Old Holders and the Coin Market of 1989

philographer

I think that we all wonder from time to time about the history of our coins…

Where have they been? Who carried them? Who plucked them from the original

bag or roll? Who admired them? How often have they been bought and sold? In

what velvet cases or cold steel boxes have they rested?


Especially when I pick up a coin in an older slab, I have the notion that the coin

inside has been in the formal coin marketplace for the last 20 years. It was not recently

discovered. Its value has been known.



Here is a nice 1898 Morgan in an old Fatty holder I picked up recently…




The obverse:




The reverse:




And the PCGS price chart going back 40+ years:




1989-1991…Ouch!


Now I wonder…as I see the price rising...on the upswing: Who bought the coin? How long did

he hold it? How fast did he sell it? And as the price falls...on the downswing: Did the owner hold,

or bail? Sell near the top? Lose his shirt?



Especially when you hold a coin in an old holder, do you think about the market it has

seen? Do you wonder about the owners who experienced the price plunge of 1989-1991?

LanceNewmanOCC

.
nice presentation and yes too all of the above
.

Unknown

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DeliaBug

Wasn't that when Wall St. decided to like coins? Curious if that spike is there for MS-64.

Tiny

It is really cool to sit there and wonder where these coins have been and I wish there was a way to pull
finger prints off some coins that have full clear ones. I like collecting coins like that and if I could I'd send
them to the FBI to run the prints.

morgansforever

Interesting topic, I graduated HS in 89, my only concern then was girls, how my mullet looked, cars and parties.
The 99 Silver proof set from the Mint was my first numismatic purchase, the rest is history.
What was the price of a generic $20 DE in 65?

WTCG

Not often but once in a while when you find an older slab a price sticker from many years ago is still attached to it. On those stickers on MS65 common date Morgans I've seen numbers as high as $800, prices that seem outrageous today but was the going price back then.

roadrunner

<< <i>Interesting topic, I graduated HS in 89, my only concern then was girls, how my mullet looked, cars and parties.
The 99 Silver proof set from the Mint was my first numismatic purchase, the rest is history.
What was the price of a generic $20 DE in 65? >>



An MS65 $20 Saint was $4,000 give or take during the '89 mania. Some nicer ones were probably 10% higher. Today MS65's are slightly over $2,000.
But today's MS65 doesn't hold a candle to that 1989 MS65. And there was much grade compression back then at the 65 level. It took a heckuva coin to
get a 66 grade in any denomination. There were so few coins slabbed in only 3 yrs that they were fairly scarce items compared to raw coins. Today it almost
seems like the opposite is in play when it comes to gem coins. Even in 1990 a slabbed coin auction was still somewhat of an oddity. Raw coin auctions still ruled.

blu62vette

I have on rattler DMPL with a price one the back, I bought it for about 1/3 of the old marked price and it is now back to half of that marked price.

philographer

By July of 1992, prices had come down. Some had further to go. Some prices then

are the same as they are today...20 years later, i.e. 65 Morgans for $125 (close enough)



Check out this old ad:

410a

From an investing stand point the coins were a horrible buy at the top, but who knew. Many dealers shied away from buying at that time, but some made a market. I have old coin world newspapers from the period, it is fun to see what Hertzberg sold coins for and how big their ad was. They, the coins, had to be going somewhere. 1898 P is a commom MS 65, but not as common as an 1881 S or 79 S mint, you get the idea, but back then??? There weren't enough coins graded and holdered fast enough to let the market settle out. Then you could clump them all into "common" etc. due to population. Wayne Millers book tells the tale of rarity in Silver Dollars not much has changed and it was written in the 1970s.
The price on that coin is very interesting and is a "market aberration", at least wise in my mind it is. Further you would have to use an inflation calculator to figure out the real loss of the money spent. The coin you show is a nice coin for the grade. Believe it or not, there was a short period when NGC sold at a premium over PCGS when it came to commons, that is if I recall correctly.