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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 818497, member: 68&quot;]Stewart;</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s simply astounding howe overlooked the Ikes have always been.&nbsp; Oh sure they got lots of attention when they first came out and lots of people set aside rolls and bags despite the low quality of the strikes and all the marking on the coins but over the years this trailed off.&nbsp; Also in the longer term a lot of these early Ikes were hauled off to the banks for redemption many of the rest have been &quot;consumed&quot; by those seeking gems and varieties.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The biggest thing noncollectors don&#039;t realize is the challenge in putting together a nice attractive set of these.&nbsp; I&#039;m not talking about the gems that most people know are rare but just nice attractive coins; very choice and near gem coins.&nbsp; This is what most people prefer and where large demand could develop yet these are not readily available for many of the dates and most of the dates would be tough in there were very much demand.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Ikes are far scarcer than morgans in high grades but they are relatively scarcer yet in the mid grades.&nbsp; It&#039;s only in the low grades that Ikes are common and even here they can be tougher than a lot of Morgans.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As an example the &#039;73-P Ike was kind of difficult to find in near gem when the mint sets were brand new.&nbsp; They were all nice and bright and shiny but most had a little strike deficiency and almost all have marking.&nbsp; It wasn&#039;t that hard to find a nice attractive coin though since there were millions of mint sets and about every fifteenth &#039;73-P was a near gem.&nbsp; But that was then and this is now.</p><p><br /></p><p>Time has not been kind to these sets because people have ignored them so long.&nbsp; Most have been busted up and many of the survivors have degraded.&nbsp; But more pernicious is the fact that peoiple have been seeking nice attractive Ikes since the early &#039;80&#039;s and half the surviving sets have been cherry picked for nice specimens.&nbsp; This means that finding a nice near gem &#039;73-P will now require that you look at 35 or 40 sets and just finding so many sets can be diffuicult now days because there aren&#039;t so many left.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I love the gems and varieties and they&#039;re great collectibles but most people aren&#039;t going to be able to afford any higher grade than the choice coins.&nbsp; When people start realizing that the gems are far scarcer than Morgans that sell for multiples of the price of Ikes the demand for the Ikes will increase.&nbsp; The CDN recently did a great article on the difficulty of finding the high grades and thios might be part of the reason they&#039;re getting more attention.&nbsp; ...or perhaps it&#039;s more a symptom.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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