If price were the same which year 1oz silver should I buy and why? Thank you very much! 89, 90, 95, 96, 01, 02, 04 Also, what's the story with the 91, 92, 93, 94? Mintage is barely less than 95s right? Or no? And particularly the 03? Same mintage as the 04-09, and slighty more than 01 & 02, so why so much more?
Oh that's another good question! This may not be the best answer, but without going deep into research mode, I would get the 2002 Panda, because that was the low point for the Panda series, which means that the 2002 were not popular then, and as a result not many were sold (same design as the 2001s). But despite their bad start, the 2002 series has been given a new lease on life, and is racing up the popularity charts again - possibly because of their low numbers and the increasing number of Panda collectors trying to put together complete sets. Regarding: "Also, what's the story with the 91, 92, 93, 94? Mintage is barely less than 95s right? Or no?" "And particularly the 03? Same mintage as the 04-09, and slighty more than 01 & 02, so why so much more?" I think PandaCollector, Comeaux or Tamo42 will have better ideas than me.
The short answer is nobody really knows . But looking at what's available in the market, 91-94 are much less commonly available. I did a calculation one time based on relative price ratios to estimate the mintage figures for the 90s pandas, but it's just a rough guess. What we do know is that 1996s and 1997s are much more easily obtainable than the other 90s pandas. For the 2000s, here's a table showing the number of coins graded and the number of 70 grades assigned (all NGC numbers) Year # Graded #of MS 70s % Rarity 2001 1083 0 0% 2001 D 793 19 2.4% 2002 954 100 10.5% 2003 1519 259 17% 2004 1638 176 10.7% 2005 3112 600 19.3% 2006 1312 141 10.7% 2007 2506 411 16.4% 2008 3548 828 23.3% As you can see, things started changing in 2002 and really took off for the rest of the decade. So as the 2000s progressed, fewer coins were being melted and put into jewelry (more supply), and the striking quality was generally going up (more high quality supply), so prices went down - relatively.
So 89 & 90s are a better value if I an buy them for the same price as 95 & 96s? Thanks for all the info. I hope one day to be able to help others as y'all have helped us!
