Why are Morgans down?

I had a phone call from a Numismatic News reader. She was looking at the weekly Coin Market at a Glance.

“The price of Morgans seeems to be down. Why?”

That’s a pretty broad generalization. I asked her what her point of reference was and I wasn’t trying to be funny. Was it Morgan prices 20 years ago, or from some other year in the past?

No, that wasn’t it.

She was looking at the Coin Market at a Glance from prior weeks.

I stated the obvious. If the prices as printed are lower than those from prior weeks, then indeed prices were lower. If she needed a specific slant on a specific issue, I invited her to e-mail the editor of that section, Harry Miller.

She asked if it had to do with silver?

I asked what date specifically she was looking at.

She replied, the 1921-D. I said it was possible that some of the price fluctuation for that date was due to silver’s moves. It is not a rare coin.

The caller pressed on. Why did the prices fall?

I told her I didn’t know the answer to her question.

She volunteered that she was pricing a friend’s collection and so she was noticing.

It is too bad I couldn’t be more helpful, but one observation I can make is I am getting a large number of calls asking about prices. What this usually means is the family budget is being pinched and some prized coins are going to find their way to eBay or a local coin shop. If enough people are doing this, prices will indeed drop.