Q. David Bowers
Further, until relatively recent times many buyers and sellers weren't particularly fussy about whether a coin was strictly Mint State. Today most of us feel that a coin is either Mint State or it isn't. However, years ago a coin could still be called Uncirculated and have friction or rubbing. In the course of my coin dealership I have often bought old-time collections of com-memorative half dollars only to find that the "Uncirculated" early issues, such as the 1915-S Panama-Pacific, 1921 Alabama and Missouri, the 1923-S Monroe Doctrine, and the 1926 Sesquicentennial of American Independence coins have rubbing, friction, or even evidence of light polishing. For Lafayette silver dollars this is the rule, not the exception. Yet these same coins had been purchased as Uncirculated from B. Max Mehl, Henry Chapman, Thomas Elder, or some other old-time dealer and had been found to be desirable at the time they were acquired.
Among gold commemoratives in old time collections, it is only an occasional 1904 or 1905 Lewis and Clark "Uncirculated" gold dollar that you and I would call Mint State today. Most seem to have rubbing. On the other hand, nearly all 1922 Grant gold dollars seem to be lustrous and frosty, the kind of quality we would call MS-63, MS-64, or even better now. Over a long period of time and in the course of handling a lot of coins and collections, I came to know commemorative silver and gold coins, their characteristics, and the market for them.
A later generation of buyers (in particular, those who studied the market after 1986, when coin grading became much stricter) was to recognize that certain "common" coins were really quite rare if they were in MS-63, MS-64, MS-65, or some other higher level Mint State category. This caused a big run-up in prices for issues which were common enough in AU or minimum Uncirculated (MS-60) grades but which emerged as great rarities in higher levels. The aforementioned 1921 Alabama and Missouri half dollars are good examples of this.
As the coin market rose over the years and commemoratives that used to be worth $10 became worth $50 and then $500, grading became more technical. All of this is discussed in following paragraphs as I analyze the market in five-year segments. Today we have a very complex grading situation, one which may be too complex. In any event, the present book is not a dissertation on grading. As noted, the reader is referred elsewhere for in-depth information on this subject.
Determination of Prices
In order to determine the prices for the period before the 1970s I have Simply taken "Uncirculated" listings from catalogues, advertisements, A Guide Book of U.S. Coins, and other printed sources, and have adapted them to this category. I have noted today's equivalent grades for the typical coins offered years ago.
I recall visiting a leading commemorative specialist in the 1950s. This gentleman was an important advertiser in the Numismatic Scrapbook and was known nationwide for the depth of his stock. He invited me into the inner sanctum of his office and allowed me, as a dealer, to go through his stock in order to make a wholesale purchase involving several hundred coins. All of his coins were marked "Uncirculated," and that is how he advertised them in the Scrapbook. I was fussier than he was, and to my mind an Uncirculated coin could not show rubbing or friction or, heaven forbid, the chrome-like appearance of polish.
Looking through several hundred 1892 and 1893 "Uncirculated" Columbian half dollars I found that only about one in five coins was what I would call middle-range Uncirculated (equivalent to about MS-63 today) or higher. The others ranged from what would be called AU-50 today to MS-60. Among his Lafayette dollars-and he had about a half dozen-not one came up to my standards, and the same was true for his Alabama and Missouri halves except for one Missouri 2*4. On the other hand, all of his 1937 Roanoke and 1936 Norfolk halves and he must have had 40 or 50 of each were at least MS-63, with many of a quality which could easily be called MS-65 today.
As you can see, there is no way one can look at the advertisements of Henry Chapman in the 1920s, or B. Max Mehl and Rev. Elias Rasmussen in the 1930s, or Bebee's or Arthur Conn in the 1950s and 1960s, or the listings of anyone else, and determine whether a given specimen of a 1921 Missouri, or 1937 Roanoke, or 1925 Lexington-Concord-or any other half dollar variety-was back then what we would call MS-60, MS-63, MS-65 or some other specific number today.
The only way to evaluate commemorative coin prices over a long period of time, without comparing the proverbial apples and oranges and coming up with some-thing meaningless, is to use personal judgment and experience and to indicate the average grade level a buyer was apt to encounter for a particular issue, which is what I have done. Of course, among actual sales taking place in 1920, 1930, or whenever, there were coins that graded higher or lower than the average grade level I give. However, the level indicated represents the vast majority of specimens traded. What I have had to say to this point takes care of the grading situation through and including the 1970s.
In 1963 The Coin Dealer Newsletter made its debut. On a weekly basis it listed "bid" and "ask" prices for many different coins but not commemoratives; those were to come later. When commemoratives were first listed weekly, in the 1970s, the only category given was MS-65. The coins that were bought and sold back then, using the MS-65 prices in The Coin Dealer Newsletter, were on average what we would call MS-63 today for most issues (lower for certain others, as I explain under certain entries). Later, The Coin Dealer Newsletter added a range of other Mint State grades for commemoratives, such as MS-60 and MS-63, and, later, MS-64. In order to be consistent about the average grade levels I give for Uncirculated coins traded in the market prior to 1986, when numerical grades were taken from The Coin Dealer Newsletter and other printed sources of the late 1970s through early 1986, the MS- 65 valuations in those publications were used, for what was typically called MS-65 in the early 1980s became MS-63 (or less) after early 1986. More about this later.
For price data after early 1986 I used the Coin Dealer Newsletter prices (in combination with other sources) without adjustment for grade. A small amount, typically about 15% to 20%, was added to the prices, for CDN prices are wholesale, not retail, and the prices I give in this historical compilation are intended to be average retail prices of the respective time periods-what a knowledgeable coin collector would have paid to a dealer. At any given time in the market there have been dealers selling overgraded "bargains" and other dealers selling properly graded coins but at inflated prices; such anomalous prices have been ignored.
I have modified these numbers, past and present, with a generous measure of personal judgment, based upon my experience in having handled many commemorative coins over the years. The result is a study of market prices which, I believe, is more accurate than any other published to this date.
Today coins which grade in higher Mint State levels, such as MS-64 and MS-65, are worth a strong premium over MS-63 coins and a very strong premium above MS-60 specimens, a situation vastly different from as recently as the 1960s when just about all Uncirculated coins of a given variety were priced alike. As noted, there is no practical way to reconstruct MS-65 prices in the market prior to about 1986; thus I did not do this, for such an attempt would have been highly theoretical and could not have been backed by facts. There was no consistency of quality among coins offered within the Uncirculated category. A "fussy" buyer could go through dealers' stocks and pick out gem pieces of the quality we now call MS-65 and pay no more than regular prices. However, few buyers did this, for emphasis was not on minute differences in grade back then.