Coin Market Continues Strong Performance

The numbers just keep climbing. The early January Heritage Auctions’ US Coins Signature Auction held during the Florida United Numismatists convention realized $51,857,970, while Heritage’s currency signature auction added another $12,079,520 to that statistic. If you include the Bass Collection Part Two auction conducted just a few days earlier, that single company sold more than $88 million in two weeks. This includes 10 lots that individually realized more than $1 million apiece. This statistic ignores the sales figures from many additional coin businesses that are also involved in the current sales frenzy.

Record-setting auction prices may continue to grab the headlines, but the more affordable and generally more available collectible coins continue to be an extremely strong market segment as well. While it may appear that the price has decreased on a few of coins, in many cases this may be deceiving since there can be a noticeable gap between the price asked for like coins depending on which third-party certification service encapsulated the coin, or if and who “stickered” the coin with yet another layer of certification. It’s been said before, but it needs to be said again: Buy the coin, not the slab. There are plenty of choice coins that don’t sell for strong prices simply because the services that examined them aren’t as popular then may be the coins examined by another such service.

The bullion coin market is likewise enjoying strong sales in both recently released U.S. Mint issues and those coins re-entering the secondary market. Non-circulating legal tender commemoratives continue to draw much interest, although secondary market sales in this area aren’t quite as strong. Likewise, the only movement in modern proof sets is due to the intrinsically valued coins in these sets. Overall, the business and hobby of coins continues to perform well.