Modern Commemorative Silver $1 Proofs, things I THINK I have learned, but please set me straight...

It wasn't until after then that moderns started getting graded in the quantity they are today, back then most people thought they were a waste of time to grade which clearly some still do. Few is any monster boxes were going to the TPGs, collectors weren't searching for submission examples like they are now, large purchases weren't going right to the TPGs ect. Of course there weren't any 70s before 64 no one was looking for them or sending them in, even with all the attention now there are only a handful

 

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BTW, people are talking about MS70's, how about PR70?

 

PR 70s for the pre-64, the rest can kind of be either but the vast vast vast majority of MS 70 are NCLT things like commemoratives and ASEs. PCGS only has 19 MS 70s in the entire Lincoln/Jefferson/Roosevelt/Washington run and they are all 2013 Quarters. The vast majority of those series don't even have a 69 and many barely have a 68 if they even have one

 

Some folks submit recently minted commemoratives and bullion coins for grading for reasons other than potential profit:

a. Curiosity as to what grade the experts will assign.

b. Slabs offer better protection than most mint packaging.

c. Slabs provide packaging with uniform geometry which makes storage and handling easier.

d. They like the look of slabs, especially those with special labels.

e. Get high quality pics for little extra cost.

f. Easier to compare coins with fellow collectors.

g. Easier to get interest of non-collectors in coin in a slab than a raw coin. I've noticed that if I hand a non-collector a raw coin they ask few or no questions and hand it back. If I hand them a coin in a slab, they show more interest and ask more questions.

h. Confirm a variety.

i. Registry.

j. Belief that the grade of the coin will have a fixed minimum forever.

Cal

 

Doug, I agree that profit is the main motive in most cases, especially if it's based on number of coins submitted versus number of submitters. Some dealers send in massive numbers of coins because they get good rates from the grading services. I've also heard that some dealers negotiate early deliveries of new issues from various mints so they can get them into slabs first and sell at a premium.

Cal

 

It was a miscommunication between us. I was referring to coins dated prior to 64 for the grades. What I was saying that for much of the existence of the TPGs the vast majority of the market and collectors viewed more modern dated coins as not worth being graded. It wasn't until sometime in the 2000s when more recently dated coins started being submitted more by dealers and collectors started looking for higher graded examples to submit. Given that it's logical to me that 70s would go up and a few dated prior to 64 would appear when before they would have never been submitted.

 

Only if you went on a coin by coin basis. In terms of people you can count the number of dealers on your fingers that are responsible for putting the majority of ASEs/Commems/Ultra Modern Proofs into the market. It's just to hard/not worth it for most people to compete with their buying power and their grading rates.

That's very rare for a series to do that well though the EU set this year is trying it's best too. Almost always when you see numbers like that it's just because they had 70s as a minimum grade on the submission.

 

I think the Registry Set phenomenon deserves more credit for the increase in numbers of 70-'perfect'-graded coins that it has perhaps gotten. As collectors increasingly list their individual coin holdings, at least at PCGS it encourages them to start new sets by showing all the different collections those pieces fit into. Start a new set, voilà, all of a sudden you are competing with 68 others building the same set. If you want The Finest Set, all of a sudden you need 70s (or 67s or 68s or whatever for many of the older sets). Prices zoom up for those pieces -- temporarily.

Then, in come the crackout artists and the modern coin dealers who make it their business to upgrade coins or to create more of a certain issue in top grades. All of a sudden, a coin in top grade that was Pop 5 is now Pop 15, or 25. And guess what happens? Prices slump.

This is a totally normal supply-and-demand cycle that happens in numismatics. This has happened to me personally back when I was doing a top-grade Registry Set of Kennedy halves. It is true, however, that older coins that are rare will remain rare. They aren't making many upgrades on 18th century gold, not near to the extent of modern issues.

Kind regards,

George

 

This thead is posted in Coin Chat so I would like to chime in a little...

Have you considered ancient coins? It's something new to learn, you get to touch them, and they have super cool themes. Since you like silver, I'm going to use the coin below to illustrate my point:


The above silver coin is called a denarius, slightly larger than a U.S. dime at 19mm, and it was minted 116-115 BC. This coin was minted to commemorate the heroic deeds of Marcus Sergius, who we see on the the reverse holding a severed head. I'm going to let Roman historian Pliny explain why this guy is cool:

Nobody - at least in my opinion - can rightly rank any man above Marcus Sergius, although his great-grandson Catiline shames his name. In his second campaign Sergius lost his right hand. In two campaigns he was wounded twenty-three times, with the result that he had no use in either hand or either foot: only his spirit remained intact. Although disabled, Sergius served in many subsequent campaigns. He was twice captured by Hannibal - no ordinary foe- from whom twice he escaped, although kept in chains and shackles every day for twenty months. He fought four times with only his left hand, while two horses he was riding were stabbed beneath him.

He had a right hand made of iron for him and, going into battle with this bound to his arm, raised the siege of Cremona, saved Placentia and captured twelve enemy camps in Gaul - all of which exploits were confirmed by the speech he made as praetor when his colleagues tried to debar him as infirm from the sacrifices. What piles of wreaths he would have amassed in the face of a different enemy!

Natural History, Book 7 Chapter 28

Maybe ancient Greece might have something that interest you more?




There are some threads going on right now in the ancient section for what kinds of coins you can expect for different amounts, should you be interested.

 

Ha. Silver Willie doesn't gamble.

I'm really not mostly concerned about MAKING money here, actually. What I AM concerned about is just buying the holder and the grade over the coin itself. Kinda like whether you prefer seeing animals in the wild, in a natural habitat, or in a zoo, all caged up.

As an example, I just completed an MS65 War Nickel Collection, and in doing so, I got rid of the PCGS dates/mint marks because the holders clashed aesthetically. Now, I have a nice set of NGC coins, all in their precious little school uniforms, all in a row. It's like when we were forced to buy gym shorts from a local dry goods store that had the school district logo on them, and you'd get a lower grade in GYM if you wore cutoffs or other non complying shorts.

I had a gorgeous BU 1945-S, raw, but I wasn't going to spend basically what it was worth to encase it like a fly in amber, so I bought an NGC holdered one.

We are becoming Sneetches...

Thanks for making me think,

 

I ALMOST bought a Cassie McFarland autograph slab because I think she's cute, and I like her curves even more than the coin.

 

In not to many years I'll be a 70 and definitely not MS; maybe BS.

 

Actually, I AM talking mostly about proofs. This all started with the bluebox fuzzy clasp close display case US MINT paper COA $1 Silver Dollar Commemoratives.

 

If I am not mistaken, high grading proofs are more common than high grading commercial strikes because of the care taken in producing the proof coins.

 

I took the lower grade, didn't see any sense in paying the extra money especially since I already had perfectly good shorts and had no need to buy more.

 

I forgot all about those times and having to wear school directed gym clothes. Half the time the jocks didn't have to dress or participate in class on game days. Back then PE factored in ones GPA. Even though I had perfect attendance all I could normally get was a C which was my lowest grades in all classes. I was tall and very uncoordinated at that age and got penalized for that. That said, what does that have to do with coin collecting

 

Lots of foolish things figured into GPA, most noticeably homework. I gave up on homework in the fifth grade, it was worthless busy work. I also stopped class participation (another GPA hit). I just took the tests (all A's on those). I considered public school a waste of time. Except for the more advanced math and my chemistry classes, the public school presented no new material after about the fourth grade. The last 8 years was nothing but repetition of previous material. (I was stuck in a lousy school system and it just got worse after the 8th grade when court ordered busing resulted in the entire budget not earmarked for salaries went to fuel for the buses. No equipment, no supplies, no books. At that point all pretense of education went out the window.)