SELL RECOMMENDATIONS
By Silvano DiGenova and Neil Berman

There are two basic types of coins that we recommend selling now, regardless of whether the seller takes profits or losses while selling. The first sell recommendation is modern coins which include American eagles, in silver, gold and platinum, and modern commemoratives after 1954  in silver and gold. The second is modern singles, which includes uncirculated roles, state quarter rolls, and most coins made after 1965, if there is a large premium due to the certified grade.

Modern Commemoratives and Bullion Coins

Let’s take a look at the silver eagles. In 1986 the US Mint began striking gold and silver bullion coins to compete with the bullion coins of other nations. The value of these coins was intended to be directly tied to the value of their metal. With the exception of a few with very short mintages, this is still basically true. While these coins are touted and priced by mass marketers and less than educated coin dealers as having a future due the current “limited” number of certified MS69 or MS70 examples, these coins were made in mass, carefully packed directly into rolls, never bags, and the rolls cased. It would surprise us if the average grade is as low as MS68 on these coins, whose total mintage so far exceeds one hundred fifty million coins. If a collector who would one day like to resell his coins or investor were to think about this for one minute, he could ask himself a question.

Of the three quarter of a million coins plus of this type certified, only two hundred odd are MS66, eight hundred odd are MS67 and nine thousand are MS68. But over seven hundred thirty-four thousand are MS69, and more than twenty-four thousand are MS70. Add another hundred thousand more or less from the other grading service, and will those numbers sound even remotely inviting to the next buyer, or frankly, to anyone who knows how to read a NGC or PCGS population report.

And it does not end there.  What is to stop any dealer from buying five thousand of these coins and sending them all in to be certified and make more MS70 coins; lots and lots more MS70 coins. Nothing, in fact is already being done. And because it is pretty hard to hide five thousand eagle coins, all the market makers even know who is doing it. How can any coin collector want bragging rights to such a coin, or have any pride in ownership of a coin that is so common, even if he owns the best one known this week, when certainly there will be lots of others equal next week?

What is a better investment? Could it be that an 1988 silver eagle in MS70 priced at fourteen thousand dollars, with a mintage of over five million coins, and with a really common MS67 example worth ten bucks, maybe, or is it perhaps a 1908 Gold Quarter Eagle in PF65, with a total mintage nearly one hundred years ago of two hundred thirty-six coins, of which maybe perhaps a half hundred survive today in all conditions, for about the same money. How could there even be a question here for a reasonable person?

Next let us take a look at modern silver commemoratives. The 1982 George Washington Half Dollar with a mintage of seven million, the 1995 and 1996 Olympiad Centennial Half Dollars at two million each, the 1986 Statue of Liberty Half Dollar at seven million, for just an example. While they are fine examples of pride in our country’s history, they are only collectable if you pay a very small premium over issue price. The huge mintages of these coins will preclude them from ever becoming scarce. Washington alone, for example, has thirty-five hundred examples certified, and over ninety-nine percent of these grades at least MS68 by NGC or PCGS.  Like the Roman denarii before them almost four thousand years ago, they are common, inexpensive and will be as easy to buy in fifty years as the ancient Roman coins are today. On the other hand, while never an investment the collector who wants to can buy the ones with the lower mintages for a small premium over bullion (which was the intent of the mint in the first place) and they can be another interesting and fun coin collectable, just like the Roman Denarii before them did.

The modern gold commemoratives pose a problem of a different sort to the collector and a potential nightmare to the investor. The Congress half eagle, with a mintage of one hundred sixty-four thousand, Mount Rushmore half eagle with just over one hundred thousand and Columbus half eagle with about eighty thousand, for example, all the coins are gems; in fact over ninety-nine percent of the NGC or PCGS certified coins of these types are PF68 or better. Because coins only come perfect, obviously condition will never become a factor in price here either. But the mintage is another story. The relatively short mintages allow dealers to buy them up in mass to make gem certified coins and accumulate enough quantities to move the bid price around almost at will. And because they can, they do, and the coins end up with television coin buyers who do not know any better. So in today’s market we would recommend being sellers of these coins as well because the market volatility can cause them to decline in value at any time.

We like state quarters, for kids can collect to get them interested in coin collecting, and almost every kid we know does and plenty of adults as well. And why not, there will be two coins for each of fifty states from two mints, and they all have examples made in silver in proof. This is a perfect coin for local coin shops and mail order dealers for their unsophisticated collector clientele. Additionally, many of today’s state quarter collectors have or will become the serious coin collects of tomorrow with no harm done. But with business strikes of between a half billion and nearly a billion per coin per year, and proof mintages of over three quarters of a million per coin per year, while they are historic and fun to collect but are not now and never will be candidates for investment for the same reasons we delineated with modern commemoratives.

Our last sell recommendation is modern proof sets; late twentieth century proof and uncirculated singles and type and state quarter proof singles that have been purchased with any substantial premium over non-certified prices. Particularly sell extremely high grade coins with low certified populations but high mintages. Please take your profits or losses now, and see our additional buy and sell recommendations next month.