By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics ( A portion of her Recent Market Report)
The FUN show had a small group of monster coins in the Heritage Auction and a few in the B+M Sale. but we are really not talking about many coins. They were all bought up for record prices, and we highly doubt you will see most again.
Here are some facts you probably did not know as to where coins are hiding: A serious amount of PR Gold is over in Japan. Its been going there for the last 15-20 years and NONE has resurfaced. We think about 60% of all GEM PR gold is now over there. We certainly have not seen many GEM PR Gold pieces for sale anywhere (save for FUN) in the past year. Legend even once sold a complete 1891 highest graded PR set to the people buying. They also HUGE buyers of ALL MS65+66 DMPL CC Morgans. Never could understand that, but they have most of these as well. BTW, they are VERY picky about the mirrors, if they are not FULL B+W, they won’t buy the coins.
Another fun fact, there are major funds that has been buying coins for the past few years. They are very private and are extremely well capitalized. It is apparent by the rarities they bought, they plan on buying the very best and holding for the long term. They do not buy coins under $100,000.00. We do know they have spent as much as $10,000,000.00 a clip for coin deals (all VERY quietly). They actually are buying incredibly smart and are doing exactly what a long term minded collector should do. Since this fund has billions of dollars in and around it, it can also withstand a market stall or fall easily, so you won’t see them dumping anytime soon. We have recently heard talk of one to two more other coin funds being developed (by different groups).
There also is a new breed of “super collector”. Yes, Legend happens to exclusively deal with 3 of them. We unhesitatingly would say that between our good friend from Ft Worth, TX, and the family down the road in Dallas (who own 2 1804 $1 and the unquestioned greatest BUST collections ever), COMBINED their collections are worth a startling $500,000,000.00! Do you have any idea how many coins those two collections have??? Or how many coins valued at OVER $1 million they have? Neither of them plan on selling anytime soon. Its really not only them hogging all the cool stuff. The Internet has unleashed so many thousands of new collectors. We’ve seen numerous holdings of $10 million or more that are just fabulous! We think it is safe to say, the majority of ALL the great coins have found great homes!
Add all this up, and CLEARLY proves how rare coins are. It also clearly proves how UNDER valued great quality is. As collectors start to realize they are not seeing great coins they know they MUST pay more. Its been proven recent auction after auction (forget about using other rags for printed information-auctions are reality) how the “best” quality coins perform. That’s why we keep telling you not to let an incredible coin go because of an extra 10-40% cost. When you buy a great coin, you should be doing so with a long term objective. That’s when you will see the staggering returns like a Pittman earned or a Norweb got. Its all about demand and time. These days so few cool coins are for sale-do NOT miss opportunity!
