I don’t know who’s the ad genius who figured NFL fans love these types of things, but I was watching NFL Network when I saw this same commercial multiple times. You can apparently buy (for just 9.99! Five per customer!) recreations of old coins minted by some commemorative mint and I don’t understand why. What’s the purpose of owning a coin you can’t spend? Sentimental value? It’s made with .999-whatever pure silver, so is the value going to go up when silver goes up? Am I supposed to buy this now and give to my grandchildren to smelt?
What is the market for these and why do they exist?
ETA: I put this in Cafe Society because it’s something you buy off TV, but feel free to move it since it could go in a few different places here
(But more will be.) For the same reason people buy shot glasses they don’t drink out of (and swap them here, apparently), salt-shakers they don’t fill with salt, baseball cards they don’t stick in the spokes of bicycles, knives they never stab anybody with, ir any other object that comes in many variations of which you can accumulate as many as your budget can bear.
Yeah, I imagine that some people buy those fully realizing that they aren’t actual U.S. currency, and are just doing so for the novelty.
But, I am familiar with those ads, and as noted in Skywalker’s link, they are written in such a way as to be deceptive to the gullible, the credulous, those with limited vocabularies, and those who aren’t paying close enough attention. I have to believe that at least some of the people who buy them do so believing that they’re getting an amazing deal on a valuable collectible, which is bound to appreciate in value.
If they are .999 silver, their value is literally their weight in silver and not a penny more. There is nothing ‘collectible’ about mass-maket reproduction coins. Not now, and probably not 100 years from now.
I’m going to guess that the silver value is maybe 1/3 their cost. If you want to invest in silver, buy silver bars or silver certificates.
I’ll note that the other types of harmless collectibles you mentioned in your earlier post (shot glasses, salt and pepper shakers, baseball cards, knives) aren’t generally flogged on direct-response TV ads.
Yes, the “collectibles” companies that advertise on TV pack their ads full of marketing fluff, but of a particularly borderline-deceptive nature, which encourages credulous viewers to believe that the items being sold are (a) worth far more than the price, and (b) extremely likely to appreciate in value.
Any kind of “collectable” object is marketed based on its perceived future value. Remember those old commercials for commemorative plates? Here’s one.
Yes, they add a disclaimer about “some” plates going down in value, but then immediately pivot to all-but-assuring customers that their plates will of course appreciate. You can get this particular plate now for ten bucks or less all over the internet. Oh, and it doesn’t have a ticket cost, either, it has an “issuing price,” just like stock at an IPO. These plates are meant to be perceived as an investment.
Coins are the same thing, except it’s even easier to convince rubes that they’re making a sound financial decision. Plates may or may not be worth anything, but money is worth money!
My grandfather “invested” in some collector coins, which were divided among his great-grandchildren when he died. I don’t know what he paid for them, but I’m pretty sure the kids didn’t even get that much when they sold them. On the other hand, between those and the honest-to-goodness silver dollars he’d saved in coffee cans over the years, each of the kids netted about $5K for their college funds, so there’s that.
There was one collectible coin hyping how it was plated in .999 (?) pure gold. Plated, so probably micro-ounces of actual gold.
My nephew’s idiot father started buying those stupid “collector” plates in his dotage. Luckily, my nephew caught it before it got out of hand. His father was also sending money to crackpot righty organizations.
‘Collector’ value always comes down to two things - desirability, and scarcity. That’s why condition matters so much - there are millions of old Barbies around, but very few still in the original box. So a Barbie that might sell for $1000 in the original box might only be worth $20 if it was in typical played condition. It’s also why a numbered print can be many multiples of the value of a non-numbered print, even though they are identical in every other way,
Similarly, the most collectible coins tend to be ones with double strikes or other flaws that caused them to be made in very small quantities. Or sometimes the same coin will be made in two different mints, with one having a much smaller production run. So the right mint mark will make an otherwise identical coin worth much more,
Intentional ‘collectibles’ that are advertised in national media are made by the millions, and since their only purpose is to be ‘collected’, they tend to stay in as-new condition. Therefore, no collector value whatsoever.
They made a lot of money off suckers over the years, which then convinced other suckers that there was actually a market for these things.
Yet if you talk to an estate sale expert, they’re going to tell you that all of those Franklin Mint Collectibles are essentially worthless and that there is no resale market for them.
So honestly, if you have relatives that collect these things and are convinced they’ll hold their value or increase in value, they’re suckers. If they’re elderly, you should sincerely look into a mental health evaluation and possibly intervening to stop them from hoarding worthless crap and blowing their money. As above, if they’re doing this, they’re likely also sending too much money to phony TV preachers and fraudulent causes.