What's Up with the '69 Mint Set?
cladking
Posts: 28,701 ✭✭✭✭✭
All of a sudden a few of the retailers have raised their price on this substantially.
This date is the canary in the coal mine because some of the scarcest moderns are in it. If it really is moving then the '68 should be hard on its heels because the '68 Philly dime in chBU is coming to be the toughest clad dime because of tarnish in so many mint sets and the fact this date rarely cleans up.
You can't just grab a '68 dime from pocket change any longer because there are so few left and even these few are mostly culls or very low grade.
You used to be able to count '69 sets by the thousand and find them in hundreds. Now even the biggest retailers might have dozens. They have been ignored and consumed and now the supply doesn't seem to be keeping up with the still very anemic demand.
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Im sure there are many others that this will happen to in the future
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1999 and 2012 are more recent ones that are higher priced...
Agree! Recently I paid up dearly for mint sets from this time frame.
Then I found someone online with 2 or 300 1982 souvenir sets and the bids were starting at 119.00 and I bought one and apparently not the right one.
It came very boring, no luster or toning. Anyway he sent his number and is willing to listen but I don’t know how much would be a decent offer. What price would you suggest per set of 100 purchased?
Blame people like me listening to you and started buying.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
did people cut up the 68-70's for the 40% half when silver was very high?
Yes. This was in 1980 and then to a lesser extent in 2012 to 2018. The first time the rate was fairly high but it was brief. The latter time there weren't as many sets around and the profit wasn't as high. I doubt more than about 10% of mintage were involved. A few SMS's went as well.
This could turn out to be the first time I've ever been right.
I like these sets, Most are still bright.
Of course Gems are pretty scarce in them but chBU's are very common. I consider them worth $50 each with the '82-D a little less. $200 for all four typical sets is a fair price. Nicer sets are worth more.
Some of the mintages now are tiny and there are more special coins and Gems in them. Some have never been cheap.
I agree. But then I really like moderns and all the sets have something going for them. Also the vast majority of every Gem made by the mint between 1965 and 1995 went into mint sets. This is 100% for mint set only coins but many moderns approach 100%. If you want a well made modern clad with a minimum of marking there is usually nowhere else to turn. This applies to some of the cents and nickels as well.
If the current activity in the '69 set is real then the next will be the '71 and '68. The circulating versions of many of these coins are gone, at least in collectible condition, and the mint sets are mostly gone. Most of these sets should be cut up as soon as they are received and the coins soaked in 91% alcohol because the longer the tarnish stays on them the less likely it it can be removed.
Later date sets are often less interesting but keep in mind mintages crashed in the '80's and finding nice examples can be tough. The number of rolls saved was still pretty small. I think they are so cheap largely because the attrition is very much lower.
Oh yea,
I cut up hundreds in the 2011-12 run up and "spent the other coins" that will get the modern hunters attention
This is how it came just two packs so I just went online looking for a different type that I purchased a while back and yes they’re pretty expensive.
The other pack I recently purchased came with like 10 or 12 coins in one sealed cellophane pack, it had some nice coins and some being graded now.
I did not realize that these moderns were rising in value like this. I have seen some of these mint sets at a few tables at the local gun shows... I just passed them by... May have to look closely next show. Cheers, RickO
Holy Moses...you mean my "bad" modern Mint Set investment in high school might turn out to have been a "good" investment in my retirement???
I guess if you wait long enough...
Not necessarily.
Even if every coin in a set goes much higher and a set premium ever develops there is every chance your sets will have no nice chBU coins and then they have tarnished. The primary driver of higher prices right now for most mint sets is the strong demand for NICE halfs and dollars. As issued between 60% and 95% of half and dollars were nice chBU or better but now many of them are tarnished and have to be soaked in alcohol.
Curiously though the demand for 1969 mint sets is probably not for the Denver half dollar because for one its value is only about $5.50 in chBU and two, almost none of the halfs still in the sets are nice. Only about 33% will come clean. So either the demand is for intact sets (which I doubt) or it's spill over demand from the many collectors seeking dimes and quarters. This is where the real value has always existed in the '69 mint sets. ...Well, in these, varieties, and Gems.
This implies we're getting close to needing a wholesale market for BU rolls of quarters and dimes and I've always maintained there are not enough of these to even "prime the pump". There simply aren't enough BU clad rolls even assembled from mint sets so that dealers can maintain supplies. Almost as soon as a BU roll market develops most will instead trade as singles.
Nice coins in nice mint sets will attract buyers.
Mint sets, older mint sets, should be dismantled and cleaned but this will take care of itself if a BU roll market appears because dealers will stop selling mint sets and use them to assemble BU rolls. Buyers would be well advised to be sure the coins aren't spotted because many of these will never get cleaned.
None of them other than varieties and Gems have gone up that much yet. Of course the '82 and '83 issues are all special cases and are much higher. Very few dealers can keep a nice '82-P quarter in stock.
But the roll prices of the more mundane issues and mint sets have been rising. It's not uncommon any longer to see the '69 at $15 or $20 retail and some Ike rolls are up around 80 or $100 wholesale. Most people won't find this very impressive but it is to me. In 1989 the '69 set had a very brief run up to about $18.50 bid but most of those sets are gone now. There was never any apparent reason for the run up but when the coin market crashed it did as well.
Modern markets have always been a little hard to figure. But there's a definitive uptrend the last couple years.
Got a proof set recently and it looks cameo and the coins in good shape. A lot of the older sets have milk spots and other issues.
I just left 3 unopened packages of 5 each 1969 Mint sets. 15 unexamined sets...
Where'd you leave them?
Proof sets are funny now. Some dates are a mess and others are typically OK even in the same type of packaging. I suspect it has something to do with production or cleaning the planchets and coins.
In a few years there could be a shortage in these. They've always had more demand because quality is so high so they could do pretty well. Some might be hard to get now like the 77 half dollar but I don't know.
I have a hard time resisting the unopened packages. With "15" sets there's a better than 50: 50 chance of the D/ D dime.
I'm pretty sure I can grab them any time.
I haven't looked at my 1969 Mint Sets for many years. I have a whole bunch of them. It seems that most of the half dollars had some kind of spotting or imperfections on them.
Maybe somebody caught wind that the 69-S LMC DDO could be found in the set. Just an idea 🤷🏻♂️🤔
Blame my wife!
She made me unload most of my 1969 mint sets to make more room for her jewelry!
I managed to save my BU rolls of 1969 coinage. The 1969 -P quarter is scarce.
Unless I'm misremembering from my youth...it wasn't east to find clean Mint sets from the late 1960s - early 1970s...even back then.
The flat packs had a tendency to lose their air tight seals and got ragged looking...and many of the larger coins either got cloudy or looked like you put a cigarette out on them!
Back in the day the half dollars were almost all shiny enough but this mostly just served to highlight excessive marking on them. But the halfs were the first to go and a few started getting spots and haze by 1980. Today it's largely a matter of degree because they are all affected but a very few are still attractive. It's a good idea to try to save these but most are beyond being completely saved now.
You're right that a lot of people don't realize that the set of dies used for mint sets is pretty small. Dies are used only briefly and then retired to strike regular circulation issues but the total number of different dies used is very small so coins like the '69-S DDO cent do not appear in sets.
There are ten or twelve varieties that appear in older mint sets that I consider "significant" and another ten or twelve more minor ones. Ironically even though the incidence in mint sets is often very very low they made so many mint sets that mint set varieties tend to be far more common than those made for circulation.
Yes. Rolls of '69 BU quarters issued for circulation are extremely scarce. In part this was because quality was so horrid nobody wanted to save them. Nice well made and attractive coins for Philly this year were nearly as scarce as the rolls are now.
I finally managed to find a few of these in the late-'80's but they had just been opened up from their original packaging and hit the cash register. I managed to recover almost all of them but he had already handed a few out as change. This just serves to highlight one of the chief reasons moderns are so tough; the attrition is extremely high because they get put into circulation. Despite the fact so very few were saved many of those that were just get dumped into circulation or otherwise are spent accidently. It's been a pretty long time since anyone's chBU '09-S VDB got spent accidently.
At the same time you had proof sets from the mid 1990s which were high priced as well as the 2004 proof set then the prices dropped like a rock after the late 2000s.
There were problems from the day they left the mint and the pre-'65 issues had some trouble early. But where the older sets aren't that much worse the later sets are. Even most of the coins in the SMS's have problems now! You won't notice it at a glance through the plastic but if you look closely you'll see they are almost as universally affected as '69 or '70 sets.
I believe the lack of attention to this is very indicative of the virtually total lack of interest and attention of collectors.
Most of these coins are already gone and most of the survivors need a little TLC right now. Sure there are some rolls of '70-D chBU half dollars around because these were cut out and saved but what about the '69-D halfs? What about the quarters? most dismantled sets are cut up for just a few of the larger coins and the rest spent.