If the spirits in Charles Dicken’s ageless “A Christmas Carol” have any veracity, the ghost of Christmas past is kind and demure. The next spirit, Christmas present, is jovial and boisterous. Of course, Christmas yet to come is scary, embodying the dark and foreboding unknown. As collectibles go, some of those three traits can be applied to this past and coming year.
Masks, Covid and politics aside, there were positives in the past 12 months. Thanks to people being confined to their homes, prices for collectibles skyrocketed 25 percent or more due to increased demand. Mail-order or brick-and-mortar dealers enjoyed robust sales across the board.
So too for books about collecting. When better to curl up with a good and/or profitable book than when sequestered? That’s particularly true when the government sends out checks for thousands of dollars to do with what you will. Many used those dollars for hobby purchases.
Evidence of that was the immediate sellout of the centennial restrikes of Morgan and Peace silver dollars from the US Mint. Originally struck in 1921, they have long been favorites of coin collectors and historians. The originals were used widely in the Old West and Roaring Twenties. The 2021 modern versions of those coins sold out within hours and quickly climbed in value....
Collector/investors also had lots to spend at auctions this year. The unique 1933 $20 gold Double Eagle sold for an unheard of $18.9 million. A block of four of the famous inverted Jenny 24-cent Air Mail stamps fetched $4.87 million. The fabled one-cent British Guiana brought $8.3 million.
In addition to the aforementioned 2021 centennial Peace and Morgan dollars were several silver medals commemorating the Coast Guard and Air Force. The oversized, two-and-one-half ounce rounds with exceptionally designed military images immediately sold out and now command a hefty premium in the aftermarket.
Spirits of the past and present combined when a lowly booklet pane of 13-cent stamps was found to have a color missing. Originally issued in 1978, in 2021, a dealer discovered one of the roses meant to be printed on the stamps was missing. It may seem minimal but the value for a single pane of those 13-cent stamps is now over $2,200.
As for the immediate future, five new quarters will be issued over this coming year. Following the wildly successful 50 State Quarters series, the new coins will showcase American women of accomplishment. These include astronaut Sally Ride; poet/author Maya Angelou; Wilma Mankiller - chief of the Cherokee Nation; suffrage leader Nina Otero-Warren; and Chinese actress Anna Mae Wong.
What else may appear in the future is less clear. Just how gloomy it may be waits to be seen. We’ve long heard rumblings of Andrew Jackson being replaced on the $20 bill by Harriet Tubman. That’s fine but is said to still be in the works. These things take time and legislative wheels turn slowly. We’ll see if that debuts in 2022.
Most applicable to the doom of the spirit of the future is the growing menace of China. It’s not political but factual. China has proven itself increasingly problematic in both the worlds of collecting and finance.
Currently sitting off the West Coast are a hundred or so massive ships stacked with tens of thousands of shipping containers – most from China. Many are laden with counterfeits. This is well known by US Customs who does their best to intercept them. Recently, over 280 packages containing thousands of fake “vintage” US coins were uncovered. Many were reproductions of classic silver and gold types from the 1800s. All are designed to cheat US collectors.
“So what?,” you say. Maybe you don’t collect such coins so aren’t in peril. OK…other packages intercepted contained millions of dollars in fake $100 bills – the kind we use in daily commerce. Should you receive some and try to spend or deposit them, if discovered, the bills get confiscated and you get nothing. So much for a Happy New Year. By the way, US Customs estimates 95 percent of all imported fakes come from China.
All that puts an interesting spin on one of the first collectible stamps of 2022 just released by the USPS. It celebrates 2022 as the Chinese “Year of the Tiger.” That alone begs the question, just how dangerous might that tiger be? I’ll leave that to US Customs and the spirit of Christmas’s yet to come.
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