I used to believe that super low mintage coins would have value...

turtlefoot said:

I see now that it is so much more than that. I find it so interesting that a wheat penny with a mintage of 1,193,000 will have a minimum value of $281 (1914-D), but a non-US coin with only a mintage of 700,000 has a value of $5.69 (1976 Tunisie 1/2 Dinar).

It is amazing that a coin with a mintage far less than one million can be had for a dollar in circulated condition!

Doug

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I agree. It is very strange. I asked my local coin dealer about it one time and he said it had to do with there being next to no market for foreign coins.

Donneybrook said:

I agree. It is very strange. I asked my local coin dealer about it one time and he said it had to do with there being next to no market for foreign coins.

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Agreed. At our local shop you can buy foreign coins/bills for next to nothing. Even Reich marks are fairly cheap and those have some collector value. I collect some foreign coins, I think there are some very neat ones. I don't even remember where I got all of mine, but I have them from Canada, Britain, China, Japan, Honduras, Zambia, Denmark and probably more that I'm forgetting...

My local coin shop buys non-precious metal foreign coins for a whopping $6.50 per pound.I'm keeping mine.

I'm sorry to say that many times ive thrown out the foreigns that ive found via roll hunting. I keep the thousands of canadian I find, its usually easy to pass those off on everyday purchases. Just dont try to pass one off at the bank, they may throw it back at you. I know this by experience.

I guess it would be easy to make a collection of very low mintage coins on a small budget. I guess it all goes back to demand and not to actual rarity.

Doug

Harsh fact of life i guess, i learned that lesson as well. I've had silver coins that were in a mintage of just 50,000 and they are not worth much more than melt in uncirculated condition... Heavily biased towards US coins those collectors are...

zeemang said:

Harsh fact of life i guess, i learned that lesson as well. I've had silver coins that were in a mintage of just 50,000 and they are not worth much more than melt in uncirculated condition... Heavily biased towards US coins those collectors are...

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My daughter has started getting into coins and coin collecting. It has become a "Daddy/Daughter" type of thing. I think I might stat focusing on low mintage coins for a personal collection. Who knows, the focus might shift down the road and they might gain some value.

Doug

It's also hard to get rid of foreign stamps. I just bought a krap load of old ones from an auction for $2. One sheet of 32 cent U.S. stamps was in a bidding war

Some US coins can be had for an affordable price with low mintages ... if you like half cents ....

I think that 'value' is boiled down to a formula:
1 - How many were minted?
Total number made
2 - How many are surviving?
Total number left (loss, melts, etc)
3 - How many are surviving in good condition?
Were they recognized early on as 'collectable' and removed from circulation? Look at mintage and values of 1931-S vs 1914-D fewer 1931-S cents were minted ... but the 1914-D is valued much higher in similar condition
4 - How popular is that series to collect?
The more collectors, with the fewer coins ... the higher the price.

When I got started in collecting, how the 'value' of a coin was determined was somewhat a mystery.

This is exactly why I buy european Gold coins over american ones.

Gold is Gold, paying way more for the image stamped into it is silly.

It's all supply and demand. I collect ancient coins, most of which are considerably rarer than that 1914-D or even the 1909-S VDB. However, since they aren't as widely collected, or at least, not usually by date/control mark/whatever, they are still affordable. If they were priced similarly to US coins by their rarity, I would sell the ones I have (including 3 coins I have that are the only known examples), buy an island country, and retire.

If all of a sudden there were 800,000 people who wanted your Tunisian coin, you could do the same.

-- Tom

Another example is a completed set of US Minted coins...take IKE dollars for example. KT recently purchased a complete uncirculated, varietal, and proof and mint set of all that were made, in a beautiful display case that shows both sides of the coins, with info on all the mintages, for a mere $174.00 on ebay...just remarkable considering people on ebay go nuts for a worn Morgan or Peace dollar of common mintage that sells for double the silver value...or more...

KT is just convinced that the IKE dollar set will eventually be of interest to serious collectors and therefore will increase significantly in value. There are several 40% silver proofs in such a set.

Collectors are a fickle bunch....they want the very best and pay dearly for it, but if they have a beer budget they will get a "filler", and by pass a nicer example cause the price is a bit out of their range.

KT knows this because KT was a mineral collector for 50 years...but since His Royal Budget, He spent most of His Royal Time collecting specimens rather than purchasing the best He could. Finally realized that He needed to be reimbursed for His Time and Effort so began to sell off what He has....to other collectors...sold the best quarter of His Collection, and got 3/4ths of what He figured it was worth....now am slowly selling to old friends and new collectors specimens mostly from sites that have been long closed to collectors. May take the rest of KT's lifetime to dispose of the rest of the collection, and now it holds little interest to His Majesty with His new interests of CRHing and MDing.