"Irrational Exuberance"

IronmanDuke

Last year, I officially became a Darksider and purchased a fairly-complete Franklin Mint "Coin Sets of All Nations." I loan them to local schools and built a website for students to review the pics.
website

I've been filling in some of the missing setswith buys in the $10-$20 range, but the three most recent sets of Camoros have gone for

$56.55 (April 7)

$61.00 (April 11)

and now
$70.89 (April 14)


The last three prices for the Mauritania were also north of $30.

Are these coins that great? Or, as our Fed Chairman said, "how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values".

It seems like there are four guys who keep trying to outbid each other. I'm tempted spend a grand on a complete set, sell off the 20 most-scare scare sets, and give the other 136 to "Future Darksiders".

Or I'll just let these guys kill each other off and wait for things to return to normal.

How much of this is
- the value of the coins (condition & rarity)
- the value of a more-complete FM set
- the "thrill of the hunt" or "ego"?

Your sagacious advice is appreciated.

GoldCoinLover

Sorry for being offtopic but, erm, Irrational Exberance.
A hilarious japanese song on Yatta! Irrational Exberance. I know this is off topic but its a great song and I think you'll like it! Go here

cladking

I've not seen these two sets you mention so can only guess what's in them. Most modern
Mauritania coins are pretty difficult to locate, especially in unc.

Most post-1950 world coins come only two ways; distressinly common or very scarce. Some-
times these will apply to the same coin such as those which are extremely common in circu-
lated condition but rare in unc. Other times it will apply to specific dates or a type. There
hasn't been a lot of interest in collecting these late date coins and the little that did exist either
wasn't very systematic or was held down by the impossibility of finding the coins. Most of those
which have survived were bought up in huge quantity in the year of issue and shipped to the
US. This makes many coins exceedingly common but leaves others to the mercies of the issuing
authorities. This is further complicated by restricted travel to many of these countries due to
political or safety concerns. Central banks tend to recall out dated coin now days and then melt
them. This combined with the lack of initial interest can result in some series being represented
by a mere handfull of circulated survivors. The Franklin mint obtained a great number of coins
for these sets which either weren't generally available or which were typically ignored. This has
resulted in numerous very highly desirable coins in this series. There is at least a little variation
in dates so this could be a factor also.

While there are still few collectors for the later date coins, they are bumping up against some
extremely limited supplies.

tbirde56

OT- > ...a hilarious japanese song on Yatta...
(just my personal opinion).

0john0

I waited for a year for bidders to kill each other off when I wanted to buy an Irish 1990 5 ECU. The coin is "worth" $30 by catalog value but sells on the US E-bay for $60 - $150!!!

So, I started surfing foreign E-bays on a regular basis and just bought the coin on German E-bay for $22.
My recommendation, therefore is look on other auction sites, preferably in other countries.

Germany E-bay



And this can always come in handy too: translation site

Italian Ebay

-john