Your Overvalued and earlier Undervalued gold articles and Doug’s responses make great reading. Just a few thoughts.

1911-D Indian Head $2.50: It is about time somehow said what you said. With a mintage of 55,680 and over 7,000 graded examples this is not a scarce coin and not worth the price.

1886-1907 Liberty $2.50: It is tiresome to see the 1896 to 1907 issues touted by sellers as low mintage rarities. They are always abundant in auctions. Their prices rise and fall as a group depending on the price of gold and type coin collector interest. MS63 and MS64 prices for these generic issues have been soft. The 1895 with a mintage of 6,000 in mint state is worth only a tad more than 1907 with a mintage of 336,294. 1886, 1887, 1892 and 1894 are better dates in mint state but they are still not scarce. Your two exceptions for post 1880 issues were the super low mintage 1881 and 1885 – I would add the 1883 as they seem to be offered for sale infrequently.

IMO new collectors with a modest budgets looking for low mintage quarter eagles would do better to look to the 1862 to 1877 period. The San Francisco $2.50′s from 1861-1863 & 1865 are Civil War issues scarce in all grades. Circulated examples are reasonably priced. The 1866 to 1872 Philadelphia issues are far scarcer than the post 1886 issues with comparable mintages.

Mark

Of course, gold coins are worth the value of gold in them. Many coins sell at a collector premium to their gold value, and for quite a few of these, the collector premium dwarfs the gold value.

To use an example from Doug’s inventory, the 1845-O $5 NGC MS-61 has a bullion or gold value around $200 but has a collector value of over $10,000.