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Stocks are schlock. Bonds are bunk. Not even cold, hard coins are
worth what they used to be.
Or at least not those commemorative quarters. Demand for these
special-edition coins is perhaps half of what it was even a year ago,
according to some numismatists.
Did coin collectors tire of all those television shopping networks
hawking the new, commemorative specie relentlessly? Maybe, though the
real problem might be that the mint ramped up production far beyond what
a thriving but obviously niche market could support.
Right now, Internet-based coin brokers are selling 40-coin rolls of
Delaware and Pennsylvania quarters -- the first two state quarters
released -- at upward of $35 apiece.
That's $25 more per roll than face value, but rolls of those same
quarters were fetching $50 last year, according to Allan Rosenberg,
owner of Coinland.com, a Web retailer based in Plainview, N.Y.
Adding to the early demand were some early investors in the state
quarters, who pooled funds in the hopes of artificially creating demand
to drive prices higher. Indeed, prices were driven higher for the
earliest offerings.
Because of the increased demand, or at least the perception of it,
the mint began minting more of the newer quarters, in some cases minting
double what had been made of earlier quarters.
"They killed the golden goose," Rosenberg says, driving
demand back down.
Now, supply and demand have roughly evened out and stabilized. Since
quarter production peaked with roughly 1.6 billion Virginia quarters in
late 2000, production has come steadily down to current levels, lower
than at the start of the program.
So far this year, the mint has released Ohio and Louisiana. It made
fewer of the Ohio commemorative quarters than it did of Pennsylvania,
Delaware or any of the other 16 previously released quarters, though
what the market is willing to pay for rolls isn't entirely based on
production figures.
The mint makes quarters based on orders from the Federal Reserve
Board, which are based on demand and the economy, according to a mint
spokeswoman. The production declines fall in line with declines for
other minted coins, she says.
Signed into law by then-President Clinton in late 1997, the mint
began minting five state quarters a year in January 1999 and will
continue minting them, in the order their respective states joined the
U.S., until Hawaii is issued late in 2008.
When looking for state quarters to hoard yourself, make sure they are
in what numismatists would call "brilliant uncirculated"
condition. Brilliant uncirculated means exactly what it says, referring
to coins that have never changed hands and retain their mint-fresh
sheen.
Pay attention to the mintmark on the face of the coins, too. The mint
produces all of its regular coins at facilities in Denver and
Philadelphia, and typically the mint tries to split production evenly
between both locations.
However, this isn't always the case. Significantly fewer New Jersey
quarters -- the third in the series -- were minted in Denver, and those
quarters carrying a "D" mintmark sell for $25 to $30 a roll,
about double the price for a roll made in Philadelphia.
With Ohio, the situation is reversed, and due to a six-week,
workplace-safety-related closure of the Philadelphia mint, nearly twice
as many Ohio quarters were minted in the mint's Denver facility, so
"P" Ohio quarters will likely appreciate faster than their
"D" brethren.
Rosenberg says rolls of Georgia and Connecticut quarters, the fourth
and fifth issued, go for $15 to $18 each in coin shops and on the Web,
while all the offerings since are selling at $15 or less a roll.
Though it pales in comparison to the appreciation, even after waning
markedly, of the Pennsylvania and Delaware quarters, $15 does still
represent a 50 percent mark-up from what they're worth in a gumball
machine.
The mint hasn't released Louisiana production numbers yet and there
is no way of telling if Ohio will end up the least-heavily-minted state
quarter. It is also difficult to say where supply, demand and pricing
are headed from here.
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