The quadrupling of gold coin prices over the past two decades presents both a challenge and an opportunity to the coin collector. For the coin collector who has managed to build up a good collection of US gold coins, the value of their collector coins has increased many times over. This is good news if they need to sell coins to gold coin dealers to raise cash for a pressing need. The veteran coin collector also benefits from this dramatic rise in prices if they want to expand their collection, or perhaps start to specialize in collecting a certain coin value, or maybe specialize in collecting all the coins minted in a certain year. Yet if the rise in the price of US gold coins offers opportunities to the experienced coin collector, it leaves the beginner coin collector wondering how they are ever going to build up a good collection of US gold coins.

Understanding Gold Coin Prices
While variations in gold coin prices are clearly impossible to predict, general trends in gold coin value can be detected by the perceptive coin collector. Through keeping track of items appearing on coin news sites, and visits to gold coin dealers, the coin collector soon picks up information on price trends. While the daily price changes of gold bullion coins can be ascribed to the working of the “invisible hand” of market forces described by the famous Scottish economist Adam Smith, the constant influences shaping the prices of gold collector coins are open for all to see.

Gold coin prices are shaped by the spot price of gold on the world market, the status of the gold coins as rare currency or error coins, and their grade. The higher the international gold price and the more aspects of the gold coin likely to give it a rare currency status, the more the coin is going to be worth.

A Coin Collector Budget
Supposing Bill Gates or Warren Buffett decides to start building up a coin collection, it can safely be assumed that the funds at their disposal are significantly more than those of the average American coin collector. They could easily visit leading gold coin dealers and buy an excellent collection of US gold coins that includes an entire series of years and designs, rare currency and other attractive numismatic coins that the average coin collector could only dream of acquiring. The coin collector of limited means does not have anything like this amount of money to spend and so they must decide in advance their available budget and on this basis determine the gold coins for sale that are within their budget. Perhaps they have no more than a few thousand dollars available for their coin purchases, but they can still buy gold coins that form the basis for a respectable collection given a willingness to compromise.

Knowing How to Compromise
The coin collector can adopt several different approaches to building up their collection without having to continually face disappointment at sales of numismatic coins online, or at gold coin dealers. One approach is to look for coins in the more middling grades. For example, it is possible to buy gold dollars from America’s first gold dollar issue (1849-1889) in extremely fine grades for under $300. In complete contrast, the coin collector who is determined to buy a rare 1849-C Open Wreath gold dollar (only five samples known, would have to pay more than a hundred times this amount to get this gold coin in a middling grade. In a similar vein, some of the more common half eagle dates from the 1840s and 1850s can be bought in extremely fine condition for no more than $650 but if a coin collector aims to get a rare date such as 1875, the price is multiplied many times over.

The coin collector who prefers to look for higher grade gold coins for sale can look to buy gold coins from a high mintage year. For example, they might find an 1862 gold dollar for under $1500 in MS-64 grade since this year had one of the highest mintages of the series—over 1,300,000 coins. Similarly, a coin collector might opt to buy one of the 5,700,000 half eagles minted in 1881 and find an MS-64 grade coin for under $1800. To buy similar grade US gold coins from lower mintage years could easily cost the coin collector closer to twenty times the amount charged for high mintage coins.

In conclusion
In all fairness it should be noted that the gold content alone of US gold coins accounts for at least half of gold coin prices with the remainder of the price attributable to rare currency status and grade. The coin collector who chooses to buy gold coins from legitimate online sites and reputable gold coin dealers can be certain they are getting value for money. However, the question of how far a limited coin collector budget will stretch is going to depend on the trade-off between grade, rare currency status and gold content.