Market Movers and Shakers

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The 1853 Newcomb 10 Large Cent in RD, similar to this one, was a Top Gainer in the last three months.

By Jaime Hernandez - August 6, 2024
Original link: https://www.pcgs.com/news/market-movers-and-shakers-aug24

Now that we're midway into the year, coin prices seem to be holding up for most coin series. The recent jumps in gold and silver prices have also seemed to help many coins, with many performing exceptionally well. We will be highlighting 10 of these particularly strong performers over the past three months on the Top Gainers list here.

The first coin on the list is an 1888-O Morgan Dollar VAM 5 graded PCGS AU58. The coin recently moved up in price on the PCGS Price Guide from $215 to $1,250 in AU58. The sale of a PCGS AU58 specimen in a December 2023 Heritage Auctions event, where the coin hammered for $1,680, influenced the price increase noted here and made it the largest price gainer in the past three months on the PCGS Price Guide.

Morgan Dollars are some of the most popular coins in numismatics, with the Morgan Dollar varieties known as “VAMs” (named for variety experts Leroy Van Allen and A. George Mallis) a thriving niche all its own. Many of these astute VAM collectors are not only trying to complete a full set of Morgan Dollars, but they are also brave enough to try and collect these coins by variety – some of them being exceedingly rare. Obtaining varieties for many of the different dates can be challenging, especially since there can be very few known examples for certain varieties, where only a handful of collectors can own them at any one time. This is the case for the 1880-O VAM 5 variety, as PCGS has graded a total of only 28 examples for this variety in all grades combined, making the variety extremely scarce, especially in AU or higher.

The second coin on the list is an 1853 Braided Hair Large Cent with a Newcomb 10 variety, graded PCGS MS65RD. In the past three months the coin moved in price from $4,150 to $12,000 on the PCGS Price Guide. The reason the price increased stems from an August 2023 Stack’s Bowers Galleries sale where a PCGS MS65RD specimen sold for $12,000. We also updated prices for most large cents on the PCGS Price Guide, and, intriguingly, most of the varieties seem to be outperforming most other U.S. coin series. Most of the price changes reflected for the entire large cent series in the past three months reveal about 6,300 Gainers and only 300 Losers. This is a strong testament to how strong the market is for most large cents, including its many varieties.

The third coin on the list is a 1955-D Washington Quarter graded PCGS MS67+. The coin recently moved up in price on the PCGS Price Guide from $22,500 to $41,000, responding to a $40,800 realized price from a January 2024 Heritage Auctions sale for that piece in the same grade. Washington Quarters grading PCGS MS67+ and higher have always been difficult to find, despite the U.S. Mint having produced millions of examples for most dates. Over the decades, many dedicated collectors searched for and tucked away the nicest-quality examples of Washington Quarters from rolls, bags, and other sources in hopes of finding superior specimens. It’s great to know that a coin that is almost 70 years old was so well taken care of for all these years, allowing collectors to enjoy such a piece today and hopefully for many years to come.

And these are just a few of the coins that have performed really well over the past three months. To view the entire list of U.S. coins that have seen marked fluctuations in price, please visit the PCGS Price Guide and check out the Price Changes category to see the Top Gainers and Losers.