Has the market for Proof/Mint Sets finally died?
keets
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My boss is a strong buyer and wholesaler of Proof and Mint Sets, he always has been since I first met him around 1987. Over the last 10-15 years things have been slowing and moving down consistently. There are some Mint Sets that get listed on the GreySheet so close to bid that even 10% back puts them under face value!! Believe it or not, I have even seen bid prices on that guide that were under face value buy several cents.
We recently found out that a wholesale buyer we use will no longer be able to take anything from us. That creates a bit of a pickle and leaves many dealers who would sell to us out in the cold. We'll be offering about 25-35% back from now on.
Has anyone else heard of this trend?
Al H.
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when you are passing 15% back of face, let me know
I sold a 1958 Mint set in the original packaging for 15% back a few months ago to a dealer friend. He tried to sell it to his usual buyer and they told him to try and get his money back. Not worth the trouble at any price.
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Died, yes years ago. I still buy pre 65 and cut the silver out. Haven't paid over spot for one since 2010-ish. Any set not silver just open and dump in the ole coinstar.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
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If any of you are dumping sets in the coinstar let me know. I buy mixed random cello cutouts and circ sets. They're still selling "ok" on ebay but after fees and time spent and shipping and whatever there's not much point.
The only ones I see worth a lot that are getting attention are 1948 and prior.
Wow, I unloaded nearly all of my extra proof and mint sets about 5 years ago. I guess I lucked out on that timing.
All I have left is one '58 mint set with some toned coins in it. Will never sell it back of bid - I'd rather hang on to it. (But I will sell it at some point).
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I am curious who these people are that are selling sets to dealers cheap enough where dealers can flip them for a profit and still be under face value. Sounds like they are terrible at math.
I ended up breaking up six 2007 presidential dollar sets for Coinstar. Selling them on eBay financially was just pointless.
What are the 1958's going for these days?
there seems to still be a "market" for Mint Sets through 1958 and Proof Sets through 1959, but the prices seem to be subject to the overall Set appearance or the high grade of individual coins. past these dates(from my experience) the Sets are too common to keep the prices from falling back.
what we do is keep "in stock" two Proof/Mint Sets from 1965 to date pulled from what we buy over the counter or wholesale from other dealers. since my boss routinely attends some monthly shows we move all the excess at that time. my responsibility is to search everything for certain high grade coins and major varieties.
if this trend holds true and sellers choose not to sell at the required lower prices I, for one, will miss the opportunity to look through the coins and buy the choicest ones cheaply. I really enjoy the hunting.
Yes. It's crazy. I've told many dealers that we should all cooperate and put those "face value sets" into circulation until they get "scarce enough" to command a premium. It's insane.
I mean, what the heck are you supposed to do with a set that has a $3.25 bid/$3.50 ask but $2.90 in face value? Even if you could get full ask, you are only at 60 cents over face value. And how long would you have to hold it in inventory waiting to get full ask?
Forever??
I gave up trying to sell whole sets. Excluding errors, super toners, varieties, seldom seen coin worth grading, etc., all clad stuff goes in the junk bins. Halves in the $1 bin, quarters in the .50 bin, dimes, nickels, and cents in the .25-5/$1 bin. Prez and SBA dollars I use for change. Proof Ike's get priced at a few $ and sell quick, most other Ike's also change. Nice little profit that way, the bins rotate quickly, and dealers keep bringing me sets at face value or face + .25 or so and are happy to get rid of them. I buy tons of bags of cut out proof/mint coins at face, usually missing the halves and maybe dollars from dealers too, get .41 of face, sell them at $1.10 I do see some grouped sets in the Facebook groups sell decently though, but the bin thing keeps the YNs and dumpster divers happy for now.
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keets, Do you see another area of numismatics that will have an oversupply vs demand in the near future? An area that is difficult to move in the shop you work in?
If you work a bit harder and cut them up and sort then into bags of 20 or so different dates of the same denomination you can get 2X or 3X maybe even 10X for cents and nickels. The key is working harder.
If no one is bidding for the mint sets then the price might as well be $0. You'll find plenty of buyer at 20% in back of that.
I buy every 1961 mint set I can find at todays price. Mintage of less than 250,000? Bring em!!
The Cupro nickel sets just junk never fooled w them.
Others I sell cost plus or if cut up NN retail then put in junk box.
I don’t wholesale junk or inexpensive material - keystone markup them at very least. Some of my highest profit sales at shows is junk. A friend who runs a shop cuts them out to 2x2 then various junk boxes - all of it heavily marked up. Helps pay his expenses.
Customer picks out $26 junk I might fudge it down to $20 and it may have cost me $5-$10. When selling junk don’t do it any less than keystone markup. Junk box coins priced $1 to $20 some might may be from bulk wold coin deal bought really cheap. Limit junk box to sonething they can quickly go thru then refill as sells. If guy there too long going thru it take it from him “buying anything?” If not put it away until he leaves table.
For the last several months, wholesalers in the Chicagoland area have been at 50% / no buy on most mint sets and many proof sets. Recently its picked up, some dealers are buying at 10-20% back.
Interesting info.
I do see alot of these proof coins in junk bins.
I can normally buy proof sets around 30 back of bid and sometimes even more. Mint sets I cut up and throw in bins. They are good for people building modern sets
HAPPY COLLECTING
I am putting together a Kennedy Half set (no proofs) and an Ike set complete. I look through a lot of mint and proof sets to cut out the half (from the mint sets) and the Ike's from the mint and proof sets. The proof halves go into flips in the box, the rest of the coins, go into the piggy bank as spare change. It's actually cheaper to buy the sets than to go through a dealer stock book for a 2x2 half or dollar than it is to buy the sets and spend the change.
Hell I'm regularly finding pre 65 90% silver proofs when buying straight junk @ spot to 5% under spot. Modern 90% proofs 5-10% under. Not like I'm finding unlimited supplies at that price but more than enough to keep the silver stack happy.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
As a collector I gave up on the mint sets and clad Proof sets years ago for those years when a 90% silver set was available. I like to maintain annual collections, but I was losing money on clad sets year after year. At least the silver sets have melt values.
Why did the sets sell so many back in the day compared to now?
Much smaller collector base? People just don't buy because of price drops?
Change in collector taste?
As long as brick and mortar shops exist, the market for proof/mint sets will never die out.
You guys are killing me. I would love to get my hands on dozens or a few hundred sets at face or slightly over. Retail options still are well over face, but probably a slow sell.
Definitely dead (good luck making money on it), I did not want this stuff 20 years ago. If had shop and they bringing this junk in to dump on me would politely tell them “we have phased these out.....”
I remember selling some 1969-S Proof sets in 1970 for $18, I don’t think they have touched that level since. You can go to the same well only so many times.
No one buys them for birthdays anymore.
Give a kid a proof set. Watch the curious expression.
I stopped buying the sets years ago.. well, I did buy the silver proof sets a bit longer.... They all sit in a box in a corner downstairs. I will pick up the occasional 1964 set at a show if it has an AH half. I really should go through them to look for any special coins and just spend the rest - well, not the silver
Cheers, RickO
Current circulating coins are scrap metal. Who would want shinier junk?
I just asked a guy yesterday WHY people come to “sell” almost 98% of the time. In 9 years I been here, that’s my experience.
Every shop I ever walked into in my entire life , I spent money to “buy” something. This includes coin shops and pawn shops. It’s an odd world, working in a coin shop. People don’t collect, they pawn trinkets.
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"People" need money; not coins.
I think that all of those points you cited are in play.
Back in the 1960s, especially after 1964, when the Kennedy half dollar made a big splash with collectors, people eagerly awaited the issuance of the new Proof sets. The Special Mint Sets displeased many collectors, and when Proof sets returned in 1968, there was a big pent-up demand for them. When you bought five sets from the mint, which was the per order limit, you were assured that you could take them to your local dealer and make two or three dollars a set.
It seemed like every collector wanted to “the first guy on the block” to get that years new Proof sets. The dealers needed the coins because they had customers who were unwilling to wait for the mint to deliver the sets. A couple dollars per set profit might not sound like much, but in those days a dollar could buy three gallons of gas. If it was a good year, like 1970, you made a little more.
I think the beginning of the end started with the 1971 set. That was first year that there was no silver coin in the Proof set, and as a collector I thought those sets were dull, boring and ugly. Things perked up a bit when the Eisenhower Dollar was introduced and added to the Proof set in 1973 as a copper-nickel clad coin for the first time. That was good year because you had to buy coins from the mint to get any of the Ike dollars dated 1973. There were little promotions that came and went, like “the 1975-S penny was going to be great because its mintage was less than the 1914-D.”
Also the mint began issuing Cameo Proof coins as a matter of policy. That was a good and bad thing. It may have increased interest for a while, but it also ended searching through sets to get Cameo Proof coins. They all were Cameos.
I think the major turning point circa 1979-80 when the big money got into coins. For some people, spending $10,000 on coins was not as big a deal any more. People were rushing to buy “things” in the runaway inflationary economy. The Consumer Price Index was increasing at a 20+% per year clip, and holding cash seemed stupid. Money market accounts were earning 16%. “Little stuff,” like Proof sets got lost in the shuffle, and investors and collectors moved on to bigger and better things.
After that I think that the Proof sets fell out of favor. Some collectors began to look down on Proof coins, and got more interested in high grade circulation strikes, which are harder to find. There are core collectors, like me, who buy one set every year, but once I have my set, I don’t want any more, and new collectors don’t seem to want them. Therefore the old sets are stuck in the doldrums with few active buyers.
There have been exceptions, like the 1999 sets that included the State Quarters, but that was just blip. It has not had good staying power.
I think people need food, shelter, clothing and water.... and lots of love, of course.
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the down side of this is that some valuable, collected and diificult to attribute Varieties will enter the melting pot. some of what I'm talking about are varieties that some collectors may not even be aware of. gone forever............................
Classic collectors can't understand these markets.
Buyers have to bid based on what seller actually have and now days these are often completely picked over. Additionally sets now are often corroded and this especially applies to '68, '69, '70, '71, '75, '76, '77 '78, '79, and 1980. To a lesser extent it applies to all pre-1985 sets and many later ones. A picked over lot of 1971 mint sets is a liability rather than an asset. Sure 1971 mint sets are getting scarce and would sell for a lot of money if there were demand but there is no demand because every collector knows these were made in the billions and will be common till the end of time.
Proof sets are beautiful but their number still swamp the real demand of collectors. More than half are gone now but the supply is still large enough that the demand hasn't caught it.
There is far more supply than demand. When that happens, prices go ...
The families of the collectors. Unfortunately, many people with good intention want to "leave" the coins to their family members. I always tell people, sell it while you are still around and leave them the money. The heirs have nothing in it, and when presented with offers from local dealer (or pawn shop, or next door neighbor) are happy to accept just to get rid of it.
Been telling the buyers to stop buying the sets for past year or so. Problem is they sit around. Take up space. Have to be counted and many have been picked through or the OMP is messed up. They just don’t warrant shelf space.
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My grandparents first bought us Mint/SMS/Proof sets each year after we were born. My parents & then I picked up the mantle when my kids were each born. We bought each 1 (usually clad) proof set each year until 2011. I even managed to buy each a set going back to 1982 (well before their birth years), as they were readily available at ridiculously low prices. (Maybe now's a good time to start picking up some from prior years as well, if so cheap).
After that, I started questioning the value of buying annual sets, as prices skyrocketed for plain old clad coins, and demand/prices fell for older sets. I figured it made more sense to buy them a SAE or Morgan/etc each year for the same price. And I haven't looked back since.
I just wish my grandparents/parents had started getting me sets in 1958 vs 1962.......
Makes sense
I do like these proof coins. I have proof and mint sets going back to 1999 with a few other sets. 77 proof set (birth year), 3 coin 76 sets, 61 to 64 proof and 58 mint set.
I was thinking it might be better to just buy nice slabbed proof coins, Starting with 50 to 64.