Bluesheet: SPORADIC SIGHT-UNSEEN BIDDING TRENDING DOWN

GOLD COMMEMS ARE A BRIGHT SPOT

This week’s Bluesheet sees updates across most series reflective of sight-unseen exchange bidding from CCE and CDN Exchange. Gold commems are in demand from MS61-64 which comes as no surprise because prices for this series seemingly couldn’t go any lower. There are great values in this series and it’s nice to see active bidding to represent this fact.

Of course, we feel that many series are too low at the sight-unseen level. Whether you are talking about early Walkers, Classic Commemoratives, or proof type coins, the prices on these Bluesheet pages read like a “Black Friday” special. In many cases, you simply cannot buy coins at these levels, yet we are handcuffed here at CDN waiting for bidders to come in and raise the levels.

On a positive note, it certainly seems a much larger amount of dealers and collectors understand the multi-tiered market than at this point a year ago. Awareness of the (at times) wide spread of prices for the same coin in the same grade is growing, and less people are being caught off guard. A more knowledgeable buyer is definitely a long term positive for the market.

GOLD SPOT PRICES PUSH SAINTS DOWN

Gold spot prices corrected a bit over the past week, so it’s only natural that market makers in generic gold coins have reacted accordingly. It is interesting to note that generic (certified) gold coins have held up better than the raw metal itself. This is not unusual during rapid swings of the commodity market and certified gold tends to be a more conservative bet than simply buying raw gold coins, bars or contracts.

Despite the contraction of the gold spot price, better date and high grade gold is the brightest part of the rare coin market at the moment. Each time this year when there has been a collection of either early, scarce date, or high grade gold coins to go to auction the results have been very strong. The most recent example is the collection of $20 Saints sold by Heritage in New York.

The regional Houston Money Show, put on by the Greater Houston Coin Club, takes place this weekend, and two weeks later is the final PCGS Member’s Only show in Las Vegas. Those two events wrap up the show schedule for the year, after which the circuit turns to Florida.