Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't much of the really cool early US 20th century types (like the St. Gaudens, Mercury Dime, etc.) based on design elements (e.g. medal like high relief and traditional greco-roman imagery of liberty) from France and other European coins of the time?
I agree with the comments about the 1938-D walker. Classic example. In fact, we could probably come up with the "classic" list of sleepers - the ones that get all the airtime. In many cases, it's based on mintage numbers - oh, this coin has only 200,000 more than the key of the series!! Yeah, well there are only 4,000 people who actively collect that series, so........... The question itself is self-excluding. If you can call a coin a sleeper, than it's definitely NOT a sleeper. A sleeper is a coin "waiting to be discovered/appreciated". If that coin is on everyone's sleeper list, then it's not a sleeper. Probably not making myself clear. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "junk" (ha ha) that the mint has stopped making won't become valuable one day........
Shhhhh please don't do anything to make the demand for half cents increase. They are still reasonably affordable!
One that I have been looking at casually is the 1936-1942 proof Lincoln cents. They are not cheap but did not make a lot of them either.
sleepers: Semi-key Barber quarters. Barber dimes: most lower mintage dates/mints, including the 1895 O. Half dollars: many dates, esp: 1904S, 1905P, 1905 O.
The half dollars I have read there are a lot of very old counterfiets. People have these and truly think they are genuine when they are not. So, would you obtain these raw or slabbed?
I would say there is one cent that i always thought was a sleeper the 1931S cent. I think the coin will wake up someday soon Jazzcoins joe
some of the recent bullion coins that were cut short may prove to be sleepers. Some of those mintages seem really low.
If anyone has 40 back issue years of numismatic periodicals, I'd bet that every few years there is an article touting shield nickels as sleepers.
I mostly agree that coins usually cost what they should cost. Otherwise, we'd all be rich! But, that said, I think ASEs might turn out to be a sleeper in the long run because the day the US Mint discontinues the series, and someday they will, every ASE will jump in price. I think this coin will be the morgan dollar of the future and highly prized by collectors.
Interesting comment, slabbed for some, raw for others. As for contemporaty pieces, they are highly collectible, and usually base metals.