult. One of the things that make it difficult is that it is pretty hard to find a 1969 in change at all!! Many people throw these away and even more are lost over the years. They get recycled in old cars and accidently picked up in vacuum cleaners. While their original mintage over 150,000,000 seemed staggeringly large when they were issued, this merely served to assure they went into circulation and became worn and then lost.

A 1969 quarter from circulation is worth about 25c but this doesn't mean a nice VF is common. It merely means that of the couple hundred surviving that there are even fewer who desire to own one. But a BU '69 quarter is worth about $2 now. If you want a nice choice example it might not cost a lot more but you could spend years searching a dealers stock for it and might cost as much as $5. If you want a gem then you can look through mint sets or buy one already slabbed. Plan to look at about 100 mint sets from many dozens of coin shops or buy a slabbed version for, I believe, fifty to a hundred dollars. If you want a higher grade then good luck. These are being put into collections which might not be for sale for many decades. Finding one available is tough.

I have yet to see a good argument against collecting moderns. All the arguments always come down to name calling and appeals to one's emotions. Certainly a lot of people don't like these coins and I'm the first to understand why. These coins came out in 1965 and right off the coin market crashed. The government stepped into the hobby and just gutted it by removing the silver from coins along with dates, mint marks, mint sets and proof sets. They evened threatened to take the right to collect coins at all. The good silver in circulation disappeared by mid 1969 and it seemed there would never be anything worth collecting again. The collecting base shrank every year from 1965 to 1995 and this is not only indirectly but directly related to the introduction of clad.

What most modern haters don't realize is that it's the modern coins that saved the hobby as well. Even befor the issuance of the states coins the hobby was starting to recover because of the growing base of modern collectors. This was a small market but in 1995 the hobby was in the depths of a recession. Sure, there were high dollar coins still trading strongly but coins of lower value were languishing. You couldn't give away many great collector coins like a VF '24-D cent. The growing modern market lifted the low value classics out of the gutter. Then in '98 the modern market began the boom which is still occurring (and still spreading).

No one knows what the future holds but I'm still predicting that there will be more than a few hundred people who want a coin like a VF '69 quarter. I'm still guessing that this market has great room for growth. I know that these coins are a tremendous joy to collect and there can't be too much more fun than finding coins you need in circulation.

 

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<<What most modern haters don't realize is that it's the modern coins that saved the hobby as well. Even before the issuance of the states coins the hobby was starting to recover because of the growing base of modern collectors.>>

Really, and the Silver Eagles had no impact? Nor does the efforts of the ANA on William Street?


Silver eagles are modern coins and most people consider them such. This also applies to the commemmorative made since 1982 and the other bullion coins and pecial issues. This whole area is growing in popularity and it started in 1995.

Until about 2001 the ANA had an editorial policy which slammed moderns. While they may be an important voice for the promotion of all numismatic areas at the current time, this was hardly true in 1995.