Silver Eagle interest start of trend?

The precious metals market has the feel of having formed a bottom for a probable run to higher levels.

Buyers for common silver dollars have been absent from the wholesale markets, but I have noticed over the last several days they are again bidding for circulated Morgan and Peace dollars and are looking for bag quantities or partial bags.

Proof silver Eagles have remained steady and their gold counterparts are slowly regaining some of their previous premium. The silver Eagle series continues to gain popularity both from silver investment demand and from some of those same investors seeking date sets or trending towards collecting. Should those investor/collectors turn into real numismatists we could have another boom as there was with the state quarter program.

Practical, savvy information on profiting from hunting coin rolls.

Boom or not, Barber coinage continues in demand with the larger coins of the group being virtually on fire if they are nice circulated and with full “Liberty.”

Sometimes dealers and collectors pay too close attention to bid sheets and not enough to the real world. I recently attended the Long Beach California Expo and it was a normally active bourse. Some commented on light attendance, but they have short memories and compare the June event to the more busy winter show.

Back to the bid sheet issue; I note that the 1922 cent with no “D” has declined, which has me scratching my head in bewilderment. Two weeks ago I sold my only VF at the Denver ANA. At Long Beach I sold two EF-40 examples, both to dealers at slightly over the ask prices, not bid. Now I look at my advance copy of the new monthly bid sheet and EF-40 is down. Go figure. You wonder why, well we have all sorts of electronic trading media and sight unseen bids/asks and these do not take into account the actual look or quality of any particular coin. Now the examples I sold were nice and they were certified by NGC, perhaps the coin that brought the bid down was not so respectable. Maybe it was more VF-35ish, or had unattractive color. It may also have been the result of a cash flow issue with a small dealer. Who knows? The point is you can’t just rely on price sheets – even mine. They are only guides and rarely up to the minute.