I wonder what our "Didnt see that coming" in precious metals will be..

[OnARoll]

I wonder what our "Didn't see that coming" in precious metals will be..

So alright I know a lot of you old timers have stated that they used to throw back 40 percentas because of the low value at the time..I was thinking today about and i'm wondering what our "aw crap I should have saved those" moment will be say 20 years from now..In order for a metal to be precious it must be rare, with that being said supposedly copper mines will run out somewhere in 2030 I read, so I could see copper being a contender but that's about it..At one time silver was seen as worthless as our clads we loathe so much, just a coin that represents a certain value, just a coin weighing your pocket down too much..We look at our clad like they looked at their silver, just junk coins to buy the things we need, nothing more nothing less. Only difference is now our quarter lets say isn't made up off 25 cents of precious metal but its given a intrinsic value of 25 cents. A quarter is only worth .04 cents in metal..I wonder if one day the clad coinage will be worth anything say if they switched our currency to all steel or something.Will we suddenly be melting it all down and start buying these Clad art bars that I see people get tricked into buying all the time on ebay? Would the clad hoarders come on top? lol.. I don't know, just random thoughts and rambles.. What our your thoughts??

 

[fistfulladirt]

I was a teen roll hunter in the late 1970's-early '80's...I remember the finds were not that great as silver approached $40-$50 an oz, and I also remember interest rates climbing near 20 %. Dad was a homebuilder and in '79 his crew built 20 homes...in 1980 they built two...resession time in the US.
I also remember the Hunts wanted as close to pure silver as possible, so 40%'ers with their refining costs were not in big demand...I ended up selling the 90% halves I had after the market crashed, for a few bucks each or less.

 

[Eminem]

Homie, me and fiddy said this once and I says it again, coppa cents are the best investment a coin rolla' can find.

 

[SilverForBrains]

yea i would have to agree with m. mathers on this one, likely copper cents. I can't think of any other candidate besides nickels, and I think copper has way more of an upend since it's a better conductor

 

[Generic_Lad]

Aside from cents and nickels (which have already gotten a lot of coverage) there's not a whole lot that I can see really having an upside barring hyperinflation or something like that.

Instead, I think the question will be what do we toss in the melt pile that's actually going to be worth a premium.

Will Bens start holding the same collector status that walkers have? Will gem Mercs be worth a lot? What about micro-varieties? Will the upward trend in high-grade, slabbed, modern clad continue? Will Ikes start to be really actively collected?

In the past, a lot of coins have been ignored by the collecting community either because they're unattractive, common or low-valued. After all, hunting for that elusive key date is part of the fun of collecting which makes collecting Lincoln pennies more enjoyable than say, SBA dollars since you can collect Lincoln cents for a lifetime while you can cobble together a near complete set of SBA dollars in a good weekend.

I think right now there are many more numismatic opportunities out there than just plain "melt" opportunities because copper would have to massively increase in price for clad to be worth $$$ and while hoarding copper cents makes sense, I think that's pretty much the only opportunity in melt.

 

[coinguy*matthew]

Will Ikes start to be really actively collected?

Soon people are gonna realize that most high grade Ikes have populations in the low hundreds while top pops are usually in the low teens, not only do they have a very famous WW2 general they also commemorate the landing on the moon and were the only large sized clad dollar. Believe it or not putting together a gem set of Ikes is not easy because of limited availability and several varieties with low pops. I collect all series of coins but my favorite of all stands with the very little appreciated Eisenhower dollar.

 

[Owassokie]

I've kind of talked about this in a different thread but I believe the next coin to surprise in 20 years will be...drum roll....40% coinage. That's right, the exact same coin that was referenced by the OP as the former surprise.

The mindset of the average collector/stacker/crh'er is that 40% is junk in comparison to 90% and .999 silver. At least 95% of us smaller stacker's fit this category. We typically trade out of our 40% coinage if possible, and we're even willing to pay a premium because the 40%ers are 'taking up more space' or 'harder to refine'. Matter of fact, most of us small timers don't even consider that the other 60% of the half dollar has melt value too. As of right now, that 60% of useless, waste-of-space copper has a melt value near 5 cents per coin or 10% of of the face value. Most of us agree copper will go up in the future yet we still pretend it has no value.

In my opinion, if you want to beat the next 'surprise', don't mess with pennies. Buy some of those crappy 40% halves at a discount and enjoy a truly nice copper premium when you sell them in 20 years.

P.S. Don't tell anyone else. This is our little secret.

OO

 

[fixxxer9]

I have been buying 40%ers from my LCS because they sell them for $3.50 a piece and they have a TON of them. I hoard copper cents so I hope that someday they will be worth something close to what silver coins are today. Who knows. But I'm trying to hoard as much silver and copper as I can, hopefully it will pay off someday.

 

[billionaire]

Didnt think of the 40%er thing... but i think there will be a rise in copper pennies too. My theory is that when the US lifts the melt ban many years from now most copper pennies will be melted. This will cause a rise in some of their numismatic values as well. The Canadian penny melt down will test this to see if im right. Possibly another little secret between us.