What's up with the '73 mint set?
cladking
Posts: 30,337 ✭✭✭✭✭
All of a sudden the set is hard to find and the component parts (especially the Philly half) seem to be in short supply.
This has always been an interesting date because most of the coins in it are relatively common. The P mint cent and Philly nickel weren't saved much in rolls and the Ikes are mint sets only. The value of the set has been all over the map since the Ikes commanded a huge premium all through the '70's but the demand fell while plenty of sets were still around. This set actually got down to about $5 in the '90's and, no doubt, a few of the ikes were just hauled off to the banks. In those days the half dollars were hardly worth the cost of postage so most were spent.
I can't help but wonder that now the set is at over $20 retail that maybe it's in part because the half dollars are tough to find and the Ikes are just hot. The quarters in this set are readily available but only because so many sets are destroyed. There are no rolls.
This date comes pretty nice except the two larger coins are scratched. There is little problem with tarnish for the date.
Comments
I found "448 results for 1973 mint set" on eBay. ???
I was not getting sets from the Mint at that time....Living/working in other countries and well out of the U.S. coin loop.... got some coins from countries I lived in though. I will look around for a '73 set and see what I can find. Cheers, RickO
Around 1974 or 1975 the 73 Ike was the go too coin everyone had to have. The silver proof was running around $50 and the uncirculated set get up around 30 or 35 dollars with the individual Ike's going, when really nice, above $20 each. I recently found a 73 P at the bank and brought it home (still pretty nice shape) and put it in a flip. I have the P and D in my Ike dansco about half filled but that's not part of the collection, it'll go to the grandkids when I kick off.
In 1971, in the Air Force, when we lined up for payday (back when they gave us cash), you had to take $5 in Ikes and everyone bellyached about how they dragged your pocket down. They have never had a lot of love as far as I can tell.
How do you search this.
I found only 103 results and many of them were proof sets or something else. A few were multiples. I'd guess there were about "70" distinct mint sets available.
But it's the prices I find surprising. 5 years ago you couldn't give these away and 2 years ago it was about a $7 set. Now most appear to be trading at retail of around $20.
No '73 coin is rare and the mint set is not rare either. The reason moderns are so readily available has always been that there is no demand and not that the supply is high. This is proven by the low prices of most modern rarities. Only the unique and extremely rare moderns bring very high prices and these are much lower than equally scarce classics.
I think I got the two I have (well, I busted one of them up years ago) for $5-8 each ~15-20 years ago. I haven’t looked for 70s mint sets in a long time and haven’t seen a price increase. I was thinking of buying a few 70s sets if I could find a few gems in them.
i've never really known the ebay algorithm to show everything of a specific category and//or search at any one time. you may desire to use different browsers, devices, laptop, pc, phone, tablet etc and compare results. even a different ip should affect this. ie: proxy, vpn, location etc.
i've been trying to list more with my iphone vs laptop as my search results on each yield vastly different results for active and sold items so hoping items listed via the phone may yield different/more customers. gotta try different things to get different results usually.
The 1973 set is nice to have as a conversation piece. It contains a one year type coin: The Lincoln Cent.
Frank Gasparro prepared a new reverse die for the 1973 Cent, but people at the Mint thought that his initials were too big and prominent.
They made him prepare a completely new reverse die for the 1974 year, leaving the 1973 Lincoln to become a one-year only type coin.
Pete
I had forgotten this.
The P and S mint cents are underappreciated since relatively few rolls were set aside. Many of the rolls are tarnished now. The mint set coins tend to be OK but nice attractive coins are just a little tough in the sets. Strikes are good but there are a lot of scratches.
There are no great rarities in this set other than very clean P mint Ikes but every coin is probably underappreciated even in comparison to other moderns.
But I do believe buyers are scrambling to get a few specific coins out of the last of these sets. The supply in the future will have to come from the sets destroyed over the last nearly half a century and most of these coins are either gone or are in circulation in low grade.
It's an interesting situation for what was once the king of mint sets but now is "just another date". It was hard to imagine back in the '70's that the Ikes wouldn't always drive the price of the '73 set.