sell my 1970 russian kopeks

here what i have for sale :

1970 - 5 Kopeks PCGS MS-65
1970 - 20 Kopeks PCGS MS-65
1970 - 50 Kopeks PCGS MS ENV. DAMAGE
1970 - 15 Kopeks - Sold for $550
these are key dates for USSR coins
EXTREMELY hard to find in MS Condition ! View attachment 285516 View attachment 285516 View attachment 285517 View attachment 285516 View attachment 285517
PayPal Only !

 

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All of them are tough coins. I've got all of the coins except the 1970 15 kopek which I dearly regret for not obtaining.

 

good luck finding one ! how much r u willing to spend ?

 

I have no idea to be honest - I suspect the 1970 15 kopek to be priced higher than ever before. I don't think I'll get it any less than 500 dollars given how insane the prices just keep shooting up and up. 5 years ago a 1970 mint set was on sale for 500 dollars and I thought it was crazy expensive. Even a 1996 mint set is commanding such price at this point of time.

I've just obtained the last 50 kopek coin required for my collection which is suprisingly not 1970 or 1971. It's 1975!

 

Most collectors still don't realize what's going on. In 2007 the '70 mint set listed for $15 and you'd have been lucky to fet that much. In '07 I passed on a 1973 Indian proof set for $15 because it lacked the box.

These prices are exploding and Krause is not keeping up with them.

 

I kinda disagree cladking. Collectors finally have a good idea what to pay at least with Russian mint sets. With the economy going pretty bad, desperate sellers sell what they got and people with the money pay premium prices for mint sets. Krause / catalog value is only a guide.

I personally don't see how prices can go up 5 - 20 fold (or more) from today within the next 5 - 10 years unlike the past 5 years. There's always a possiblity but we'll never know. At this point of time, a 1970 mint set was last sold at 1600 USD. Could go up by another few hundred but we'll see if it ever hits the 5000 USD mark. A lot of money even with 1000 USD to be honest.

 

I'm curious why these years are so valuable?

 

There's just too much coins that floated around since 1967 - a lot of commemorative coins were struck. Metals price rose in the late 1960s and I'm sure even the Soviet Union would have felt a bit of crunch back then. As there was a lot of coins circulating, there wouldn't have been a need to strike coins unless needed. Mintage of larger denomination 15 kopek onwards have been rather minimal until 1975 / 1976 when a lot more coins were struck for all denominations.

A lot of coins in particular 15 kopek onwards struck in between 1965 - 1976 are getting difficult to find (excluding 1967 commemorative coins). Bear in mind - that was a fair bit of money back then.

 

If the OP is selling these, shouldn't it go in B/S/T?

 

I'm really talking about moderns in general and should have made the point better. The Russian market has been stabilizing at these new levels but there are rare moderns from all over the world now being sought by collectors for the very first time. I don't know where things will end up but collectors have ignored almost all the moderns so supply is very spotty. Where are you going to buy something like a Brunei 1982 10S? There aren't exchanges to handle these coins and if you triesd to start one you'd find that, as a rule, the coins won't be available at any price.

The main reason that the '70 15k is so scarce is most probably that they weren't saved. Russians hated moderns in general and Soviet coins specifically. There simply weren't coins being saved other than the few that got saved inadvertantly through falling into the woodwork or bing taken home by visitors. I'd guess they sold three or four thousand mint sts but the vast majority were sold in the US where there was no interest. Dealers cut up sets like this and tossed them in the junk box. The attrition was high on the sets and it was high on the coins in the junk box. If they didn't sell in the first couple months they'd be worn to AU and if they did sell they might be used by children as play money.

The middle class all over the world is expanding and a very few of these people want the coins they grew up with and they can't find them. This pushes the price far higher until the demand is satisfied. Sure in the short run it's possible prices will actually retreat but the fact is that these coins are so scarce in many cases that any significant demand can not only maintain current prices but push them much higher. This isn't to say one should buy or sell any specific coin (well do pick up the Brunei coin when you see it at catalog ), merely that supply on many coins is severely limited and attrition is still high. Coins that list at low prices get little attention and can end up in scrap buckets or almost anywhere.

 

I've seen countless mint sets cut up and put in junk boxes. This even includes things like older Soviet mint sets and other low mintage sets of rare coins. I always used to go through these boxes and found hundreds and hundreds of scarce coins from sets though they often were only sliders by the time I found them.

People just don't appreciate the attrition on all moderns. I've seen things like pallets full of Lebanese nickel coins headed for scrap because they were worth more as scrap than coin. Now days when coins are no longer used they are gathered up and melted. In the old days people kept the old coins but now they turn them in.

The modern economy is consumer driven and consumers consume even coin. Many modern coins are even made of highly perishable metal like aluminum or zinc. When you add in the facts that they aren't collected it simply means they no longer exist; especially in pristine condition. Look at the 50k above. It's still a nice coin but it is not pristine.

 

i seen one raw coin recently sold on ebay for 325$

 

Is there something about what they were made out of that makes them liable to getting spots or tarnishing? A lot of the Soviet coins I find in dealers' value bins have unsightly spots or tarnishing on them, to the point that I won't buy them (and I'm not very picky.)

 

This is quite common and affects about 40% of them pretty severely. It could be the zinc in the copper nickel but all of their modern alloys are prone to this. I stabilize them now days but don't have enough information yet to know if it helps.

 

also , many USSR era coins were remelted in 90s

 

I think you also need to remember that in the early Soviet era, coin collecting was frowned even in the late 1970s. It was pretty much a "burgeoisie" activity and therefore it was uncommon to have collectors to start off with. Views changed in the 80s especially the Olympics where commemorative coins were struck more regularly and people would have a bit more savings.

The Soviet silver olympic set much less the gold and platinum coins were generally not available to the public as far as I can understand. You might be able to obtain a silver coin - note, one, not a set at a price worth more than today's money. I think I worked out a while ago that if you included inflation, a 10 ruble silver coin is worth more than 50 dollars, not forgetting that gold and silver prices were at one of their highest prices back then.

I think it was in the mid 1980s where some collectors realize that some coins cannot be found in circulation and had to break them out from mint sets. Furthermore a lot of mint sets were made for export hence they had to import the mint sets back into the country.

Note that coin prices during the Soviet era was literally all over the place. At certain times, non-commemorative ruble coins were worth a big premium as they were not regularly released to the public. It's only in the really late 1980s where the banks decided to get their lazy bum off the chair to open the vault only to find huge stash of beautiful ruble coins. I think the chervonets gold coins were also stashed in this manner. Hence, you can find a fair number of non-commemorative ruble coins in UNC condition. That said, it's getting hard to assemble a set of such coins.

As far as corrsion is concerned, this mainly happens in mint sets especially in hard plastic / cardboard sets. They are not too common in mint sets that have been sealed in cellophane. As of why, I guess it's the chemical dye used to color the mint set that leaked out causing a reaction to the coins.

 

I think it would be very easy to overestimate the demand for something like the '70 15k. There may be only a couple thousand in existence and many of the owners don't even know they own it or just purchased it recently for much less than its value. These coins will trickle on the market for decades but now there are only hundreds available for demand and some of these are tied up in collections. Attrition will remain pretty high until they're all accounted for in about fifty years by which time there will be as few a 1000 survivors in pristine condition plus whatever survived from circulation (apparently very few). Of course demand and overall prices for moderns in general will have some effect on this; the faster demand develops the more that will survive. If all this supply were actually available to collectors now prices could crash. Old coins tend to have many survivors and if you can't afford a Gem you can afford an about good. With moderns, if you can't afford an Unc there might not be anything else or it might be a poorly preserved example of a very poorly made coin.

 

So what would a 1975 Russia Mint set be worth?
NGC has the Rouble at $30 in MS60
The 20 Kopek at $125
The 15 at $140 and the 50 at $175
The 1,2,5, and 10 are between .5 and $1 each.
I can't see the mint set being worth that much. We are talking about $475 for the individual coins. Or are the NGC values flawed?

 

NGC values in MS60 for 1975
1,2,5,10 Kopeks at between .50 and $1 each
20 Kopek at $125
15 at $140
50 at $175
1 Rouble at $30

That would make my 1975 mint set worth about $475

Doesn't seem correct or is it?

 

1975 USSR Mint set worth 75-110$
NGC Prices are for individual coins , usually prices right at VF-XF points for raw coins