I was wondering if any of you are purchasing rolls of Peace/Morgan dollars in nice, AU grades as invesments. I think its a nice double play -silver with a little added numismatic premium. I already invest in silver rounds, bars, junk, etc. Just looking to diversify a little bit more in silver..which I'm very bullish on at the moment. Thanks.
Last week, I bought - 5 rolls of MS61/MS63 Mixed Date (1922-1925) Peace Dollars for $455 per roll and - 2 rolls of MS61/MS63 Mixed Date (1878-1904) Morgan Dollars for $629 per roll The dealer actually let me cherry pick through 6 rolls of Morgans to make 2 rolls to buy (which i thought was nice). Each roll contains about 15.5 oz silver So the melt on each roll is around $372 (at todays spot price). I agree it's kind of an interesting play on silver. However you need to make sure the coins you buy were not harshly cleaned or AU sliders. If you're not careful, the UNC rolls you buy might actually be labeled junk silver when you go to sell them (if they were harshly cleaned) If you are looking for a cheap way to buy silver in a coin that is no longer made ... one interesting play is circulated Walking Liberty Halfs ... i bought some today at only about 3.6% over melt ... circulated Franklin Halfs are even cheaper. You can also take a look at circulated Peace Dollars, Morgan Dollars, Merc Dimes, even Barber Halfs are available in bulk quanties. With these you dont have to worry about grading issues, while still getting your "coin fancy" tickled. Just for comparitive purposes, ASE's are typically sold for around 14% over melt but you get a bit more for them when you sell (i think generally $1 to $1.50 over spot) Here are two sample coins from the Silver Dollar rolls i bought ... sorry about the poor quality of the photos i shot them in kitchen light using my iphone ...
Bullion ASEs have the same potential. One day the Eagle program with end or change and the supply will be fixed, from that moment on, a numismatic angle will come to eagle bullion coins. Most will protest this and say it's nonsense but they are short sighted.
krispy, what is the total mintage of all the ASE's ? (i think it might be approaching the hundreds of millions?) i have learned never to doubt anything happening though. certainly when Morgans and Peace Dollars were being minted people thought they were common! and actually now that i am thinking about it hundreds of millions might be similar to the remaining population of Morgans & Peace??? (no idea about that)
go with the Morgans the peace esp like the 1922 are way too common....rolls are neat but for my collection (and budget) I stick w/ the NGC PCGS MS63-64 range (occasional 65 ) with a nice price range of 40-55$$ and room for improvment (I will admit though to disadvise buying any 1921 Morgan except mabye the D mint bec. they are literally fricken everywhere )
I was curious to look at the total mintages of the dollar coins under discussion ... Morgan Dollars (1878-1904) = 577 million (many melted) Morgan Dollars (1921) = 87 million Peace Dollars (1922, 23, 24, 25) = 104 million Peace Dollars (all others) = 86 million Silver Eagles (1986-2010) = 200 million+ It's interesting the the Silver Eagle total mintage is comparable to the Peace Dollar Mintage; and perhaps the remaining population of Morgans. Although many Morgan and Peace Dollars were heavily circulated, and all the ASE population is unc. The actual remaining population of Morgan Dollars is hard to calculate because of all the melting between 1905 and 1920. But it appears the populations are at least in the same ballpark with ASE's I think this tends to support krispy's point - but probably only if the ASE program ended (as he said). The ASE mintage in 2008 was 20 million, and in 2009 was 30 million (largest single year mintage ever). So the mintages of ASE's are clearly on a steep rise -- and if the US runs the ASE program for another 10 to 20 years -- the total mintage of ASE's could blow the other two (old) dollar mintages out of the water. Interesting.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses, guys. Especially you, Wing. Those are sweet pictures....you took them with an iPhone? Cool.
