Unlike precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum, the values of rare British coins are difficult to graph. The main reason is that by the very definition ‘rare’ they do not come to market on a frequent basis making charting results difficult. A further compounding factor is that most older collectable British coins vary in their condition which means that a superb example may fetch top money one month, then a far lesser example only one quarter of the amount a month later - but to chart these two results would show the value of the coin is falling when clearly this would not be the case.
One final factor that affects any form of value growth study is the varying prices at which coins may be sold in the marketplace as they can be sold at auction, privately, or by a dealer.
Our Collectable British Coin Specialists have taken up the challenge of preparing a value growth study of a handful of selected British coins. In an effort to lessen the impact of the various factors described above, they have chosen four coins that tend to come to market always in the same condition, creating a ‘basket’ of collectable British coins in a similar way to that of the Consumer Price Index which brings together a range of consumer goods. This also flattens out the impact of the effect of, say, the rising gold price on the value of gold coins.
(The coloured points which display the rising values of the four individual
items,shown in the graph above, contain spikes, but by combining these
values into a trend average we obtain a considered view of how the
values of collectable British coins have been growing over recent years.)
They have opted also to use auction price realisations. Although some auction results might be affected by two competing bidders becoming ‘over-excited’ in a particular auction for a particular item, generally this provides a sound basis for comparing the price someone will sell with the price at which someone will pay.
This trend line shows that in the seven years since November 2002 (when each of the items appeared on the market at the same time), the values of the ‘basket’ of collectable coins have risen by over 255%. Interestingly, between July 2008 and June 2009, a period when the impact of the global financial crisis was starting to be felt, the trend average values rose by over 15%.
While this graph doesn’t depict the specific coins in this offer, and while we cannot guarantee that past figures are an indication of future growth, the value growth study does show that values of the British collectable coins studied has been growing for some time.
