Why I think MS70 West Points are undervalued

TWQG

These have just broken below $300 for the first time which is the only MS70 S$1 that low (as far as I know) and it doesn't seem warranted. Yes there seems to be a lot of them but when you look closer, they do not occur more frequently than other silver circulation strike commemorative dollars. For this analysis I looked at the last ten years of these issues starting with the 92 white house. This includes 36 mint issued silver dollars. If one calculates the percentage of coins of each issue which gets the 70 grade as a function of total submitted you end up with a percentage ranging from 0.15% for the 92 olympic to 20.66% for the 94 POW. If one takes the average of all of the individual percentages you would get an average of 5.64 +/- 5.00 %. The average for the 02 west point is 6.78% which is well within the standard deviation. I do know of S$1 with similar populations (and much higher frequency) which go for more. I believe the diproportionately large amount of the westpoints being graded in search of these 70's has temporarily flooded the market, but this will eventually settle down.

Just my two cents

BSqr

yea, I've noticing the drop in price on WP MS70s - six weeks ago one sold for $625 and then a couple for $500+

there's just so many of them - NINE for sale right now on eBay as best I can tell

BSqr

just FYI

In mid Sept. a POW MS70 sold for $409

Monstavet

Statistics on a saturday night....what is your p-value for this prediction? For that matter, what was your null hypothesis? Come on! I want some scatterplots or some sort of visual aid!

BowAxe

Sean,

Interesting observations, but I think your 10-year review tends to mask current trends because it includes what I call the "fat years", 1992-96, when the overall percentage of modern commemoratives (gold, $1, and $.50 combined) that made MS70 was never less than 6.6% for any given year and ranged all the way up to 10.7% for 1994. Instead, consider the total percentage that made MS70 for the last four years only:
1999 3.0%
2000 1.8%
2001 1.1%
2002 4.8% (to date)

In light of these numbers, a 6.8% MS70 rate for the West Point issue is unusually high for recent years, and considering the large number of West Points that are being slabbed, the supply of MS70's very well may be saturating the buyer's market for that grade. Aside from the relatively few people who are competitively working on Registry Sets, I imagine the average collector who buys PCGS slabs is probably happy with the far cheaper MS69.

It will be very interesting to watch the West Point MS70 prices over the long haul. I won't be surprised if prices continue to drift downward and remain under $300 indefinitely.

TWQG

There are problems with my simplified analysis, but, the time that pcgs graded the 70's (with the exception of the date limitations) can be assumed to be spread throughout the ten year period and not necessarily graded in the piece's year. Therefore, these numbers more represent the variation in mint quality rather than changing grading standards. I think they show that the west points were made better. Some in the fat years go 70 very infrequently: 92 olympic, 93 madison, world cup, are at or below 1% grading MS70.

BowAxe

You are quite right that there must be variations in minting quality from one issue to the next that account for some of the vagaries in grading. There are exceptions, of course, but gold issues generally tend to have higher percentages graded MS70 than do silver issues, and the dollars higher percentages than the half dollars. I assume gold strikes up better because it is softer, and maybe the West Point Mint handles their products with greater care, but I don't understand why the half dollars don't fare very well. Six out of the 15 half dollar issues still have zero populations in MS70, but only 2 out of 49 dollar issues and none of the gold issues have zero pops. What's the problem with the halves?

Dell

BSqr

let's face it, a cow patty strikes better than clad