One of the easiest and quickest way to diversify one’s coin collection is to buy foreign mint sets or foreign commemorative folders. If you can get there fast enough, many of the national mints won’t charge the kinds of overhead that is always expected when purchasing from a dealer or over the internet. Several European national mints do not engage in price gouging. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and Finland do not charge very substantial fees for providing commemorative or mint sets as products available over the internet. The highest cost is for shipping.
At the AMA coin show here in Pittsburgh, there was such an abundance of US mint sets and proof sets, they were practically giving them away. You could walk out of there with the entire run of both types for the 1980s for just under $50, the 1990s for around $60 (because of the 1999 issue of the first state quarters). I saw a dealer selling a run of 2000s, plus the 1999 set for $90. That’s eleven years worth of US standard issue circulation coins- which includes state quarters and the bicentennial Lincoln cent issues- for $90. That’s $8 per year for a P and D uncirculated set and the S proof set. If that dealer accepted Visa, I may well have been the owner of such a run. The reason behind this saturation was the bad economy. Everyone who had a collection was selling it. Keep in mind, these poor souls paid at least $15 for the proof sets and at least $12 for the mint sets for each year. The high rates of production, coupled with easy market access, does not make US base metal mint or proof sets worth investing in.
The much lower rate of production and relative market distance allows foreign mint and proof sets far more safe as an investment for a coin collection. Canadian sets are very easy for anyone in the US to obtain and can be done so with a very low cost of shipping. The Royal Canadian Mint has obviously realized the lucrative nature of the low production for one-of-a-kind type coins and coin sets, as they have recently begun offering very specialized, highly desirable sets that might include a special ‘Loonie’ ($1 coin) or ‘Toonie’ ($2 coin). Such ‘specimen sets’ have included the special $2 coin, featuring a Lynx cat in place of the regular polar bear, and the Spotted Owl $1 coin. both of these were offered in a special collectors folder and production quantities were each limited to just about 15,000. They both contained the regular series of coins, from the 1 cent coin all the way up to and including the $2 coin. The normal issue $1 or $2 coins would then be replaced by the commemorative issue. The standard coins alongside the commemoratives in these sets usually feature highly specialized textures.
RCM also offers a wide range of lower denominated commemorative coins, such as the 5 cent Veterans coin and the 10 cent Volunteer coin. You’ll even find some of these in general circulation. Nearly every year for the past fifteen, RCM has issued at least one commemorative 25 cent coin. For the years 1999 and 2000, a series of twelve such commemorative quarters were issued each year. The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics provided the perfect opportunity for RCM to issue a total of 30 commemorative coins in both the 25 cent and $1 denominations.
My own collection has recently gained one such commemorative folder- that of the 2001 Year of the Volunteer commemorative 10 cent coin. It is sealed in plastic and I can barely make out the reverse commemorative design. I also added a very special commemorative to my collection in the form of the 2005 60th anniversary of victory in Europe re-issue 5 cent commemorative, with the Victory design on the reverse. The obverse features the same head of King George VI as did the 1943-1945 issues 60 years before. It comes in a tin, with a very nice insert and is accompanied by a large bronze medal weighing 26.4g. The 5 cent coin is sterling silver and weighs 5.35g. I pain just under $10 (CAD$10) for this issue and shipping was free.
This is just the type of issue that is not only inexpensive, but will likely appreciate quite a bit in a short amount of time. This issue was sold for around CAD$5 just about six years ago. Compare this 100% rise in value with the mere 15% rise in value a 2005 Marine Corps US Silver dollar issue carries. The Canadian commemorative was limited to a 60k production run, while the US produced nearly ten times that amount- 600k for its commemorative issue.
Add to that the effect of direct shipments and pre-orders that the US Mint allows for each of its issues to the effect of low and slow appreciation values for US silver commemorative issues. With few exceptions, US commemorative coins, while plentiful and abundant, don’t offer the same kind of investment value that other national mint issues have.
