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Message:: [QUOTE="V. Kurt Bellman, post: 2111729, member: 71723"]Here's the thing with popularity winning out vs. rarity - it is the shorter run where that is true. Over a span of a few decades, the popularity of series is "sticky", due to education / indoctrination (which noun you feel more comfortable with reveals a lot) of younger collectors by the graybeards. However, and this is my central thesis, over the LONG run,  especially across generations, popularity is subject to change, but rarity will always be rarity. In other words, lack of supply creates its own demand in the end. If that were NOT true, the "key coin pricing effect", where a slightly rarer date can often sell for significant multiples of a slightly less rare piece, would be impossible to explain economically. So who else believes in my thesis? Well, for starters, David Harper of Numismatic News. Who else believes in the rise of moderns? Start with David Lisot and Charles Morgan of CoinWeek. They spend their full time analyzing the coin business, not blindly doing what they've been doing for 50 years because they've been doing it for 50 years like many coin people do, because they apparently were so traumatized by 1965.[/QUOTE]