Understanding Long-Term Coin Market Trends

By Mark Ferguson

Understanding long-term coin market trends can help you make better deals when you’re buying and selling coins. If you can develop a sense of whether the coin market is rising or falling, you’ll have an idea of whether you’ll have to stretch to buy coins or if the market’s positioned right so you can be a tougher negotiator. Similarly, having a sense of how the overall coin market is trending will help you decide whether it’s a good time to sell coins or if it’s better to wait in order to get the highest prices you can reasonably expect.

There’s an overall coin market trend in which demand and prices are rising, falling, or are stable. Of course, there are also market trends for individual series of coins that may run counter to the overall coin market trend. In addition, there can be different market trends within a particular coin series. For example, in the present market, competition remains fierce to purchase the highest-grade rarities at record-setting prices. But at the same time, there’s been a slight pullback in prices for more common, mid-grade Mint State coins, like those grading MS63 to MS65 in series where higher grades exist. What I mean is, the highest grades for some rarities are often circulated or low-grade Mint State.

Classic silver commemorative half dollars, like this 1925-S California Jubilee Half Dollar, haven’t been atop the market since the 1980s. Courtesy of PCGS TrueView.

You can develop a sense of trends within the coin market by discussing this topic with dealers and active collectors, reading columns like this one, following posts on the PCGS Forum, studying price guides, attending coin shows and auctions, or even joining a specialized club or group. Keep in mind, though, that opinions and experience vary, and you’ll have to weigh everyone’s comments. For instance, anecdotally, it seems that in predicting whether precious metals prices will rise or fall during the coming months, half the people believe they’ll rise, while the other half believe they’ll fall.

As members of the PCGS Price Guide team, we have an advantage in observing coin market trends. We comb through auction records all day long, analyzing the market and updating prices. Personally, I’ve been a market analyst and contributor to major price guides for more than 20 years. I’ve also been active in numismatics for much longer than that.

As I’ve watched the coin market during that time, I have observed many changes. The coin market is greatly influenced by outside economic forces. For example, the inflationary forces of the last few years have greatly stimulated demand and prices for rare coins as people have sought ownership of tangible assets. This trend accelerated after the stock market experienced a major correction at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. For nearly a decade prior to that time, stocks were appreciating and attracting capital away from the coin market.

Those events of spring 2020 provided a “turning point” in the coin market, and that’s what I like to refer to as a major change in the overall direction of the coin market. Another, earlier turning point occurred during the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis, when rare coin prices experienced a serious correction. Rare coin prices began recovering during 2010 and 2011 and continued to appreciate until the fall of 2014 and early 2015, when prices began a very slow, downward spiral, until reversing in 2020.

For some, it takes courage to buy coins in a retreating market. But that’s the best time to search for coins for a collection and to negotiate to buy or bid at auction. Competition is lower during times like that. One major drawback to buying in a slow market, though, is that people hold coins and collections off the market until demand and prices begin to rise again, making it difficult to locate scarce and rare coin issues.

Large cents, like this 1814 Classic Head Cent, have seen more cyclical ups and downs as the numismatic market moves in and out of economic and collecting seasons. Courtesy of PCGS TrueView.

I’m not a fan of trying to study coin prices and figure out which coins are undervalued, and then trying to buy those coins. That’s really an attempt to figure out what coins people will want to buy in the future. Instead, I prefer to see a collectorinvestor decide what they want to collect and then build a high-quality collection, whether the coins are circulated or

Mint State. After all, it can take many years to build a highquality collection with the standards you set for it.

Once you decide on the makeup of the collection you want to build, you can begin learning about past market trends for that series. If it’s a type set, you can learn about market trends of specialized areas within the coin market when going after those coins. For example, what has been the market trend with circulated Liberty Seated coinage?

Importantly, coin market trends within various series don’t always repeat themselves, like they seem to do in the overall coin market. While prices in the general coin market tend to rise and then soften or plateau and then rise again to seemingly new, higher levels, individual series or collecting areas might take longer to repeat that cycle. For example, the market for classic silver commemorative half dollars was extremely hot during the late 1970s and into the 1980s, then the market for that area reversed. Comparatively, there’s been only mild market interest in early commemoratives since that time. Similarly, several important, influential collectors of early copper coins passed on a decade or so ago, leaving the early copper market with a void of top collectors. Scarce die varieties began selling as type coins to new collectors.

Again, learning about market trends in the overall coin market and those in the specialized area you collect and invest in will make you a sharper buyer. Use that knowledge to your advantage when negotiating to buy coins and when bidding in auctions.