Could someone talk about the coin "boom" of the late '80s? What was it like?

XpipedreamR

I understand we've been in a strong period for coins the last few years. Is it anything like the '80s (or whenever the "boom" was)?

What kind of stuff did you experience that would shock a younger collector such as myself?


Feel free to ramble on as you please!

lordmarcovan

I mostly dropped out of the hobby between 1983 and 1991, so I couldn't tell you much. I remember getting junk mail and telemarketing calls from people pushing slabbed Morgan dollars (no doubt the old PCGS "rattlers").

agentjim007

In 1988 dealers were buying everthing slabbed. It took 3 months for grading so everything in a slab was hot. This was a great time for sellers. little while later the floor dropped out and many lost millions. I was poor (thank goodness) so I didn't loose.

Coinerww

How old are you XpipedreamR?

eureka

The late 80's boom was an "Investment" craze. Nearly everyone was touting coins as such. I paid for a year of college getting in and out of MS64 saints during a short period. It was hard not to get caught up in the hype.
It was also during this time that I interviewed at one stock brokerage that had gotten into coins. I saw a list of their inventory and it was nearly all Accugrade. I got the job, but turned them down. It was then and there I decided that being a glorified telemarketer (stockbroker) wasn't for me.

XpipedreamR

I am 34

stman

My Wife (now deceased) and I were collecting Walkers. Looking at tons of them and buying a few that really sparked our eye. Before certification soooo many in cardboard 2x2's at shows with grades saying "Choice BU to Gem BU" that were actually sliders.

We wanted one Gem in ms65 that was just a total blazer. Yes we were collecting white ones. Problem is we were raising a family, buying a house etc. without much money. Soooo the price for common date Walkers in ms65 ended up pushing the $400.00- $500.00 mark. We couldn't buy one and all of a sudden we saw some we liked. Shortly after the price came down and we were able to find one for $165.00. I still have this PCGS ms65 Walker to this day. They are still a good value in todays market IMO.

ziggy29

When the market was at the peak of its boom in the mid to late 1980s, I was a college student and a stock boy at a drug store. The economy was booming and many people had more disposable income than they had ever seen before. Many of them used that disposable income on coins. One other fairly recent phenomenon affected the market some, one that previous frenzies (such as the mid 1960s) hadn't seen -- third party grading and encapsulation. At first it was a novelty. But as it gained credibility, it gave people who didn't really know what they were doing some amount of confidence in their transactions -- which is, I think, both good and bad. Good in that it reduced the chances for being ripped off horribly by overgraded, problem-laden and fake coins. Bad in that many of them used it as a substitute for buying the book and learning more about what they are collecting in, and bad in that it was the peak of "coins as investment" hype.

At the time, it was mostly PCGS and ANACS; NGC was still a toddler if not an infant. To some degree, it was like today -- people chasing the finest of the fine with unheard of prices. Never before in the history of numismatics had a somewhat trusted source stamp so many grades of uncirculated permanently to a coin. The market just flat out exploded and priced me out of much of it, being a part-time, $5-per-hour grocery bagger and shopping cart shagger at the time.

I think the boom/bust in 1989 was more exaggerated than any market action we're seeing here. We may be due for a pullback, but the market has been (for the most part) much more orderly than it was then.

lordmarcovan

I guess I picked the right time to drop out.

My personal timeline:

1976 (Thanksgiving Day): began collecting
1977: got a choice EF 1827 Bust half from my stepmorther. Cleaned it to hell and back. (Still have it-it's retoned prettily.)
1978: got some Morgan dollars and other silver from my grandmother (coins from my great-grandmother's desk.)
1978 or 1979: got my first detector (a $20 toy that had a flashing light on top- no audio.)
1981: got my first "serious" detector (a $200 White's TR Discriminator.)
1984: graduated high school, went off to college, sold all but a few coins to buy books, dropped out of collecting.
1987: sold the White's detector, which had been gathering dust for several years.
1991: resumed collecting during my poverty-stricken first marriage in North Carolina.
1992: got my first modern detector (a $480 Garrett GTA-500 which lasted until this spring), started dabbling in inexpensive world coins.
1993: made my first noteworthy detector finds, got hardcore into that (since I still couldn't afford to buy any coins.)
1994: first marriage hit the rocks, moved to Georgia, still hardcore into detecting.
1998: started "serious" collecting of a slabbed 19th and 20th century type set.
1999: took my first "baby steps" as a dealer, discovered the Internet, started selling on eBay.
2001: briefly flirted with Registry Set collecting and joined up here.
2002: sold my Registry sets and used the money to buy showcases and stuff to become a "real" dealer, albeit on a small scale.
2003-2004: well, here we are.

doop

JUNE 2ND, 1989 BLUESHEET WAS THE PEAK OF ALL PEAKS.
I'LL TRY TO FIND THE OLD ONE WE HAVE AND SHOW SOME COMPARISONS

EagleEye

I worked for a coin shop in NJ at the time (1980), We bought a lot of silver as it ran up. I recall regular trips to NYC with bags of silver to unload. They were taking in 90% silver, silver dollars, 1960-1964 proof sets to melt, as well as Columbian Half Dollars. 90% silver was something like 25 times face as I recall. (at $40 silver)

I recall going to the Garrett sales in NY, seeing the Brasher Doubloon sell. I wound up buying a beautiful toned bust half AU58) for something like $550. It was the cheapest coin in the auction. Loved looking at the lots though, especially those 1877 half dollar patterns.

Since there was no grading except ANACS certificates, grades were pushed to the max. MS67 was commonly used and today equates to MS65 or so. (Old MS67 equated to MS64 when PCGS first started)

EagleEye

oops, sorry, Ithough the original post was "Early 1980's".

I think the price run up during the late 1980's was due to unchecked sight-unseen bidding. Dealers would bid up coins they owned and over priced the market.

DorkGirl

The only story I have is from the dealer I frequent. He lived on the beach in Hawaii for something like 4 years, all he did was buy and sell silver. He never touched an ounce, and lived like a king. Then the bottom fell out, and he fell to earth and moved back to Colorado. He said it was one heck of a wild ride. You should have seen the look on his face when he was telling the story, pure joy.

doop

<< <i>oops, sorry, Ithough the original post was "Early 1980's".

I think the price run up during the late 1980's was due to unchecked sight-unseen bidding. Dealers would bid up coins they owned and over priced the market. >>


Hey Rick,everybody was doing it,even our dearly departed Elliot(r.i.p.) that you used to work with way back. He was one of the masters as it.
Yeah,it worked good for about a 2 year leapfrog effect each week.

It didnt matter what you bought hardly, by the next few weeks (some cases days,some cases-same day it was nearly a non-effort situation
where you could turn huge profits. Even smaller dealers on the teletypes and at the mid-sized to large shows were easily woopin down
ceo pay. Or, depending on what you may have bought raw and made mega hits on once slabbed even better. Even if you were working with a half mil or close to it inventory you could still bust down 15-25g a week.

BUT.....the big "Wall Street Fund" of hundreds of millions, if not into the single billions never did develope. A few firms bit a little until they figured out how bad they were getting hosed by "marketflation" and bidding manipulations.

THEN...it was a news-flash/crash (hee-hee-hee, uh....it was.....sniffle!....OVER!!!!)

MSherman

In '89 I was VP & General Manager of Heritage Rare Coin Galleries. While I didn't buy and sell coins directly, I was active in management, went to all the major shows, and wrote a number of articles analyzing the market. I also was the Editor of Legacy Mag during that time. I believe there were several factors behind the coin boom of the late 1980s.

By 88-89, third-party graded coins had become plentiful enough, that a good supply was available on the market. The increased liquidity they provided drew the attention of several major brokerage houses. Both Kidder-Peabody and Merrill Lynch each had coin funds in the $20 million to $50 million range (though I don't believe either was ever fully funded.)

Nonetheless, that additional capital (demand) was sufficient to push prices considerably higher. As I recall, high grade type coins and gold did particularly well during this period. (Oddly, common-date Morgans had peaked a few years prior.) There was little interest in "moderns." The ultra-high grade mania (MS-69+) did not exist yet. An MS-67 was about the top of the line. Nice MS-65+ Seated, Barber and early 20th century material was quite hot.

A few "new" players were also factors. I believe a middle eastern gentleman named Iraj was among the most memorable. Iraj attempted to make a market in several areas, and pumped additional millions into the market. Also, a west coast bank (Safra) was providing loans against coins, providing additional leverage, (or margin) to pump the market.

Why it ended so abruptly in mid-June of 1989 is still somewhat of a mystery. But when new money quit coming in, the party was over. Prices fell somewhat, but remained at reasonably decent levels for another 10 months or so. Then in April of 1990 the bottom fell out. During the last half of 1990, the sight unseen trading system broke down, and coins were tough to sell at any price. Prices bottomed in 1991-92, and remained flat for 10 years.

The current market appears to be on far more solid ground than the booms of the late 20th century, in that true collectors make up a large portion of the demand. That's not to say the present good market will last forever, but I don't see a crash of the magnitude of the 1980 or 1990 crashes on the horizon.

alergar

In the 80's I was collecting casino silver dollars.

I didn't start collecting real coins until the late ninties, after my house got broke into and my casino dollar collection got stolen.

Collected world stamps as a kid, but lost interest in them after I moved back from England.

onlyroosies

I can remember buying common date DMPL morgans on Teletrade for $1300 and by the time
they arrived I could sell them for $2000. I bought boxes of generic MS65 Morgans for $300
a coin and sold the whole lot for $750 a coin to some fund. Of course there is the other end
of this. I was holding about $200K worth of coins when the bottom fell out. I was able to get
out of most with a small loss. My 2 worst were..... I paid $15K for an 04 L&C MS65
Gold commem and finally got out of it at $5500. I paid 10K for an 1893 MS65 Morgan and finally
sold it for $4K. After the dust had settled I had lost a few thousand dollars over the coarse of
about 14 months. The only coins I kept were my Roosies. I had just started collecting Roosies
as everything else was buy and sell. Been spooked ever since but still love those Roosies.

Onlyroosies

100proof1957

Twas a wild time,made about 10 bucks an hr,went to every show i could with 10 k in cash,the big shows like Long Beach was like the Wild West !
i came in at the tailend and got out at the peak.
Common MS65 Walkers in PCGS Holders were bid $350.00 un-seen,better dates were just nuts,41 S in 65 was bid like $3550.00.
I purchased 41P in MS67 for $2130.00 on Teletrade,didnt like it,called a dealer in LA 5 minutes after i got it and flipped it for $2250.00.
The boom was fueled by the funds mostly,Merrill-Lynch,Kidder-Peabody,i think even Superior Coin was doing a fund before McNall got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

cladking

It was a crazy time and was particularly painful for me. Not that I got caught up in the craze, I didn't. But
I had waited a long time for moderns to do something and they were just starting to stir in the late '80's.
The grading services wouldn't grade the coins because there were some shenanigans going on and they
didn't want to lend their stamp of approval. For the main part there wasn't much demand anyway, but Ikes
were becoming appreciated. There were some that would sell for hundreds of dollars which was quite a bit
for clad in those days. The booming market just overshadowed them. Dealers were buying dip in five gal-
lon buckets and speculators were buying any type coin that wasn't nailed down. Morgans at the high end
and lower unc grades were also being sought and bags were still being cherried.

When the market tanked many people either left the hobby or severely curtailed their involvement and the
hobby started a slow decline. By '95 low priced material was almost impossible to move at any price and
dealers were tripping over one another to lower the prices still further. Backrooms still filled up with unwanted
coins and the only easy sells were nice attractive uncs that didn't have too much of a premium and monsters.
There was a little activity in nice key date coins but these were usually discounted also. In '95 the modern mar-
ket finally started moving and everything's been going up since. There was a little step up in demand in '98
when the states issues were planned and a larger step up in '00 when this market matured a little. Since
then we've had the huge numbers of baby boomers returning to the hobby and millions of newbies starting
collecting.

The hobby is likely to remain dynamic for more than a decade and have a stong upward bias for at least a cou-
ple more years.

ScarsdaleCoin

OK guys....FYI in answer to what caused the bust.......I remember it all too well....Gulf War in August.......caused stock market to drop around 500 points in few weeks.........wall street got scared and I mean SCARED.... pulled a lot of money back out...ANA was a horror....dealers lost all of the backing $$$$ support...hence many dealers just dumped coins to get out.........if you had cash you were ok, but no coin dealers (excuse me maybe a few) had any....took til end of year to round out and stabilize.......anyway enough history....like they say in the elevator business...what goes up, must come down

Fairlaneman

Mass overgrading on raw coins which lead to Mass overpricing. Many people were run out of the Hobby, myself included, from total disgust at what was going on. This was like mid 1988 for myself and did not return to coins untill 1997 or 8.

A damn good period of time to forget but a period that should be remembered because of what can happen within this hobby.

I really do not think a period can happen like this now because of the firmly entrenched TPG's we have. Maybe prices will go into the dumpster but atleast your grades should be somewhat stable.

Ken

orie

This was bs(before slabs). I purchased 5 morgans for around $2,500 and sold them 10 years later for $150. They were for investment on the advice of a friend, and still is, who has been an ANA member for fifty years. My take on the cause was the silver run up(Bunker Hunt), tax shelters, etc, not dealers.

Bear

Nobody ever sees the end of a bull market, till after it breaks. This is a sad but often

true observation. Hindsight has many mavins, but forsight is a lonley orphan.

Catch22

I was a young collector in the late 70's and was still sharp enough to realize that the advertisement in the back of Coin World looked like trouble. It was an ad to invest in a portfolio of rare coins to be determined by the guys running the fund. It had monthly investment options beginning at 50 bucks to tens of thousands. The ad touted the interest of unnamed wall street big shots that were sure to drive the prices of Gem Uncirculated coins through the roof. It wasn't very long after that ad appeared when people started getting indicted for fraud. I don't recall the names, but they were big shots at the time.

onlyroosies

My take on the cause was the silver run up(Bunker Hunt), tax shelters, etc, not dealers

Now we,re back in the late 70's. I believe 1979 was the gold and silver run up. Gold hit $850 and
silver hit $50. Now we're back another 10 years and I remember being in the futures market
and watching gold go up limit ($25 at the time) day after day. My contracts were up mega bucks
and again I got stuck in the down draft. Limit down day after day and no way out. When I finally
sold my contracts I lost about $10K. It was luck and a great broker at the time why I only lost
$10K. I remember reading about a local guy that made about $50M in gold futures.

I didn't mean to pop this thread back 10 years. We could go forward to the stock market bubble
burst a few years ago and the $1M I lost there. Same story..... Made a mil, Gave it back.....

Life is good and I'm having fun....

Still.....
Onlyroosies

coingame2000

Bear,

The market collapsed on April 18, 1980 and I saw it coming. Sold out my few (at the time) customers in January then went to coin shows with a checkbook full of money, spent it the first day, sold all the coins I bought before the end of the show and went home with even more money. I was at the Jack Tarr coin show (in San Francisco) when one of my dealer friends called me on Thursday evening from the Central States show and told that the merry-go-round was about to stop. I grabbed the brass ring and dumped my inventory on Friday before the news hit the West coast in earnest.

Mkke

Hurricane

I remember common date ms-65 morgans going for,like, $500. It was insane.

100proof1957

at the end of the ride about mid 89,i had a beautiful Walker short set (41-47) 20 coins
16 in MS65 and the tough S mints in MS64,sold to a dealer for 7700.00,could build it today for about 3.5 k

mhammerman

I started in earnest about late '84 and lasted till '93 or so depending on when you actually declare someone toast. I came in as things had cooled down some from the $40 silver. For me, 1984 was like the end of a market upheaval. People were looking for morgans and there were plenty of nice ones around. Most of the circulated ones had become involved in the great silver rush from the Hunt brothers trying to corner the silver market. I was chasing ms 63/4 morgans a few years after the market had settled down some. I was going to shows, head in the game stumbling around but learning. Back then most folks worked with a dealer and a lot of those dealers worked out of small shops or just out of their house. After a proper courting period people would work with you and the better your contacts in the coin world, the better your access to the good stuff...that probably doesn't change from then to now. You would put in your request for a coin and someone would be going to a show or would get on coin net or something like that and track down what you were looking for. One guy would call another guy and three or four of the coins would appear and you would cherrypick the lot and pay a little premium for their efforts. It was kinda preslab but slabs were definitely showing up. The gsa cc's came out during that period and they were just getting a lot of looks and people were making a living just trading the gsa's and high end morgans. I don't really remember anyone going after other coins but I was in the morgan hunt, not much else could catch my eye. The silver thing was still cooking during this period but it had cooled from the earlier '80s. I remember there were people into $8+ silver real deep and it was showing up at about $5 and never moved up for years. Gold was even more of a sad movie...there were a lot of people bleeding from the low bullon value of gold. There were guys going around with entire cases of gsa cc's roaming the country. I started buying ms rolls at about $800 for common date ms morgans and had a few come and go, they were so hot that they were like liquid almost better than a bank, the cash was just a phone call away. There was a very active morgan market...people were all over them like a bad rash but just the good ones. People didn't just buy anything, at least not the crowd I was running with, we could all grade to within a part of a point and could damn near tell you what the last guy that owned the coin before you got it had eaten for breakfast. My activity started moving to vam's and it was so very cool to learn the die history of certain vam's and actuall be holding a white hot ms 63/64 stunning cc vam in your little plastic flip, in your hot little hand with your huge hand lens, under a 100 watt soft light. I remember a coin like that would cost $500 or $600 buks. I guess the difference between then and now is that back then you could find coins, maybe 3 or 4 of the same grade with a vam or two in the lot, now it doesn't look quite as easy to find good coins. I still have my huge color morgan book with a huge full color plate of each date/mm but I'm not going to unpack it. It seems that things started to go south in the business world actually, for me and a huge number of other people. Things got bad and then it was over, just like that!

Now, I look at the morgan market and what's going on and it seems so much different. I saw silver play with $8 recently, noticed all the houses being built on cheap money and I see a lot of the same stars coming into alignment again so who knows. I will say that it was hot back then, it was very hot and cash talked, b.s. walked.

It is very nice to be getting back in to coin collecting and the market because now it is poetry and art and methodical patient persuit, not like it was back then but could it ever be that way again. Is the mint going to ever issue a bunch of gsa's or is silver going to ever take everybody back to the moon...

thanks for letting me tell that story

BowTieCoins

Very cool thread here!! Tell us more!!

Katrina

fountainheadgold

In the late seventies I was buying gold, silver at my Antique shop, Mostly silver. metals were going up everyday, people were bringing sterling flatware, and tea sets, coins, you name it. sometimes it got so busy I would have to weigh by feel. that is holding it in my hands and guessing. we only had 1 scale and i would guess to speed things up. We got stuck holding $200,000.00 worth of silver at an average of $39.00 an once. I am still waiting to get out of this deal. If I wait long enough I may have the last laugh, By the way I made enough in that period to be able not to worry about the hold. when silver was at it low I converted it all to bullion and now have it in safty deposit boxes, probably for my kids

majorbigtime

The market was waaaaay overheated, condition freaks paying outraageous prices for a grade point or two (yes, this still occurs, but not with the same vigor), telemarketers, boiler rooms pushing coins (they had no real numismatic expertice), and Wall St investment funds proliferated. Both "rare" type and generics (primarily common date hi-grade Morgans) were "hot"!

I then lived in SoCal, and a character named Johathan was all over TV and the radio, touting sure fire investments in coins. I it was rumored that he went bust, and hung a lot of paper (bad checks) on the way out.

Somehow, I was lucky (smart?) enough to stay on the sidelines during this period. With 20-20 hindsight, I should have sold everything I owned as it could be rebought for cents on the dollar a few years later.

For years, many ads would quote the peak prices to show what a bargaing the coin was. I don't see much of this anymore.

segoja

Late 80's boom was a blast. I remember buying 10-20 MS65 Franklins (any date) for $100 each and walking them across the room and getting $140 each. I thought I was hot $#%^. But as profits rose, so did inventory values, and when the crash came, nothing was selling.

I hope this market doesn't come to that.

The difference is that this market is fueled by collectors, the last fueled by investors (funds). The other advantage of this market is the mint's programs that are getting more and more Americans into coins. That provides breadth, which sustains bull markets of all types.

Hope it lasts forever!

roadrunner

Even at the peak of the '88-'90 Market pricing was fairly orderly and the blue sheet was keeping up for the most part. Asking 10% or even 20% over sheet was the norm at the peak. For type coins there was a very uniform price structure from grade to grade of doubling the price from MS64 to MS67. Hence a MS67 usually brought 8x the price of a 64 and 4x the price of a 65. Some of this pricing behavior still exists today even when the pops don't support a doubling in price.

You could get nice prices for coins right into March of 1990. I unloaded a pair of my best seated quarters for about $20,000 each.
Prices were still crazy and it seemed like the time to get out.
My mistake was thinking I was safer trading into MS64 Saints at $1000 each (they had been $1500). The saints did better than those coins would have, but they got slaughtered a bit too on the way down. I sold them out when they briefly popped back up to around $735 per coin. Shortly thereafter they flopped to around $630 and then meandererd all the way down to $400 or so over the next 5-10 years.

roadrunner

ladyship

Does anyone have any idea how much the market shrank in numbers of collectors and dealers after this crash?

longnine009

It was horrible to be a buyer. An MS67 Walker was one that
hadn't been stabbed with an ice pick.

Pick up some back issues of CDN on ebay. Especially
1979-1980. It's interesting reading.

BillJones

I was still a collector then, not a dealer.

My view of it was that it was pretty stinky becuase my opinion of it was that it was an over-blown market that was driven by investors and speculators. It did not affect me very much because my interests ran to early coins, which were not "players" in that market. Those who were collecting or fooling with the "old commemoratives" for speculation where the ones who really got burned. The prices for those coins have never recovered to the levels they held then, but they might do so in the future.

mhammerman

"The difference is that this market is fueled by collectors, the last fueled by investors (funds). The other advantage of this market is the mint's programs that are getting more and more Americans into coins. That provides breadth, which sustains bull markets of all types."



There is more breadth now and I believe and the mint is showing up with some interesting coinage. It appears that the collector base is broadening as is the investor base. It is peculiar that the market follows certain coins during certain periods. You worry about China sucking up all the resources like they are doing now with steel and other commodities. It is not unimaginable that there will come a point soon where there is exponential growth in the consumption by asian markets and you find yourself bidding against someone in Singapore on an international coin board for anything over ms 63...probably for more than a few buks. Not sure if this is good or bad, depends on how you play it.

Three things that I can offer:
1. don't spend money you dont have betting on the come
2. buy as much quality as you can with what you have to
spend
3. study and learn about the coins, the market and the people, go
to shows, read books and visit some shops.


...Onward!

Cameonut

Those were the days! I remember the PCGS rattler holders and the NGC old style holders were especially hot. Dealers couldn't keep slabbed material in stock. Prices were out of this world - maybe not to be seen again in my lifetime.

I was lucky, I didn't get hurt when the bottom fell out. I decided to sell most of my brilliant proof coins at just the right time - made quite a bit. But that is when I started collecting cameos - at that time the designations were not on the holders so you could get.

I now wonder if some of the slabs I bought in this era and tucked away might grade a bit higher today!

JRocco

One thing I remember clearly, as has been stated, were the claims of CH BU, and GEM BU, and A UNC, and CH UNC+, etc etc etc. Yet they all graded the same---about 3 points lower than their claims. CH BU were often sliders, A UNC were cleaned XF, GEM BU was a nice 62/63 coin and CH UNC+ was a B/B cleaned coin. Oh well, glad those times are over. What scares me now is the total insanity of some high grade modern prices. SOME PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET KILLED when the reality sets in. As a Morgan collector I still have a closet fear that another "great hoard" will be found of a particular mint or year and destroy prices for a while till they get absorbed into the market. For this reason, I got into collecting higher grade Lincoln's during the 80's partly because I felt that no great hoard of these would ever be found to destabilize the market, cause who the heck would hoard high grade unc. Lincoln's ??? I think with the intro of state quarters,., and the new Jeff rev., and possible changes to the Lincoln in a few years, our hobby will stay strong for a while.

baccaruda

For years, many ads would quote the peak prices to show what a bargaing the coin was. I don't see much of this anymore.

I'm guessing you don't watch the "Coin Vault"...

jcping

> coin "boom" of the late '80s? What was it like?

Here is an ads and we did not see it today.

BUY an 1889-CC Select BU Morgan dollar for $xx,xxx.00. We guarantee it go up by xx% in three years. We will send you a quarter eagle (or a half eagle) US gold coin. If the 89-CC Morgan did not match the growth, the gold coin is yours.

The ads is in Coin World. Did you get a picture about the crazy-ness of 88-89?

Even slab coins are popular at the time. More than half (to three quarters) coins in the Long Beach shows are still raw.

majorbigtime

<< <i>

I'm guessing you don't watch the "Coin Vault"... >>



Good guess--I can't stand to watch that absurdity. It's bad for the hobby and the market IMO!

cladking

<< <i>



One thing I remember clearly, as has been stated, were the claims of CH BU, and GEM BU, and A UNC, and CH UNC+, etc etc etc. Yet they all graded the same---about 3 points lower than their claims. CH BU were often sliders, A UNC were cleaned XF, GEM BU was a nice 62/63 coin and CH UNC+ was a B/B cleaned coin. Oh well, glad those times are over. What scares me now is the total insanity of some high grade modern prices. SOME PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET KILLED when the reality sets in. As a Morgan collector I still have a closet fear that another "great hoard" will be found of a particular mint or year and destroy prices for a while till they get absorbed into the market. For this reason, I got into collecting higher grade Lincoln's during the 80's partly because I felt that no great hoard of these would ever be found to destabilize the market, cause who the heck would hoard high grade unc. Lincoln's ??? I think with the intro of state quarters,., and the new Jeff rev., and possible changes to the Lincoln in a few years, our hobby will stay strong for a while. >>



You sound like someone who can grade in any era.

While the statement that people could get burned in some moderns is a real consideration,
it might be pointed out that at least with modern issues the collector has a better chance of
knowing populations if he does his homework. With the Morgans it was impossible to know
how many of any date was/ is in storage or had been hoarded. Generally with most of the
moderns one can get a fairly accurate assessment of the number of coins available and the
percentage in each grade.

It is ironic that Lincolns are one of the more greatly hoarded US coins.