Is it possible to corner the market on a coin of 50-60 pieces?

Longacre

I saw this on a web site offering a particular coin for sale:

Only 4,000 were struck and it is unlikely that more than fifty to sixty are known with most grading VF to EF.... Considering that most XXX can be obtained in the $5,000-10,000 range, this would be a great issue to hoard and attempt to corner the market on, as the market cap for XXX is well under $1 million.


Has anyone ever attempted to corner the market on a coin that has 50-60 in existance? I understand that you can do it with a unique item to a 1-2 item coin, but how difficult would it be to do it with 50-60 pieces? I thought this comment was interesting. Does anyone have any thoughts?

kranky

I don't think it could be done in the real world. You'd need to consider how many are in strong hands and won't be available for purchase, how many people would even want one (because without demand, cornering the market will mean nothing), and whether you could actually locate all the examples which become available. You can't tell every dealer that you want them because that's shooting yourself in the foot.

Not to mention it would take a very long time. (Unless you're talking about 1964 SMS coins, which seem to be incredibly available for coins that supposedly had a mintage of a dozen or so.)

lathmach

Sure you can.
If you have deep pockets, you can do it.
Just buy everything that comes on the market.

Ray

LanLord

You would need more money than I have.

You would need to keep your intentions secret.

You would need to make all your purchases fairly close to one another or risk the coin taking off on your price wise.

As long as there are willing sellers, I don't see why you couldn't do something like that. But if there are only 50 or so known and it's only $5000 it's probably not got a great following to begin with, will your cornering of the market be financially beneficial or will you have 50 turkeys to unload some day?

RYK

I think it would be more interesting to attempt to do it with a coin that many people (or a few people...or somebody) actually care about! Suggested coins in my area of interest would include 61-D $5, 59-O $10, and 41-O $10. Frankly, if you acquired 20 of any of these, you probably could affect pricing. I have recently heard of a Dahlonega collector hoarding a better date $5 (not one of the keys) because he thought it was undervalued. Just this morning, I thought it would be interesting to hoard the 46-D $5 for the same reason.

I am not sure that there are enough New Orleans QE collectors that it would matter--but I acknowledge that I might be dead wrong on this. At any rate, I can think of better things to do with $1 M (both coin-related and unrelated).

JrGMan2004

Might be able to do it on 1802 Half-Dimes... buy every single one that comes to auction

D

You would need more money than I have.
-LanLord

Share the wealth? .

-Daniel

Conder101

The closest I can think of someone doing somthing like is a collector of early copper who decided that a particular R-5 variety (31 -75 Known) was actually more common than that. So he decided to singlehandedly prove that it was an R-4 and he started hoarding them. Well that variety is now considered to be a mid to low end R-4 (115 - 200 pieces) and he has something like 83 of them. He has so many of them that he has had a definite effect on the price of this variety. A low R-4 on a common date normally doesn't command much if any premium. This varety now lists at about four times that of a common variety.

FullStepJeffs

At one point a few years ago, I thought about hoarding the 1940, Reverse of 38 FS24 Proof Jefferson of which there were less than 20 graded (at that time). I then started noticing more showing up and realized it really wasn't worth the possibility that 100's existed in all grades.

I also talked to an individual who told me he owned all of the 1964 SMS Jeffersons (who knows if he was really telling me the truth). I asked him why he owned all 10 or so known and he related that he just never thought about selling them. Shortly after that conversation, they started showing up in the auctions bringing 8-10K each. Who knows if it was just a coincidence... but it happened.

Steve

MrEureka

It can be done relatively easily. The tricky part is finding a way to profitably unload the position. That will be difficult unless:

1. The coin could seem like good value even at a much higher price.

2. The coin is highly distinctive. (That way, the values of similar types of coins will not make the cornered coin seem like it's overpriced.)

I might try the following:

All 1896 patterns

1883 Hawaiian 1/8 dollars

1787 Excelsior coppers

AgMe

I think the real question is how many collectors have the coins (vs dealers) & how many collectors would want them after you have all of them.

As an example:

I'm always looking for PR70 DCAM Ikes (any year), and I'm not alone. It would take a 10x increase in bid for me to sell them though.

-g