A good question - too bad there is not a good explanation. Short and sweet - it's supply and demand. Other than that there really is no reason.
Doug is right,from what I hear,they abruptly stopped making the proof sets relatively early in the year to start working on the new designs and caught everyone by surprise.The price went up VERY quickly after that.
It doesn't have anything to do with marketing skills - the prices only went up in the secondary market. And it is the collectors themselves who determine prices in the secondary market by continuing to pay more for something than it is worth. If they would just stop - the prices would drop like a rock.
Ive always wondered that too I thought 3,183740 were produced from both clad and silver proof sets. If im wrong(doug) correct me With the popularity of the Statehood program and the recent proof sets , I doubt this one will go down much. It is not just the collectors paying high prices that makes this coin so expensive, It's the dealers charging too much to begin with.!!!
I'm pretty sure that if people stopped buying them the dealers would drop the prices. It cost more money to sit on product than it does to lower the price.
So its what the market will bear, and how its perceived. If its perceived a rare item indeed it will show in the price.
But don't you see - it doesn't matter what the dealers charge, it's what collectors will pay that matters. Say a dealer has 15 sets one week and he sells them all for $49.95. Next week, when he gets 15 more, he ups the price to $59.95. Again he sells them all. So the following week he gets 25 more and offers them for $69.95. But this time he only sells 8 sets. Three weeks later, he's still got 15 sets left. So he drops the price to say $55.00 - he sells 5 more in the following 2 weeks. By now he knows he has overpriced the market - he drops back to $49.95 and sells them all. That's how it works - sooner or later people simply refuse to pay anymore and the price drops. Some people never figure it out - but dealers don't control the market - collectors do. Because the collectors are the ones with the money - they are the ones in control. All ya have to do is say no and be patient.
2001 dollar it does not matter if it was a key date or rare one. sold out or not. popular demanded or beautiful designed. low mintage or something else. the price jump in folds because of some group of insiders or coin dealers hoard that particular coin. and declare it is a key date, etc. let me give you an example. during 1992. the white house commems was sold out. it so happened that almost all dealers doen't have the uncirculated version. so they push the 1991 u.s.o. up to challenge the white house coin. besides that, they played the white house proof instead. the coin market is exactly the same with stock market. only big brokers and rich people control them. and we are only based on luck with them,
