Quarterly Review: COLLECTOR COINS FIND THEIR FOOTING

This month’s edition of the Quarterly II features half dollars through $3 gold and we are pleased to report that levels for the better dates in these series have found solid ground across the board.

Over the past year we’ve done the hard work of adjusting pricing levels to market, but we now see an increasing amount of coins hitting our levels in live auction venues, exchange bids and reported trades. This is gratifying and encouraging as this support means readers can use our sheets with increasing confidence that the market will support these levels.

Type coins represented here are still feeling some downward momentum. Most notably, common-date Bust half dollars in MS64 and MS65 still seem to under perform and our reported prices are, if anything, supported by active sight-seen bids for CAC coins. The Bluesheet reflects much lower values for coins the market deems inferior to their stickered cousins. Other areas of type-coin weakness are gem proof Seated half dollars (no motto and with motto) and Trade dollars.

Frankly, we are still surprised by the declining values of gem type coins and many of the dealers we speak to feel the same way. Retail buyers in these areas remain thin, and market makers are wisely reluctant to accumulate too much inventory.

With that said, however, values seen for some of these issues are at multi-year lows and we highly encourage our readers to examine these series. It may well be time to play the contrarian game and jump in.

Moving to gold issues, when one ignores the vicissitudes of generic (common) issues, the dated material continues to do quite well. Auction records for better dates are still all over the place, and heavily reliant on quality, however, nobody seems to have an uncomfortably large inventory of better-date Liberty gold coins right now.

This 1864 $3 graded PCGS/CAC MS65 realized a healthy $44,650 at a recent Stacks-Bowers auction

Additionally, we are aware of several impactful buyers of key gold issues, and this new demand is literally draining dealer inventories of the coolest material. When this demand shifts to silver type coins, the potential for upward price movement could be swift.

BY JOHN FEIGENBAUM, PUBLISHER
& PATRICK IAN PEREZ, EDITOR