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Guide Prices Can Understate True Rarity Value
By Harry E. Salyards
October 05, 2007 |
Bill Eckberg's research article in this issue, on the "Science of Half Cent Values," struck a particular chord with me, because it reminded me of how differently market values are determined in different U.S. coin series.
Demand alone can explain the high values spread across the Morgan dollar series, for example. The scarcest date in the series, the 1893-S, commands a price of $7,500 in VF-20: for an R1, on the Sheldon scale!
The 1889-CC, of which a couple of original bags are still credibly attested, will cost the aspiring owner $25,000 in baggy MS-60! In my opinion, it's a matter of familiarity breeding demand. Every corner coin shop and flea market will display dozens of Morgan dollars. Buy a few common dates, and you may aspire to go after the scarcer ones. But there's never any lack of supply. If you've got the dollars to spend, someone will have the coins - even an Unc. '89-CC.
Contrast that to the Seated dollar series, whose aggregate mintage closely approximates that for the half cent series. Twenty-five years ago, I attempted to put together a set - to a sense of rising frustration. Decent, uncleaned XF-AU's, which is what I was looking for, were virtually unavailable. Investment newsletters would tout a date like the 1871-CC at $2,500 in XF-AU which I discovered, to my chagrin, would really cost you 2-2.5 times that much, when they infrequently became available. In retrospect, that $2,500 was probably a credibly-reported auction price realized or private sale from - 1972, not 1982! I've bought enough truly rare pieces in a variety of series over the intervening years to recognize that published prices on such material may reflect sales that are easily a decade or more old! So when I see someone calling attention to the underpriced Seated dollar series, compared to Morgans, I can only say - Good Luck! It's apples and oranges. Show a Seated dollar to a relatively-novice collector, and you may even get a blank look - as if to say, "Is that American?"
What does this have to do with early American copper, or half cents in particular? It occurs to me that the semi-linear relationship that exists for half cent values up to EF-40 (other than the plentiful coins of the 1820s-1850s) may reflect the fact that, like Seated dollars, they are literally rare. No matter how much money you bring to the table, you aren't going to put together a first-line set of half cents without expending many years in the search. And as such, below the level of the trophy "type coins," it makes intuitive sense that a fixed supply, spread in progressively decreasing proportion between G-4 and EF-40, would command progressively increasing prices, in proportion to that supply. The numbers might not progress by grade levels as Sheldon's did for large cent prices between 1925 and 1950 (4-8-12-20-40), but there would be a definable progression.
But what about large cents? That's a discussion for another column.
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