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How are Early Commems doing?
CommemKing
Posts: 2,202 ✭✭✭✭✭
I have literally been out of coins for over 7 months now. I have not checked prices or even looked at my coins. I got bit by the sports card bug and have been real busy at that. How are Early Commems doing these days? I assume as bad or worse than they have been doing over the past 5 or so years. I didn't sell everything. I still have my PCGS Set Registry going (half completed) and a very nice, complete, Dansco 7070 Type Set. They are just collecting dust so to speak, in the safe. I hope to return to coin collecting some day, but have been really turned off by what seems like a real downturn in the market overall. Just wanted to check in to see how things were going. I'm sure I have missed a lot. Thanks,
14
Comments
You’re not serious, are you? Where have you been the last thirty years?
I don't think they can get much cheaper.
My advice is to keep focusing on quality
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
Serious about what? Yes i'm serious. I literally have not looked at a coin price in over half a year. I assume they are still doing poorly. I'm not understanding your pitiful sarcasm.
I seem to be missing something. Your post seems to imply that the coin market has not been doing well, but the sports card market has been doing well ? I thought sports cards were down quite a bit in recent years (with some exceptions, of course).
At least many coins are made of silver or gold, and those metals are doing ok.
The modern sports card market seems to be on fire for me. Although I focus on football cards, I have made a killing on Zion Williamson rookie cards. They are very much alive. Now the vintage market, not so much.
They’ll bounce back someday.
Sincerely,
1989
Im not concerned about the metal content. If that was the case i'd only have about $20 face in silver.
Wow, no sense of humor.
They're not doing "bad or worse", but rather "bad AND worse". I love this series, but have been waiting for a rebound since the early 1990s. Ugh...
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Here is an example. This card is worth about the same as an ounce of pure gold and just as beautiful.
Wow, no sense of humor.
I didn't sense any humor.
The auto looks streaky.
My OCD could not tolerate.
I would rather have the ounce of gold.
I am more a Bowman Draft kinda guy so hoops and football are out of my circle of competence.
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
Coins that look like that Roanoke seem to be holding their own. The real lovely coins do well despite the ‘market’.
Hmmm...that's debatable (and I think I'd win the debate)
That auto looks perfect in hand. A combination of a somewhat blurred photo and the fact that the photo is 3 times larger than the card make it look that way. Plus, it's the GOAT. This card will continue to climb every year, especially when he is unanimously inducted in the HOF.
I heard @Justacommeman is considering changing his handle to LibertasDude, which should tell you all you need to know.
I don't recall many or any recent posts about any newp commems. Even after FUN.
I have been recently looking at the $2.50 sesquicentennial commems and considering going for one.
"If I say something in the woods and my wife isn't there to hear it.....am I still wrong?"
My Washington Quarter Registry set...in progress
Prices for circulated commemoratives have dropped about 10-20% over the past ten years. That may reflect drops in the overall coin market.
Values have been dropping slowly over the past 10 years, by how much depends on the issue. On another note, Morgan's have lost proportionally more value in the past 5 years. Hope both have bottomed out and rise slightly.
This graph for Columbian's illustrates a typical curve. Click on the colored dots to see changes in prices.
http://www.numismedia.com/cgi-bin/coinpricegraph.cgi?script=slvcom&searchtype=any&searchtext=fmv&grade=65&nmcode=18514800&guide=prices&guide2=pricesms
As low as they are, I think they can drop more.
If it's more than melt, it can get cheaper.
Have populations been going up? If so, it might not be prices are going down as much as quality is going down.
This has a population of 10, so it's like a R8 token.
Classic commems are nowhere this rare, however, tokens with similar rarity have been doing very well.
I looked up the 1893 Columbian has a pop of 41 and unfortunately, it hasn't been doing well, going from $10,080 to $3,780. That being said, prices aren't tracked for MS68s of which there are 2.
More supply than demand and no reason to believe that will change anytime soon.
What effect has the proliferation of modern US commemoratives had on the stagnation and drop in value of the classic US commemoratives?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
Not exactly sure, but the Tom Brady card is interesting. It's a modern and rare with just 10 specimens. Perhaps the best thing to compare with the Tom Brady card is the 2019-S ERP with signed COA. The value and excitement are there on those, even if the quantity is 10x of the card at 100.
Most prices have continued to crater. Old holder and color coins are holding up better than dipped or white coins, which are in abundant supply and are garnering almost no collector interest unless they have a gold cac sticker.
These depressed market conditions are a great time to reject the herd mentality and go shopping.
Commems and Early Type
Love the history and "stories" behind the series.
I don't purchase them expecting to make any money. Just to enjoy that history.
I assume the 50 coin silver type set is the most popular method of collecting classic US commemorative coins. Anyone know what this set would cost in PCGS MS63 and PCGS MS64? I seem to remember the CDN Grey Sheet listing the prices by type and with a total price for the complete 50 coin type set in each grade.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
Except that they have been saying that for the past 30 years.
Those interested in history are not the collectors of sports cards.
Therefore, sports cards should have a bright future.
As long as they don't try to sell them to me!
But sports cards have been collected for thousands of years!
Exactly my thoughts.
If you’re not collecting coins because the market is down than are you really a collector?
If you like the coin, buy the coin.
Who cares what it’s Market value is now compared to 10 years ago?
Sorta like people who sell off or stop buying stocks when the market is down. Never made much sense to me.
Like it or not, a very large percentage of coin collectors think of their coins as "investments" even though this is usually an illusion.
Stunning Oregon!
AKA Pakasmom
Classic Commems
“They are cheaper than they were 25 years ago” the wholesaler setup next to me at recent show said. I concur. He had slab boxes of them below bid. I bought a couple from him which later sold from my online store.
A walk up seller came up later with some and I took a few at blue sheet.
The discussion on classic commems is interesting because there tend to be lots of posts on their decline but not nearly as many on the many other coin series that are also going down. In those other coin series, it appears most people just post photos of coins they like.
One factor may be how hard it is to clip a commem coin to your bike for the spokes.
As a collector, I’ve been able to pick up a few really nice examples at a nice entry point. Some experts I’ve talked too are bullish, but others think they’ll sink. So, no help there. PQ examples that show up at generic prices are hard to pass up IMHO. They’re fun to collect
Show me a 40 year chart of these ....
sooo tempting to start dealing in eye-appealing examples of this series ...
Or just clip the planchet
If you take a quick look at my Early Commemorative sets below you can see what kind of coins I have. The old set I sold a few years ago. Obviously lost money on that deal. My new set is starting off much nicer. I carefully hand picked these coins because I feel they are beautiful for the issue. My first set took 8 years to put together. I'm going to move a lot slower on this new set. As you can see the coins in my second set are much nicer looking than the old set. I have learned a lot over the years by putting together my first set. It burnt me out and turned me off too, seeing them fall after I have put so much $$ in them. I guess I hope they continue to plummet for the next years so I can get some on the cheap. Then in about 15 or 20 years I hope for the sky. I just gotta slow down on these sports cards first.
Check out my sets below, don't be afraid.
Yep. Were this not the case, what would the size of the coin market be? Somewhere approaching the stamp market?
The sad truth is that the notion of being a 'collector-investor' is rather oxymoronic. One cannot really have it both ways. Investments need to focus on ROIs, nothing else. This means that the vast majority of the coins in the marketplace have zero real investment potential (factor in the tax man and inflation too). Of the ones that do, their times as 'investment quality material' can be only a few years, so an owner must be prepared to let them go to maximize profit. This is very hard for most collectors (been there, done that)--we tend to hold onto our coins for dear life, and sometimes literally to our graves.
Classic commems have been repeatedly promoted by dealers, and they mostly are still in the doldrums. Time to quite beating this horse. Buy them only if you like them, and Swiatek said as much decades ago. You will need coins with wild colors to keep from losing your shirt, and even this is no guarantee. I'm in this boat too---I have a bunch of gem BU coins and I know that I will never be able to sell these and come out close to even. Take one's lumps and move on.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
+1 (same here, I like them)
I bought 3. I just never post coins that I buy
near zero
Those have largely been different audiences in modern times
The chart shows good Overview of what’s happened. Tough make money in that arena. But many other areas about same.
What say ye about future outlook?
Just some friendly suggestions... Look at auction records and the type of commems that are doing well verse those that are just okay. Seems those that have the look and are in the right holder and sticker are fine... The rest seem to have been charaterized as widgets that have been in a downward spiral for 30 years. Is this fair? Not really but the coin market has changed and the classic commem market within the coin market has been a victim of things well beyond what collectors contemplated.
The 1986-1988 highs were a reflection of the introduction and acceptance of TPG so the market moved to unrealistic as well as unsustainable levels. And now we look back at that moment in time that created a bar... A very unrealistic bar... As to valuations. And even a bigger problem is that there is a disconnect over generations as to history, the stories commems are capable of expressing, that has been either lost or temporarily misplaced that are worthy of being passed on as to who we were... As a country... and how we became who we are today.
So until a mindset changes, the future of commems remains bleak for the majority of the coins that survived but very bright for the few coins that survived in a state of perservation that excites those that seek the finest known. It truly represents a tale of two cities... It was the best of times... It was the worst of times.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Coins with nice eye appeal are harder to find at all grade levels, in my opinion, in the last year. But, lackluster coins continue to fall.
My current "Box of 20"