When the (edit: COIN) market crashed in the 80s what did people buy?

stevereecy

I have a question for some of your old timers. Back in the 1980s when slabbed coins first came out, there was rampant speculation. The market went into a feeding frenzy and then eventually crashed. I know that at that time, common date MS 65 Morgan dollars were driven up to $500 each before the crash and settled out at $100 apiece give or take.

My question to you guys is after the crash how did the market respond? What kind of coins did the dealers purchase to survive? What did collectors do? What kind of coins got through the crash relatively unscathed?

Thanks to anyone who can recall this

MFeld

As I recall, the market didn’t peak until sometime in 1989 and MS65 Morgans reached approximately $800 wholesale, before then. I don’t remember any particular areas trading noticeably more actively than others, after prices took a large drop.

cladking

After the '89 crash the market drifted lower until 1995. Dealers sold low and bought lower. Many rarities were still strong but most of the collector markets were very weak. It was scary times in the market and seemed it might never recover and it didn't until moderns turned higher and the mint announced it was going to make the states coins.

The '86 crash was more like a market correction and didn't affect as many coins.

In '89 it wasn't just the crash that caused the problem but it occurred during a decrease in demand caused by demographics. This was before many people had internet access and the net helped save the market to at least a small extent.

MFeld

@cladking said:
After the '89 crash the market drifted lower until 1995. Dealers sold low and bought lower. Many rarities were still strong but most of the collector markets were very weak. It was scary times in the market and seemed it might never recover and it didn't until moderns turned higher and the mint announced it was going to make the states coins.

The '86 crash was more like a market correction and didn't affect as many coins.

In '89 it wasn't just the crash that caused the problem but it occurred during a decrease in demand caused by demographics. This was before many people had internet access and the net helped save the market to at least a small extent.

What “86 crash” are you talking about? I don’t remember any such thing. Edited to add: Having been actively involved in buying and selling coins at the time, I neither saw nor heard of anything resembling a crash in 1986.

AUandAG

Economy was affecting coin collecting for me. I remember moving and buying a home at 11% interest for a 30 year fixed mortgage in 1986. But that was much better than the 16% rate in 1981, so the market was improving. I don't remember a crash in '86 as things were slowly getting better it seems.

ooops

bob

Lakesammman

Here's the CU3000 - don't see much downward movement in 1986. I started buying coins in 1995 simply because that's when I had the money to do so, rather than good timing of the market.

ms70

I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

jmlanzaf

@AUandAG said:
Economy was affecting coin collecting for me. I remember moving and buying a home at 11% interest for a 30 year fixed mortgage in 1986. But that was much better than the 16% rate in 1981, so the market was improving. I don't remember a crash in '86 as things were slowly getting better it seems.

Silver hit it's high as mentioned in 1989 at just a tad under $50 per ounce.

bob

That's the wrong year. Silver did not peak in 1989. It peaked in early 1980.

stevereecy

Yes, cards on the table I collect other things than coins. And those collectibles seem to be in a bubble. I don’t want to stop collecting. So I’m trying to figure out what kinds of stuff I can collect from that genre without getting killed.

I seem to recall that “collector coins” did pretty well after that crash. Dealer started catering to collectors who were focusing on runs more than chasing investment grade plastic slabs. But I could be wrong and it might’ve been the other way around. Perhaps rarity trumped condition in the aftermath?

MFeld

@ms70 said:
I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

Walkerguy21D

I recall reading the newsletters from Ellesmere Numismatics, among others, saying that genuinely scarce coins went into hiding, and for the most part weren’t available at the new, low prices being quoted. Generic Morgans and late date walkers, sure, you could buy those all day long at fire sale prices. For my small part, early date walkers in XF/AU never got cheap nor were they readily available.

stevereecy

Walkerguy: That’s good anecdotal info.

Azurescens

@MFeld said:

@ms70 said:
I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

This is when I started going to shows as a kid. There were loads of unc wheat cents by the bucket, war nickels and ikes were a great silver buy for years bc nobody wanted them, 30s and 40s MS66 quarters were super plentiful. 90% silver was cheap and it was usually lots of good stuff. It was still pretty regularly in change so the stuff in shops could easily be cherry picked.

I remember my dad bringing me to coin shops and he would give them business just to talk and support them. I didn't know there was a downturn but now this makes sense.

Fixing metals has really killed the market and cost American businesses billions. It is a national disgrace, and an embarrassment. I don't know how many of you have the nerve to deal with that for decades.

MFeld

@Azurescens said:

@MFeld said:

@ms70 said:
I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

This is when I started going to shows as a kid. There were loads of unc wheat cents by the bucket, war nickels and ikes were a great silver buy for years bc nobody wanted them, 30s and 40s MS66 quarters were super plentiful. 90% silver was cheap and it was usually lots of good stuff. It was still pretty regularly in change so the stuff in shops could easily be cherry picked.

I remember my dad bringing me to coin shops and he would give them business just to talk and support them. I didn't know there was a downturn but now this makes sense.

Fixing metals has really killed the market and cost American businesses billions. It is a national disgrace, and an embarrassment. I don't know how many of you have the nerve to deal with that for decades.

I don’t know where you lived, but 90% silver wasn’t regularly in change in 1989. 😉

MasonG

@MFeld said:
I don’t know where you lived, but 90% silver wasn’t regularly in change in 1989. 😉

Maybe he meant 1969?

And even then, that might be a stretch...

yspsales

Are there any books written on this time period?

Azurescens

@MFeld said:

@Azurescens said:

@MFeld said:

@ms70 said:
I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

This is when I started going to shows as a kid. There were loads of unc wheat cents by the bucket, war nickels and ikes were a great silver buy for years bc nobody wanted them, 30s and 40s MS66 quarters were super plentiful. 90% silver was cheap and it was usually lots of good stuff. It was still pretty regularly in change so the stuff in shops could easily be cherry picked.

I remember my dad bringing me to coin shops and he would give them business just to talk and support them. I didn't know there was a downturn but now this makes sense.

Fixing metals has really killed the market and cost American businesses billions. It is a national disgrace, and an embarrassment. I don't know how many of you have the nerve to deal with that for decades.

I don’t know where you lived, but 90% silver wasn’t regularly in change in 1989. 😉

I was a paper boy with two routes and did it for ten years. I also hunted bank rolls. I bought my first car outright (19k?) and paid for two years of college.. and that wasn't even all of it.

Maybe you weren't looking hard enough? I remember pulling silver out of arcades and newspaper tips for like a decade, starting in 1988-89.

BillJones

Oddly enough, I didn’t notice much of any of this since I was buying early U.S. type coins and was only buying a few big coins a year. MS-65 Morgan Dollars and the old commemorative coins may as well have been on Mars for me. I had little interest in them and only knew that they were selling for outrageous prices in my opinion.

Other collectors of my ilk (i.e. guys in EAC) had a rather snobby characterization for the main part of the coin market. Those guys only cared about “walkers, dollars and commems.”

During this period I bought coins like a 1796 Quarter in VF, 1792 Half Disme, a Chain Cent, 1796 Dime and a 1797 half dime with 13 stars. I also bought a Libertas Americana Medal at one point. I also collected half cents from 1800 to 1857 by their Cohen die varieties. Back then you could buy a lot of half cents in EF for $50 to $200. Financially I did quite well with these purchases.

Jimnight

I was not aware of a market crash in the 80s.

Walkerguy21D

This was from ‘97, but I have earlier issues. It shows how much prices were still down, from 1989, even though prices on scarce coins had already started increasing.

yspsales

I remember a Coin World article or opinion saying it would be a great time to buy Morgans.

This was post crash and my first foray into coins.

Buried in these archives are stories of "when the music stopped" at Long Beach show.

Every time we lose a dealer to time, we lose that institutional knowledge.

CoinHoarder

@MFeld said:
The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

Mark is correct. 1989 is when the coin market crashed. I remember this because it was a topic of discussion in all the coin periodicals during that time period. Certified Morgan dollars, and I’m sure many other series of coins, crashed.

Not sure what others were collecting as far as coins back then, but as I recall, the market was dead for many years after that.

As far as what I was collecting, I was still completing circulated sets of silver coins.

thefinn

@cladking said:
After the '89 crash the market drifted lower until 1995. Dealers sold low and bought lower. Many rarities were still strong but most of the collector markets were very weak. It was scary times in the market and seemed it might never recover and it didn't until moderns turned higher and the mint announced it was going to make the states coins.

The '86 crash was more like a market correction and didn't affect as many coins.

In '89 it wasn't just the crash that caused the problem but it occurred during a decrease in demand caused by demographics. This was before many people had internet access and the net helped save the market to at least a small extent.

The big investment groups also stopped buying coins for portfolios, which hurt the market quite a bit too. They drove it up quickly - especially common coins in high grades.

cnncoins

With the advent of 3rd party grading, Wall Street jumped in in 1989, which drove prices crazy for most coins. I have a late May 1989 Bluesheet somewhere which I saved because EVERY coin in EVERY grade had a "plus" next to it (from the prior week). Besides Morgans at over $800 each, I sold a group of Iowa Commems in PCGS 66 and 67 for $1250 each and $2750 respectively at that time. Proof 67 Lib Nickels were bid sight unseen at $12,000 each. These are just a few examples.
The market crashed at the summer LB Show in 1989, recovered somewhat through the 1990 Seattle Summer ANA, and then tanked again badly right after the show. Once the market crashed, Wall Street bailed out. It was a very slow recovery after that.

BillJones

We can without Wall Street driving prices to speculative levels. There are no such things as “collector grade coins” and “investor grade coins.” Once almost all collectors leave a market because of high prices, the investors who are left are trading among themselves, exercising the “bigger fool” theory. The only direction that market can go is toward a crash.

WAYNEAS

I switched to chocolate coins...no survivors. lol
Wayne

stevereecy

I can't convey how much I appreciate all of this information. It's fascinating to me, and it fills in some gaps on my knowledge of bubbles...I'm sort of an armchair economist.

If I can summarize what I think happened...Bill Jone's comment about how the collector's leaving the market, so it left the speculators doing transactions until the market crashed was particularly inciteful. Perhaps during a bubble, the rarest material isn't as accessible to the speculators because it is locked away by the collectors. And because it may take a while for the collectors to come back after a crash, it stays locked away?

Walker Guy's literature is also particularly inciteful. After looking at it for a while, my theory is that the "full band" dimes didn't get hit as hard (or were quickest to recover) because they are rare, but also because the full band designation was still somewhat a new collecting interest brought on by grading companies compared to the old tried and true method of collecting high grade keys. Maybe people were looking for them before slabbing started, but with grading companies, the designation was binary...it was, or wasn't full band...whereas in the past, the dealer's definition of full strike was subjective. With regard to the rest of the winners vs. losers, it seems some of the hardest hit coins were the "second bananas" or second tier coins. While I personally love 2 cent and 3 cent pieces, it seems they aren't a favorite. I've found that second bananas are always the last to move in a bull market, HOWEVER, when they do move, they make big jumps. I'm guessing that owning them in a crash would be a way to get hurt, as they would be the first to fall and stay down. It seems that the coins that held up, or recovered the best were the scarcer coins in the more popular series. Not necessarily the keys. This is what I meant by "collector coins", though i admit the term is nebulous. Perhaps, "semi keys due to rarity in popular series" might be a better description.

Perhaps stated another way: During a bubble, prices on items can only rise rapidly if items can be traded back and forth rapidly. Sort of like how stocks can rise quickly if people "hit the ask" under heavy volume. So easily available, demand driven widgets (coins that aren't rare but loved by collector) can rise fast. But they can fall just as quickly as sellers "hit the bid" and there are lots of items trying to run to the exits at the same time. But with the rarer collectibles... the less "widget-like" ones... the owners aren't as quick to sell because they remember how difficult acquisition was, so they just don't sell. So it's like: "easy come, easy go", and "difficult com, ain't gonna sell". Importantly, it seems a necessary ingredient in bubbles might be up to the minute information on prices. Bubbles can't form as easily, and crashes can't happen as easily, if the current price of an item can't be quickly determined.

Walkerguy21D

It seems knowledge and patience won out, and real collectors generally have these attributes.

Bill was able to put away some great coins of proven scarcity and demand when he could. I stayed clear of mega grade late date walkers. At shows you’d see stacks of raw gem coins, knowing the pops were going to keep swelling over time, especially if grading loosened even a little. I bought 64s for my set, and used my real money to buy 21D and 17S obverse coins in AU, for not much more ms 67 1940’s coins were going for. Nobody was going to be submitting rolls of those for slabbing; they were scarce and were always going to be scarce. And I have to believe other specialists replicated this in their own series, like early copper, to Bill’s previous point. The marketeers couldn’t find enough early copper to make it worth their while. The nicer coins were in strong hands, usually raw, and usually stayed with EAC members.

chesterb

@Azurescens said:

@MFeld said:

@Azurescens said:

@MFeld said:

@ms70 said:
I think the OP is talking about a coin market crash and not the stock market? I don't remember anything crashing in the 80's. I remember everyone doing great and having fun.

The rare coin market hit a peak and crashed in 1989.

This is when I started going to shows as a kid. There were loads of unc wheat cents by the bucket, war nickels and ikes were a great silver buy for years bc nobody wanted them, 30s and 40s MS66 quarters were super plentiful. 90% silver was cheap and it was usually lots of good stuff. It was still pretty regularly in change so the stuff in shops could easily be cherry picked.

I remember my dad bringing me to coin shops and he would give them business just to talk and support them. I didn't know there was a downturn but now this makes sense.

Fixing metals has really killed the market and cost American businesses billions. It is a national disgrace, and an embarrassment. I don't know how many of you have the nerve to deal with that for decades.

I don’t know where you lived, but 90% silver wasn’t regularly in change in 1989. 😉

I was a paper boy with two routes and did it for ten years. I also hunted bank rolls. I bought my first car outright (19k?) and paid for two years of college.. and that wasn't even all of it.

Maybe you weren't looking hard enough? I remember pulling silver out of arcades and newspaper tips for like a decade, starting in 1988-89.

I'm about the same age (maybe a bit older) and have to agree that I remember pulling silver out of change for some time. It wasn't that uncommon. I came to recognize the sound if there was a silver coin in my change. I also remember my older brother worked at a grocery store as a bagger and would come home with rolls of silver dimes and sell them to me for face. He wasn't a collector but knew what to look for and wanted to make his little bro happy! This happened about 3-4 times.

chesterb

This will be the discussion on the bitcoin forum in 30 years.

@BillJones said:
We can without Wall Street driving prices to speculative levels. There are no such things as “collector grade coins” and “investor grade coins.” Once almost all collectors leave a market because of high prices, the investors who are left are trading among themselves, exercising the “bigger fool” theory. The only direction that market can go is toward a crash.

yspsales

What date was the LA Coin Show some talk about as being the beginning of the end?

Search function is not that detailed.

jmlanzaf

@stevereecy said:
I can't convey how much I appreciate all of this information. It's fascinating to me, and it fills in some gaps on my knowledge of bubbles...I'm sort of an armchair economist.

If I can summarize what I think happened...Bill Jone's comment about how the collector's leaving the market, so it left the speculators doing transactions until the market crashed was particularly inciteful. Perhaps during a bubble, the rarest material isn't as accessible to the speculators because it is locked away by the collectors. And because it may take a while for the collectors to come back after a crash, it stays locked away?

Walker Guy's literature is also particularly inciteful. After looking at it for a while, my theory is that the "full band" dimes didn't get hit as hard (or were quickest to recover) because they are rare, but also because the full band designation was still somewhat a new collecting interest brought on by grading companies compared to the old tried and true method of collecting high grade keys. Maybe people were looking for them before slabbing started, but with grading companies, the designation was binary...it was, or wasn't full band...whereas in the past, the dealer's definition of full strike was subjective. With regard to the rest of the winners vs. losers, it seems some of the hardest hit coins were the "second bananas" or second tier coins. While I personally love 2 cent and 3 cent pieces, it seems they aren't a favorite. I've found that second bananas are always the last to move in a bull market, HOWEVER, when they do move, they make big jumps. I'm guessing that owning them in a crash would be a way to get hurt, as they would be the first to fall and stay down. It seems that the coins that held up, or recovered the best were the scarcer coins in the more popular series. Not necessarily the keys. This is what I meant by "collector coins", though i admit the term is nebulous. Perhaps, "semi keys due to rarity in popular series" might be a better description.

Perhaps stated another way: During a bubble, prices on items can only rise rapidly if items can be traded back and forth rapidly. Sort of like how stocks can rise quickly if people "hit the ask" under heavy volume. So easily available, demand driven widgets (coins that aren't rare but loved by collector) can rise fast. But they can fall just as quickly as sellers "hit the bid" and there are lots of items trying to run to the exits at the same time. But with the rarer collectibles... the less "widget-like" ones... the owners aren't as quick to sell because they remember how difficult acquisition was, so they just don't sell. So it's like: "easy come, easy go", and "difficult com, ain't gonna sell". Importantly, it seems a necessary ingredient in bubbles might be up to the minute information on prices. Bubbles can't form as easily, and crashes can't happen as easily, if the current price of an item can't be quickly determined.

There's some truth to this but I'm not sure I'd over-generalize. A lot of rare coins traded hands at prices that were ridiculous. Most of the damage was in the commodity part of the market but that's because that is where most of the trading was going on. The investment groups were a big part of the bubble and they needed to be constantly buying coins so they couldn't wait, even if they knew, for an 1804 dollar to come to market.

I'm also not sure that I would separate "collectors" from being participants in the market. A lot of collectors were active during this period and made a lot of money selling coins.

There is also a real case of population explosion that occurred during this time that helped undermine the raging prices. There were very few coins in holders. 66 and 67 commems, for example, seemed rarer than they truly were. The astronomical prices drove a lot more material onto the market and suddenly 66 and 67 commems were not that rare. Same with Morgan dollars in 65/66/67.

This is why I would really be careful in the moderns today as well as the modern toners. The population on a lot of moderns is probably not truly understood well because the pricing doesn't make it efficacious to submit thousands of Roosevelt dimes. If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

For modern toners, there are a lot of coins in blue books and the like that have toning. Again, the old-timers sitting on their old collections haven't thrown that stuff into the market. And, I think the fact that there is no toning designation in pop reports makes some of that material seem more unique than it is. That's not to say that there aren't exceptionally toned coins out there. But I'm not sure they are as rare as some think. A lot of old albums were non-archival with high sulfur content. They will create "monster toning" under the right conditions. I don't think there are as many bust and seated collections housed in blue books anymore so the relative scarcity of those may be less misunderstood.

I think (purely my opinion, of course) that markets are driven by the PERCEPTION of value and not by the value itself. Bubbles form when the perception deviates from the actual value. In the case of the coins, it was a misunderstanding of the actual scarcity (or commonness) of the coins that caused the divergence.

yspsales

Found a post from Fred Weinberg from 2019...

One of my memories of that 'end of the market'
period is seeing Matte Proof $20's from the Garrett
Sale, I believe in March of '89 that were auctioned &
brought $80K-$90K each were almost unsalable a month
later, at the CSNS show where the market 'collapsed'
during PNG Day, and a few of them were offered at the
show for $45K, as I recall.

Lots of 'high market' / 'dead market' stories out there.

One of the seemingly fastest down markets ever seen in
coins.

Capt Henway replied...

Fred, you are confusing the 1981 collapse at Central States in Iowa, caused by NERCG dumping coins they had just bought at Garrett to pay their tax bill, with the 1989 collapse at the ANA in Pittsburgh.

The 1981 collapse lasted for years, and then the market took off in the late 80's as slabs became accepted and there was talk of a mutual fund or something that was going to be buying tens of millions of dollars worth of coins but they had to be slabbed. Slabbed coins skyrocketed to stupid levels, and on the second day of the show word broke that the fund was not going to launch. Everything, slabbed or raw, fell to pre-bubble levels.

And now a story for the OP. I had married a lady from Chicago in 1986. During the Hunt Brothers silver bubble her father had sold a bunch of junk silver for good money, but then invested the money in classic commem halves that of course went down when that bubble collapsed. In 1989, as prices were skyrocketing, I told my father-in-law that now would be a good time to get out. I got the coins in fresh holders, prepared a list and had the coins and copies of the list in my briefcase on the flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

It so happened that I sat next to another dealer from Chicago that I knew. He asked if I had anything to sell and I said yes. I pulled the coins out and gave him a copy of the list. He pulled out a loupe and a Greysheet and started looking at the coins. He named a number that was very close to what I had in mind so I said yes, shook his hand and gave him the coins. THe next day on the floor he paid me for them. The next day the market died.

About a year later I found a copy of the list and did some figuring and figured that I could buy back the list for about one-fourth of what I had gotten for my father-in-law. He always thought that I was all right for his only daughter.

cnncoins

There were collectors both buying and selling during the 1989-1990 market. Although coins in general were obviously high
during this time (especially "common coins" in high grade), the market wasn't paying for scarce and rarer coins as much as
these common coins in higher grades. Some of my actual dealer purchases from the 1990 ANA included:

1885 and 1880 Seated 25c PCGS PR 65 $6000 each
1831 1/2 Dime PCGS 65 $12,500
1802/1 Bust $1 PCGS 62 (Gorgeous toning) $14,000 (Only MS coin graded at the time)
1795 FH $1 PCGS 62 (Gorgeous toning) $21,000

I'd love to have the 2 Bust Dollars back at that price...the others, not so much.

JimW

I love this thread!!! Thanks to all for the perspective

oreville

The drop in coin prices from 1989 to 1997 was overstated. Many of the coins graded MS-65 in 1989 were graded very tightly but loosened a bit by 1997

a coin graded MS-65 in 1989 quiteoften got re-graded MS-66 in 1997 as there was quite a bit of cross grading from PCG to NGC as that was the big game in 1997. i really noticed it the Heritage sale of the Eliasberg collection (which were all NGC graded) in 1997.

one of our former esteemed posters who touted his NFL collection of commems tried to convince me to cross my old PCGS graded slabs to NGC at much higher grades.

i resisted. and stood my ground.

By the way what the heck happened to him?

WCC

@chesterb said:

I'm about the same age (maybe a bit older) and have to agree that I remember pulling silver out of change for some time. It wasn't that uncommon. I came to recognize the sound if there was a silver coin in my change. I also remember my older brother worked at a grocery store as a bagger and would come home with rolls of silver dimes and sell them to me for face. He wasn't a collector but knew what to look for and wanted to make his little bro happy! This happened about 3-4 times.

I worked at a Kroger store from mid-1981 to early 1988 as a cashier and customer service clerk while in high school and college. This was in a suburb in the metro Atlanta area. I saw virtually no silver coinage and many bought with cash though checks were more prevalent. What I did see was mostly 40% Kennedy halves.

cnncoins

Oreville, he's still around. I understand your resistance and comments. Many of the coins grade back then have graded
higher today...

Tom147

Silver in change in 1989 ? Not where I'm from. Oh sure, an occasional Roosie or Wash. Qtr. And 40% halves a little more frequently. But common silver ? Nope. Not since the late 60's very early 70's. Me thinks somebody got their dates wrong.

coiner

One of the problems after the 1989 crash in the coin market was the market became somewhat illiquid for generics. Buyers couldn’t be found for some issues. Cash was king and it was held for the “good stuff” when offered.

yspsales

The subject of the coin market crash has always fascinated me.

These are my newps inspired by the vague and confusing recollections from this thread. Time does heal wounds I guess... lol

cladking

@jmlanzaf said:

If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

Have you seen any of these original rolls?

I've been looking for decades and rarely see one.

Back when the coins were current I looked through a lot of rolls and almost every single coin was garbage.

cladking

@MFeld said:

@cladking said:
After the '89 crash the market drifted lower until 1995. Dealers sold low and bought lower. Many rarities were still strong but most of the collector markets were very weak. It was scary times in the market and seemed it might never recover and it didn't until moderns turned higher and the mint announced it was going to make the states coins.

The '86 crash was more like a market correction and didn't affect as many coins.

In '89 it wasn't just the crash that caused the problem but it occurred during a decrease in demand caused by demographics. This was before many people had internet access and the net helped save the market to at least a small extent.

What “86 crash” are you talking about? I don’t remember any such thing. Edited to add: Having been actively involved in buying and selling coins at the time, I neither saw nor heard of anything resembling a crash in 1986.

For the life of me I can't seem to remember details about the other crash in the '80's. It was mild and brief but it was certainly noticeable at the time.

jmlanzaf

@cladking said:

@jmlanzaf said:

If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

Have you seen any of these original rolls?

I've been looking for decades and rarely see one.

Back when the coins were current I looked through a lot of rolls and almost every single coin was garbage.

@cladking said:

@jmlanzaf said:

If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

Have you seen any of these original rolls?

I've been looking for decades and rarely see one.

Back when the coins were current I looked through a lot of rolls and almost every single coin was garbage.

@cladking said:

@jmlanzaf said:

If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

Have you seen any of these original rolls?

I've been looking for decades and rarely see one.

Back when the coins were current I looked through a lot of rolls and almost every single coin was garbage.

@cladking said:

@jmlanzaf said:

If prices for "top pop" stay up and the market deepens, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of original rolls of that stuff that could get holdered and make the top pops not look so special.

Have you seen any of these original rolls?

I've been looking for decades and rarely see one.

Back when the coins were current I looked through a lot of rolls and almost every single coin was garbage.

I've got some here. Every dealer I know has some they can't get rid of.

Elcontador

Actually, main Unc. type 19th and early 20th century type coins in MS 65 kept dropping in price from 1997 forward for a number of years.

CaptHenway

@yspsales said:
Found a post from Fred Weinberg from 2019...

One of my memories of that 'end of the market'
period is seeing Matte Proof $20's from the Garrett
Sale, I believe in March of '89 that were auctioned &
brought $80K-$90K each were almost unsalable a month
later, at the CSNS show where the market 'collapsed'
during PNG Day, and a few of them were offered at the
show for $45K, as I recall.

Lots of 'high market' / 'dead market' stories out there.

One of the seemingly fastest down markets ever seen in
coins.

Capt Henway replied...

Fred, you are confusing the 1981 collapse at Central States in Iowa, caused by NERCG dumping coins they had just bought at Garrett to pay their tax bill, with the 1989 collapse at the ANA in Pittsburgh.

The 1981 collapse lasted for years, and then the market took off in the late 80's as slabs became accepted and there was talk of a mutual fund or something that was going to be buying tens of millions of dollars worth of coins but they had to be slabbed. Slabbed coins skyrocketed to stupid levels, and on the second day of the show word broke that the fund was not going to launch. Everything, slabbed or raw, fell to pre-bubble levels.

And now a story for the OP. I had married a lady from Chicago in 1986. During the Hunt Brothers silver bubble her father had sold a bunch of junk silver for good money, but then invested the money in classic commem halves that of course went down when that bubble collapsed. In 1989, as prices were skyrocketing, I told my father-in-law that now would be a good time to get out. I got the coins in fresh holders, prepared a list and had the coins and copies of the list in my briefcase on the flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

It so happened that I sat next to another dealer from Chicago that I knew. He asked if I had anything to sell and I said yes. I pulled the coins out and gave him a copy of the list. He pulled out a loupe and a Greysheet and started looking at the coins. He named a number that was very close to what I had in mind so I said yes, shook his hand and gave him the coins. THe next day on the floor he paid me for them. The next day the market died.

About a year later I found a copy of the list and did some figuring and figured that I could buy back the list for about one-fourth of what I had gotten for my father-in-law. He always thought that I was all right for his only daughter.

For the record, I wish to correct my faulty memory (above) about which Central States show it was at that the market collapsed. It was the 1980 show in Lincoln, Nebraska. The 1981 show was in Indianapolis, and the 1982 show in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
TD

FredWeinberg

As usual Tom, you’re correct!
Thx

jdimmick

Market is primed for a repeat IMO , when is the big question?

hfjacinto

My local dealer said there was smaller price drop in 2009/2010 and many coins didn’t increase until 2022.

Cougar1978

I started doing shows in 1990 (after the crash) so delighted get stuff cheaper. A lot of them went bankrupt or Credit Card Default. Many never returned or switched to stocks. Others switched out of US Coins to other areas like Currency or World Coins. One guy became a US National Banknote specialist. Sadly many who got burned did not come back.

I bought mainly world gold coins close to melt. Even got some slabbed, mark up higher. Did buy some slabs US walkers, $, Commems make case look nice. Many tried low ball me learned how handle them. One guy (big gun snotty know it all US dealer) always hateful quoting bid on stuff he wanted pick off from me told him “do you have one sell me at that?” That got rid of him.

If happened again just take hit to move it then sch c loss. Life goes on.

Crypto

@WCC said:

@chesterb said:

I'm about the same age (maybe a bit older) and have to agree that I remember pulling silver out of change for some time. It wasn't that uncommon. I came to recognize the sound if there was a silver coin in my change. I also remember my older brother worked at a grocery store as a bagger and would come home with rolls of silver dimes and sell them to me for face. He wasn't a collector but knew what to look for and wanted to make his little bro happy! This happened about 3-4 times.

I worked at a Kroger store from mid-1981 to early 1988 as a cashier and customer service clerk while in high school and college. This was in a suburb in the metro Atlanta area. I saw virtually no silver coinage and many bought with cash though checks were more prevalent. What I did see was mostly 40% Kennedy halves.

I worked at an arcade/amusement park at the beach in the early 90s and spent many a day handing out quarters hundreds of thousands of coins. I was absolutely a coin guy and looked at every single one of them without fail and found 2 silver quarters after 3 years/summers. I guess there could have been another coin guy upstream on my supply side but there was not much silver left by the time the late 80/early 90s rolled along in the midAtlantic