Congratulations on the 0.5 low-mintage sales! I'm sure it is exciting for you personally; I find it exciting for the marketplace as a whole. As you pointed out awhile back...I take it as another indicator of a maturing market. One that realizes the numismatic premium comes from a number of factors, but mintage counts being a very, very important one. I view it almost hierarchically. Germane, common sales (maybe a loose 1 BTC Brass coin) provide the comfort for someone to make a 20 BTC buy like the 0.5 BTC rare piece. One of those sales may set up for a 25 BTC S1 sale, which may set up for a 100 BTC Bar sale (x of 17), a 1000 coin or bar (x of 1, 2, 3, or 5).
I am of course talking my book here, but I anticipate that within this collectible community, we will see a greater normalization of prices, with mintage and wow-factor being the two key determinants. A next evolution from there would be more sensical prices as we move up the grading scale. It is oversimplistic to simply say that all MS-66s should have an xxx% premium relative to an MS-65. Each piece is different. Years from now, with proper tracking tools in place, I envision something similar to what we have with the coin grading sites today. A place where you can see the total mintage for a certain coin, but that mintage is then further split out based on the known quantities in each grading. An MS-67 1 BTC Silver S3 is a pretty common grade. Yet I don't think we'll ever see an MS-67 25 BTC S1.
This tracking site is something that would be a great thing to implement onto my site, CoinFIRM, along with the Casascius and other eBooks and eventual galleries and databases.
It will indeed be interesting to see what a 1000
BTC coin or bar will one day sell for; im sure that all parties involved will seek anonymity so I would not at all be surprised if such a sale is not public at all.
Another burning question is, where do we get the info or these sale figures, and what should the numbers be tracked as (
BTC or $)? What sources will we get the info for regarding sales that have taken place? Simply watching one forum for these sales is very narrow-minded, even if a large portion of coin owners and traders have accounts here. It may well be that some holders of the 1000
BTC pieces are not even registered here. Will we follow the sales that take place on eBay in dollars, and convert that to
BTC (at the time of the sale) for tracking purposes? I would agree that Casascius coin sales and values should be measured relative to
BTC, because they already hold intrinsic btc value and so fourth, and are expected to rise along with btc value. Still, it does seem silly; almost like measuring the value of rare 1900's gold coins relative to how many ounces of gold they can buy. Something to think about
On a bit of an unrelated note, I notice Nubbins is really emphasising the 'chain of custody'; PGP docs and so fourth. While that's all good and fine, I really dont think they give additional value in a practical sense. Supposedly they would reduce the danger that someone would use some tech to remove the hologram and put it back; but really I think its a moot point since it has not been attempted and even when it happened, the hologram looked noticeably different. Especially in the case of the very rare 0.5
BTC S2's; nobody in their right mind would try to remove the S2 hologram to steal 0.5btc, when the coin is worth 20
BTC and the removal would at least put a huge risk in destroying it for what... a 2-3% additional value. Especially if a coin is ANACS graded, I believe its legitimacy is irrefutable.