US Coin Market Stagnant

I think PQ coins will trade higher whether stickered or not. Dogs (spotted / darkly toned trash) will trade lower and sticker won’t raise them.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The best time to buy is when the market is down

 

With the CAC bean because you can NEVER be 100% sure that it would have the qualities you assume most expert graders would agree on.

 

I am not an expert. I respect the experts. We have some vets here who have been doing this for decades, like GDJMSP, who I respect immensely and I've learned alot from them.

And yet....when we have a "GTG" contest or thread or segment, many of the vets are off by 1-3 numerical grades and sometimes not even sure if a coin is MS or AU or even EF.

Maybe if I had a coin that was high for the grade -- like those MS-66 1923-D Saints I highlighted in another thread here at CT (where the price varied almost 75% within the 66 grade !!) -- somebody like GDJMSP would agree with me on the grade and we'd have no problem agreeing on a grade and a price. But it's far more likely somebody else would say it's a plain-old 66 and maybe give me an extra 10%.

As I said, check out the 1923-D Saints posts I did a few weeks back. Highly unlikely, unless it was 2 experts who saw things the same way, that you'd have agreement on the coins.

I don't doubt it...but a CAC sticker to me CONFIRMS the underlying PCGS or NGC grade, that is all. It's a double-check to me.

Maybe....OTOH everybody is sending in to CAC in the hopes that they will be able to justify a higher price if/when they sell, and they may have not been able to justify a "crack out" from the TPGs. CAC submission and grading is cheaper and if it fails, no harm no foul to the slab.

Interesting theory, and it might pan out. OTOH, the "alleged" (?) (!) easing of TPG standards occured during the pre-Internet era when something like that today is much tougher to justify.

CAC is confirming an EXISTING grade, which allows for much less leeway than a raw submission where there is greater leeway to establish the initial grade. If historically CAC gives a sticker to 15-20% of submissions, I think if in a few years suddenly they are giving out 50% that would set off alarm bells and not go unnoticed. If the value of a CAC sticker went down because everybody was getting one, the business model and professional repuration of the CAC folks would go down the tubes (I presume both mean something to JC).

I think the CAC situation is somewhat related -- tangential, if that -- to the stagnating market so I think these posts have not been in vain.

 

Hold on a second -- keep in mind that everyone in these contests is grading from photographs, which are a poor substitute for in-hand examination. One photo, or even a couple of photos, won't be enough to let you evaluate luster, and can easily hide or over-emphasize problem areas.

 

True....but I'll bet some would still be off in-hand.

And even though it's paper and a different grading scale, a PMG 45 Gold Certificate I highlighted here had guestimates off by 10-20. It's not that difficult to disagree on coins by 1-2 grades. To think we're gonna get the number right and differ only on A-B-C is too optimistic, IMO.

 

It's a joke, I've made many posts on it. It's got tons of common as dirt things and classic commemoratives and proofs etc.

https://www.pcgs.com/prices/pcgs3000

It's a relic of things thrown together at best and something that should be taken down so people have to actually try and analyze a market segment and not use a lazy chart.

A whole 50 cents a coin with a 5 dollar service fee, what an extreme raise......

That is the angle many like to push but not at all. It's smart to protect high value purchases, if that gets in the way of dealers pushing things as premium or value purchases upon sale being pushed as premium so be it and that helps the buyer.

The market determines the value and many elite collectors believe in it as well, do they not know anything?

The ironic thing is many of the anti CAC people could make a killing snickering coins that are unstickered..........

 

The stagnant market affects liquidity. Last nite I won a really nice PCGS MS65 Classic commem for 95 pct CDN bid (with buyers fee) from well known auction house. The seller realized 75 pct bid after selling costs not including shipping. I plan price the coin at bid plus 40 pct for my online store / table at shows. I offer sellers at shows about 80-85 pct bid which beats what they would get from auction houses.

 

Classic commems other than the toned and best have been a falling knife for decades

 

Same. Only registry set I have is for Franklin’s and NGC is tougher on FBL so I stick with NGC. When buying a coin for my set I couldn’t care less about the green stickers. A nice coin is a nice coin. I don’t need one guys opinion for me to like the look of a coin.

 

That might not necessarily be true. I know collector coins and bullion/junk are two separate segments of the hobby and market, but the last boom in metals prices happened during the economic crash of 08/09. Unfortunately that was right about the time where I started to seriously get back into collecting after not collection for about 15 years, so I don’t recall if non junk type prices also rose.

 

We are currently in a fiat currency, paper asset, cryptocurrency cycle that eschews hard assets like precious metals and coins with intrinsic value. It's a great time to buy while the herd is pooling their wealth into noncents (nonsense). Once the SHTF with all this negative interest rate, QE, Repo and trillion dollar deficits, there will be a rush back in or inflation will lift their value. We're buying low while they're buying the other stuff high. I'm optimistic.

 

Can someone give me an example of a "Classic Commemorative" ? Are we talking about those collection sets I used to get as a kid in the 1970's from the Mint ?

 

I commend them for their effort.

However...today....it might be better to have a coin index more like the DJIA and not like the S&P 500 or Russell 2000 (if I can bring in my areas of expertise). More concentrated, fewer names....maybe 50 or so...the stuff you see in dealer cases and getting the most hits on Ebay or HA.

There's always a balancing act....domestic vs. foreign.....large number of items vs. more concentrated....higher priced vs. lower/medium priced....bullion proxies vs. 100% numismatics.

 

Did you see those posts on another site a few years ago -- I think I linked them here at CT -- where somebody complained that a Franklin that he had had gone up 2 whole grades with FBL (or whatever the lingo for a top Franklin is) and I think that a coin he had that he sold for like $400 was now worth like 5-figures ?

I think it was Collectors Universe or something.....I have the link somewhere if anybody wants it. Or maybe use the Advanced Search here at CT to scan my posts; I have very few posts (if any) that mention "Franklins."

 

Don’t think so. I’ve seen MANY CAC’d coins that are just downright ugly.

 

Long-time dealers who have been in the business for decades should be listened to....ultimately, they buy and sell and they can tell you WHY they have been paying more or less if traffic into their LCS has fallen 50% in 10 years or whatever or is a quarter of what it was 30 years ago, etc.