The dog days of summer are upon us. With vacations going on as well as a generally incredible ANA, dealers and investors seem to be taking a slight breather from the frenetic pace of the market the last week. This is nothing new to seasoned professionals in the business and usually occurs every year at about the same time. New material is not being offered aggressively and the few specimens being offered are usually more along the common variety. People holding premium quality rare coins seem to be holding off on offering any for sale. If you have the opportunity to make an offer on an available rare coin , we suggest doing so as this lull is temporary and in a couple weeks, the market should resume with hungry buyers advancing their bids in our opinion. Here's a short run down accordingly:
Dated St Gaudens: Maybe this series is really "just a hallucination", a term I heard used to describe the continued lack of availability of better date St Gaudens double eagles the other day. It's been months now and very few coins of rarity have surfaced despite advancing bids that several major players have placed in order to shake a few out. This is going to be a very interesting series of coins to watch in the next couple of years. If you are holding any, you should be feeling pretty secure about your investments. If you're not, you should make an effort to get on line to maybe get offered a few if and when they come up for sale.
Early (pre-1838) Gold coins: As reported in the last USRCI coin market report, this series is strong-hot and the few people that have offered some specimens know it. Very few recorded sales are taking place and the few that come up, if priced realistically, disappear overnight. We at US Rare Coin Investments are privy to several major buyers of these coins and they are paying prices much higher than typical bid levels for accurately graded, with eye appeal material. Several large buyers are working on "varieties" which appear to be extremely undervalued in relation to more common later dated gold coins. This is definitely a trend that has been growing the past several years and more information is generally available to the masses now than ever before. Savvy investors look at numbers and the numbers on these make them a no-brainer. Most dealers haven't a clue as to determining varieties and price. Stick with a seasoned numismatist on these.
Commems: A new player has jumped into this series and it would appear that this fellow is representing several large investors who are buying these coins sight unseen and will take "quantities" (hahahaha none available in quantity though) if offered them. We told you so on this for quite a while. Our thoughts are that even if we see a double digit upswing in prices on a variety of these coins in higher grades, they will still be very undervalued. Do your research and then choose some coins and get on a want list now before they go higher.
Silver Dollars: Early dollars are high high. Good idea to seriously think about taking some profits here before the large collections hit the market. Don't wait. Morgan and Peace dollars, especially nicely toned coins are a real buy in today's market. Great time to be starting or adding to a portfolio of these "cartwheels".
Patterns: Well what can we say? They're finally in the red book! Several people in the know seem to think this will create a lot of new demand (it is) and hence the prices should go even higher. We disagree. We think it's prudent to sell some of the more common pattern coins and hold maybe the blockbusters. Prices are high enough to make sellers happy happy.
That's the way we see it from here. Stay tuned for the September issue of US Rare Coin Investments Coin Market Report.
Regards,
Thomas M. Pilitowski
U.S. Rare Coin Investments
P.O. Box 496607
Port Charlotte, Florida 33949 Tel: 941-629-4765 Fax: 941-629-6532 Phone: 1-941-291-2156 Email:tompilitowski@yahoo.com
