Lately have seen many graded 70 coins sell in the thousands of dollars. Today these 2 listings sell after being on the market for ages. 1987 pf 69 3.3 oz god of longevity sells for $2000. http://www.ebay.com/itm/China-1987-...dtkAzqE4x/8z7aGnZvwqSRc=&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc 1989 pf 69 5 oz guan yin sells for $2900.00 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1989-China-...dtkAzqE4x/8z7aGnZvwqSRc=&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc
If they had been watching a couple of these, one may have gone for a lot more elsewhere ie: Auction House as such they realized it was a good buy. I do not know if it is or not. Is it worth the gamble on OMP if you can get them at the right price. Heavily toned as well. Nice looking coin.
The MCC market is still very small & it could be possible for just a few wealthy people to heavily influence (Hunt Bros again?!) We often have conflicting posts around the web at the same time, 1 person or group says prices are soft & another that prices are starting to bubble. Only the very few see the Forrest thru the Trees. What we notice is referred to by the OP. Top dollar MCC's are realising profits by sale, I'm sure the owner of the one & only PF70 (eg GoW) did not pay 2% of what they have recently sold for. That's a nice profit!! And it seems to be a lot of high end items are gone from the shelves, most of which are first time sales at this price level. Good luck to you, I hope to follow your examples. 1st we should ask WHO would want to buy up the market? I dont think it is middle america mums & dads, this is a very unique & specialist market. The big inpour of newbs like myself might have an impact but I don't think they would be behind the rare & newly discovered variety's desirability or the Grade number key dates price, they would be too slow & hesitant not to mention most likely clueless, unless they read a lot & really dedicated large amounts of time. But newblood would overspend to get what they thought was "the bomb!" investment wise, creating bubbles etc. Possible. There are a few people/groups & business/company's that would be direct beneficiaries to big increases to MCC. NGC/PCGS or any number of dealers could be buying up these coins/medals to create artificially inflated prices, setting a false floor thus feeding the hype plus owning the affected coins/medals & encouraging collectors to mass submit in the hope of 70 grade coins (a grade that NGC/PCGS themselves regulate & have control of). Wow, it might be ChineGold or JPM!! It could be me!! This cat is a Maybe. It leads me to believe it is experts, they must be behind it lol, you must be heavily interested & knowledgable about an investment to be a spearhead investor & throw so much $ at it in 1st tier investment stage (pioneer's!!), have great foresight, steel gut & willing to gamble on something 1st or be reading someone's good advice (Baden affect). So maby the price rises are natural & the ppl behind it are us the speculating investors. Whoever is involved, good on you, the fundamentals are solid, the potential is huge & I want to be apart of it! This cat is most Probable. 2nd we should ask WHY invest in this particular category of investment? They may already own many of these coins/medals, to grow profit & add value to a market/coin/medal that they may have a decent % of is a good for said coin/medal owners, then, at the peak of the hype they sell! Most Probable. I try to identify & buy into the hype in the beginning or as it is happening (the pro's would be about 2 steps ahead of me) but not after the initial rush because of the lower potential for price rise. I don't mind over paying a little as the wise man baden always says, to get what I like but I have limits & they are based on potential of growth, 10% is better than bank interest but I would rather a potential 50% - 2000%!!!!! (savvy or greedy?!) What I am doing is DYODD & get a step ahead, but that is hard work, it's easier to read a Baden blog & go from there, potential of 75% return with small amount of effort vs DYODD hardwork for the extra 25% profit & I might get it wrong..!? I appreciate all the hard work & huge effort the MCC community puts in & hope they don't take too much offence to my examples (they are not allegations, they are theory's!) & I respect the everyone's efforts & good on them, they deserve to get the cream from the top. They virtually are the market. 3rd is WHICH medal/coin will increase in value & in which order. A good example that makes clear sense is the recent 1993 1oz Ag Frosted variety: discovered by a CFF member (?), hyped up in chat forums then massive price increases. Or the GoW (1989 GOD OF WAR AND WEALTH - ZHAO GONG MING 3.3 OZ) - once again a very hot topic on CFF, also high % of these are owned by CFF members. And about now the 2002 1oz Ag BU Panda (or am I wayyyyyy to late?), people believe that it is a lower mintage than suspected & are buying them up asap. Sorry to highlight the CFF's involvement but if you follow the blog/forum paper trail it does lead back to them often!! So much proof! So its obvious that the CCF is cutting edge & have massive influence over the market! They discover most varietys & have many experts in this particular field, post about it then the flock (you & me) jump on what may have potential! Maybe it is just the "badon effect?", he picks the best coins on the market then we all fall over each other to buy them. (cant blame him for picking the cherrys! He done all the legwork!) Apart from Peter Anthony's pricepedia (which has massive influence but a delayed effect) there are a few other tools such as the CoinCompedium (this is the jewel in the crown!), fishball's site pandastats.org , MrG's book etc that anyone can use to identify small mintages or rare varietys etc. But your virtually making yourself a semi-expert or at least well informed individual on the subject, which is a lot of hard work & takes a lot of time. I think it will pay off very well for you in the future. As long as China's economy does not pop I hope to sell them back to their mother land, at a premium, if anybody should appreciate MCC it is the Chinese! And if not, the rest of the world love these coins/medals as well so win/win. Just hope you don't have to have a fire sale!!! I have to admit MCC are liquid but the premium is variable by the speed you wish to sell. At the very least they are a hedge against inflation etc that are nice to look at & I enjoy to collect very much, win/win!! My Mrs says its PandaPorn & she is jealous of the time I invest in research, & I am small fry, I imagine collecting causes divorce in more involved participants & they loose half the investment to be sold at spot!! Omg! It will be a lot harder to let my MCC's go compared to my boring old bars of Ag, I have fallen in love with them & would like to thank people like baden, pandacollector, yennus, fishball (list is too long) & everyone who has contributed by discussing MCC from all around the world! I hope I haven't upset anybody. I need you for your sage advise, as a sounding board, to buy from, sell to etc but I am just saying what I think, please discuss & don't be too angry at me..
STC. That is a good rant!!! I agree with the "badon" effect. You mentioned the 1989 GoW but this medal is dropping like a rock. I paid $1150 for a PF 69 and now I see BoyBlueJay selling one for $900... For me it is interesting to see 2 medals ie GoL and the Guanyin sell for top $ a couple of days ago. I agree with you about "investing" in MCC. Even if its not doing anything, at least you have something beautiful to hold and admire in your hands. The same cannot be said for the stock market.
Check out this 1991 LD MS 70 1 oz Gold Panda from MCM 22 hrs to go and already bid up to $10275.00!!!! http://www.ebay.com/itm/140854150638?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649
Thanks silverfever, I put a bit of effort into it because I love this stuff. Would have liked to add links to examples etc but time permitting. It's just my 2 cents & I like ppl to pick my theory's apart so I know it's either concrete or wrong. GoW bubbled I guess, a rising asset often over shoots then corrects & that's what we are seeing. I am picking them up! Have waited 6 months..GoW is one of my 1st interests, shows you how new I am! I watched FB hit them like fat kid on cupcakes & took notice but felt priced out. Great news for some. Tricky to pass them on at the peak & buy back later like I did with gold dragons (flunked it!), if you think there is more downward pressure I would buy yours for $900? I'm too chatty!! Lol, gotta go!
Thanks heaps STC for that well thought out post! I agree, a few wealthy people could definitely affect the Panda market big time. I'm expecting it, planning for it, hoping for it, and trying to take part in it Here's a list of mintage estimates of various years; you can definitely see how easy it would be for someone to corner the market, especially with just some years having only a few thousand bears. In the past few years, I've definitely noticed that good quality Pandas are becoming an endangered species. They are getting progressively harder and harder to find - which is good news (for prices), but tough news for those who want to keep investing and collecting at bargain prices (e.g. me). Here are two charts. One of all the Pandas up to 2010. The second is what I consider to be my BIG 13 I've been trying to hoard more 1993s, but supply of these is already very limited. In many ways, I think I might have started collecting the 1oz silver Pandas too late, and may have missed the boat on a lot of good Pandas that were once considered abundant. I've started quickly moving in fractional gold Pandas (because the 1oz Gold Pandas are too expensive for me), and into the 1/2oz Silver Pandas (which I think are going to be more popular).
As you notice I've taken a liking to the 1/20! Feels like more bang for buck. I also like the 1/2ozG now you mention them. But I'm not keen to buy omp with the new costs at NGC. My list of wants grows every time yennus posts!
Yep, I feel that the fractional prices are very low/undervalued; especially compared against the price of 1oz Silver coins. E.g. the 1oz Silver 1991 Panda MS69 is about $280 (or about 8.5x above spot). [BU est. 73,000] E.g. the 1/20oz Gold 1991 Panda MS69 is about $300 (or about 3.3x above spot).[BU est. 3,500]
STC I LOVED YOUR POST, yep ,you are right when my belief that this market was too cheap was being spouted out of my big mouth,other folks thought maybe a few of us who where like minded where trying to talk up the market ,Warren buffet says buy when everyone else is selling,a few folks bought fire sale coins in a bad economy from a few people who had to sell or dealers who need constant cash flow.but the key indicator to what I believe is a total falsehood as far as an mcc crashing market is:there simply is zero to no large amounts of inventory for sale then and now.........go try to buy volume,s of quality coins THERE ARE NONE,I do appreciate everyone,s opinion ,but being a long term investor ,i dont care what it is, look at a chart ,Apple stock does not go straight up there are pullbacks, WELL FOLKS IMHO, you just watched and witnessed a temporary pullback in MCC ,the next leg is upChina is getting ready to institute their version of stimulus,money printing in any country drives people to hard assets ....................
Great post STC; a lot of good stuff there, most of which I can't comment on (I'm too much of a noobie to do that), but I will pick up on this point, because this is what I'm struggling with ATM, and maybe others are as well , and that's getting basic information on what's out there. You can go to Google and tap in 'Morgan coin books', and get a long list of reference material for collecting, grading, etc Morgan coins, same with UK coins, American coins, etc, etc. Type in 'Modern Chinese coin book' and the list is much shorter and invariably includes a lot of books written in Chinese. Pandas are well catered for with Peter Anthony's excellent book, but you'll be lucky to find a copy in your LCS (No disrespect to the Panda collector). Obviously there are great forums. like this one, where I first learnt about Pandas & MCC, and there are some good reference websites, but as STC says, you really need to spend a lot of time on research (or rely on others to do the research for you, e.g. yennus's excellent charts). For example; I stumbled across a 1992 10Y Common Crane 1oz Silver coin on eBay the other day.. it took me the best part of a day to work out it was a mislabelled White Stork from the Endangered Wildlife series with only a mintage of circa 7k, and that there was also a Snow Leopard released in the same year (i eventually found this coin by scrolling through Naomi's eBay store and comparing pics). In the end I picked it up for a tad over spot... a ridiculously low price for such a good looking and rare coin. So IMHO we really need more information on what's out there before prices can really fly, or we have to wait till the Chinese market takes off (i.e. people who can make best use of the available books\ reference material). BTW if anyone has a recommended reading list for MCC, please, please PM me it.. [I don't want to hijack this thread ]
There are many excellent books for MCC written in Chinese. For panda coins/medal, you must get a copy of the book written by professor Huang Rui Yong, a leading expert in gold panda coins in China. The Mint annual report is an important source of insiders information.
