Topic: Are Physical Crytocurrencies losing its appeal to investors/collectors? (Read 2199 times)

What is your experience? Is there only a premium for early Cascascius coins misprints?
Or do you also expect and experienced a good investment return on Lealena, Titan BTC, ... coins?
And what do you think about the investment/collector potential of hardcoldca.sh, which is basically just silver with a QR code.

My 2cent: There was a hype in late 2013, early 2014, when Titan BTC, and others entered the market. This has calmed down a lot.
I am not so much informed about the prices physical bitcoins fetch here in the forum at the moment. Just noticed that some professionals sell coins on ebay for exorbtant prices.

I also heard there are already fakes around. 

They may be worth $1000 in gold value, but many of those coins can sell for 5 or 6 figures due to rarity value and/or historical significance. Calculate the premium percentage on those....sheesh.

When Mike Caldwell released the first Casascius coins in 2011, the idea was simply to prove a concept (tangible bitcoin), and provide another means to get people interested in bitcoin. They were intended to be given away, or carried around as conversation starters. I did both, and they worked very well. The coins I gave out as stocking stuffers got several family members interested in bitcoin, and for a year or two, I always had a Casascius coin in my wallet, ready to pull out when some gold-bug complained that you can't touch bitcoin.

Obviously Casascius coins are now rare collectors' items, especially since the FinCEN threats caused Mike to shut down.

To people complaining about the premiums on these coins: they are fascinating remnants of bitcoin's early history; both the original intent and why they are no longer produced are intimately tied to bitcoin's character. Such things tend to be valued by people; we are creatures of nostalgia and many of us have the collector gene. For comparison, look at the premiums on some gold coins that only had a mintage in the hundreds... They may be worth $1000 in gold value, but many of those coins can sell for 5 or 6 figures due to rarity value and/or historical significance. Calculate the premium percentage on those....sheesh.

Anyways, Mike produced beautiful coins, which helped me, at least, generate interest in bitcoin in the (relatively) early days. I hope, and expect, that their collector value will continue to be significant as time goes by.

As I pointed out above, the premiums on Casascius coins, at 1.5-4x spot, are nothing compared to the premiums on historically significant and/or low-mintage gold/silver/numismatic coins.

You can't think of the value of Casascius coins using some sort of "intrinsic" model. It works more like art pricing, or traditional collector markets (coins, stamps, etc).

If one day,after natural disaster,the electricity shut down,bitcoin will be  out of function.Maybe physical bitcoins will be usefull.And gold and silver again.

The problem is simple, people are asking entirely way too much. Some of the premiums are just crazy, especially if you believe that btc will hit 10K or more in the near future, which I do believe.

Let me give you an example.

Lets say your selling a 1btc coin and asking 5 btc. I have seen it already so I'll just use this number.

if btc hits 10K you'll need to find someone who's willing to pay you 40K on top of the face value when you go to sell it. That's crazy..

i like  physical silver and gold
but its hard to use thats why fiat was invented
its hard to send physical silver and gold around the world
the world is very global now with plane travel, internet, phone calls etc
we do business/trade with global participants, so silver and gold will never be the commonly used currency again like in roman times

bitcoin is the new and improved fiat 2.0

Yes they will not be made anymore. But be on the look out for an auction in the auction subforum for some of them that I kept for myself.

I thought the first casualty was the cracking down on exchanges/general businesses?

Physical Bitcoins were the first casualty of government action against Bitcoin.

the 25ltc silver are out of production permanantly?
i'm thinking of getting a 25ltc.