mmissinglink said:
JLizard, interesting strategy regarding buying graded SCML's some years down the road in order to potentially avoid milk spots on slabbed SCML coins because some bought early may develop milk spots over the next X years. The concern I have with this strategy (and it might be because I don't know enough about milk spot development) is that what if you wait X years to buy the graded SCML coins and in X + 1 years it develops milk spots? Then you waited in vain, perhaps.
So, my obvious question naturally is, is there a set number of months or years in which milk spots will develop and then after that specific amount of time, it can be assured that milk spots will not develop? If it doesn't matter on the conditions silver bullion coins are stored, could we even go as far as to say that for a particular coin issue (let's say 2014 SCML's as just an example), it's almost certain that every 2014 SCML that will develop milk spots (let's say 30% for argument sake...what the actual percentage is I don't know) will not develop any of those spots in a narrow time span not much far off from any other 2014 SCML which will soon or already has developed the spots? In other words, if we see a year down the road a bunch of 2014 SCML coins that then recently developed milk spots, can we fairly say that after another 6 more months, any 2014 SCML that has exhibited no milk spots can not (or will not) develop milk spots?
If there is no formula, no set amount of time variance between the same coin issue developing milk spots, perhaps waiting a few years may not necessarily be prudent if we are certain that premiums on high graded copies are predictably going to go up from a time when we have the opportunity to currently buy.
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You can call me Lizzie, Maggie used to!
I don't think that information will be forthcoming from the RCM so it will be down to collectors to gather this information.
And yes, without a definite endpoint for milk spotting to occur, it will always be a bit of a gamble buying Maples and trying to give them a numismatic value, the same with many of their bullion products. If you succeed, an MS70 without milk spots, then you have hit the jackpot I guess, can't be too many of them around despite the large number minted. If you are not a gambler then I would not even attempt to buy or grade them.
One of the data collection problems is that you have people hoping that by keeping the coins sealed in the tube and never opening it that they might somehow stop the development of milk spots, of course you can't know if that strategy has worked until you open the tube to check, thus exposing the coins to the air, Schrodinger's Coin.
Many monster boxes will never be checked even once, let alone over a period of time so even if we got all the members to chip in with information, we would only have data from a small percentage of the coins.
I would be happy to check my four 2014s periodically until they develop milk spots. I also have one from 2011, so I can check that as well.
And if they change their washing procedure half way through the year it might affect the way the coins develop faults even though they are still dated the same.
All in all I don't think we would gather enough data to make an informed decision but you have enough people playing the lottery to show that this is not necessarily important.