The K-shaped Economy (and personal recollections)
Heard about the 'k-shaped economy?' Here's some more evidence for you:
https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/final-set-of-privy-marked-lincoln-cents-sells-for-800-000
https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/1804-dollar-reaches-6-million-from-stack-collection-sale
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/16/americas/pokemon-card-logan-paul-record-auction-intl-hnk
Coin collecting
I've personally been a coin collector since before I had even heard the word 'blog.' I grew up without regular Web access - only being able to use the Net in computer classes in school, and for 1-hour sessions at the public library.
Later on, of course, the Web was ubiquitous, but I remained a late adopter, not having regular Internet access until early adulthood.
To illustrate how long ago I was collecting, I still have a 1999 Susan B. Anthony dollar set that I asked my dad to buy for me at the Philadelphia Mint on a school trip (he was a chaperone). I remember taking a tour of Independence Hall and seeing the Liberty Bell, among other sites of historical import.
It was known at the time that 1999 was the last year for the unloved SBA dollar; the new dollars would be golden in color and feature Sacagawea on the 'heads' side. So I asked for that SBA set specifically, hoping that the final year would be a 'limited edition,' so-to-speak, and rise in value over time.
I also remember something just as educational as - but less historical than - Independence Hall. More than one of my classmates showed me the Pokemon cards they bought with the souvenir money their parents gave them.
Sure, Pokemon cards are collectible, too, these days (apparently that's especially true if it was previously owned by somebody who talks on YouTube for a living!). I still have a bunch of Pokemon cards from when I was in elementary school. But I've looked up the value of the cards I have - most of them are valued at around a dollar.
Those booster packs that my friends bought retailed for $3-4 at the time, and I believe they contained 10 cards. Maybe 8. (Please excuse my hazy memory, since I never personally bought any - what cards I have were gifts from adults, mainly my parents. I can only remember what I saw on the shelves). So, estimated generously, the contents of their packs might have doubled in value by today.
My SBA set, however, still has all the original packaging, as well as the receipt, in the Mint gift bag. So I don't have to rely on memory. The two-coin set (one from the Philadelphia Mint and one from the Denver Mint) was acquired for $5.95, according to the receipt, and is now listed at a $20 retail value.
However, a quick online search reveals the same set selling for less than $20, so the true market price is debatable. In any case, I suspect that my SBA set has appreciated more than my friends' Pokemon cards.
I say this, not to brag that I'm smarter than a fifth-grader, but to show how long I've been a coin collector. There was actual reasoning behind my request. And my collecting was reasonably serious, though naturally as an elementary school kid, I was a bit short on funds.
I didn't start actually purchasing collectible coins until adulthood - specifically, about 5 years ago, in the beginning of 2021. My first purchase was a 1958-D Ben Franklin half dollar, containing 90% silver. If you're curious, the total silver content amounts to a bit over one-third of a troy ounce. That means the silver value alone is about $28 at the moment, which is roughly double what I paid for the coin in early 2021.
While I still tend to play around on the low end of the market, predominantly buying coins valued at less than $100, I've read the Red Book price guide for coins. And a Blue Book that was given to me as a gift in middle school. And, more recently, a Mega Red Book, which absolutely lives up to its 'Mega' moniker - a paperback book that tips the scales at over 6 pounds!
Mega Red is so heavy because it's a great source for information. If you spend enough time poring over its voluminous pages, you'll run across some prices that drop your jaw!
Maybe you're a budding collector who's interested in owning an example of a historical piece. For example, the half-cent denomination, used from 1793 through 1857, at which point it was discontinued and never used again in the United States.
So, what's the price for an early piece of numismatic Americana like the half-cent? How does $16,000 strike you, for a 1797 half-cent (plain edge) in MS-60 condition? Or $75,000 for the rarer 1797 half-cent with lettered edge, in the lower AU-50 condition?!
Granted, you could save a few bucks by getting one in rougher shape. In F-12 condition, it'll actually look like an old coin that got used for decades. A lot of the finer details will be worn away, but you can still easily read the legends and see the designs.
Much more attainable, especially for a beginner, or a collector with limited funds. What would a 1797 half-cent in F-12 set you back? Only about $1250 to $1500 - a real bargain! 🤣
Okay, so you've ruled out early American coinage as too expensive. Maybe you want something newer. So you look for a Standing Liberty quarter from 1916, the first year in that series. It's only 110 years old. How bad could it be?
Mega Red Book lists a price of $15,000 in MS-60!!!
Ridiculous, right?
Well, there are certainly valid reasons why collectors pay such prices.
But there's an important economic point here. If you think these prices are absolutely insane, then you agree with the 99% of Americans who don't collect coins seriously. And even some of us who do!
The factors
I believe that there are two factors behind these astounding prices.
One is the rarity, the historical value, and the simple supply/demand ratio. I wouldn't expect to pay $2 for a coin from the 1790s - that's not reasonable, considering the age and the United States Mint's productivity at the time.
In fact, in its early days, the Mint used old, outdated equipment out of necessity. Much of Western Europe used much better machinery and more modern techniques. If you look at a British, French, or Spanish coin of the 1790s, the consistency and quality is visibly superior to American coins from the same timeframe.
While the U.S. Mint was an important source of national pride (as well as a minor source of national profit), the country was just getting its footing. Until the late 1820s, the Mint lacked the funds to really get top-tier equipment and employ world experts to use them properly. Also, the Mint experienced periodic shortages of the copper, silver, and gold planchets used to create the coins.
To go back to the 1797 half-cent as an example - only 127,840 were made in that year.
Over 100,000? Sounds like a lot, though, right?
Compare that to the production of, say, a modern quarter. In 2022, the Mint produced the first quarter in the American Women series, honoring Maya Angelou. The Philadelphia Mint alone produced 237,600,000. The Denver Mint contributed another 258,200,000. That's a combined production of roughly half a billion quarters - for a single series! There were 4 additional quarter designs released in 2022, honoring Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong, all with similar mintage figures.
So, in 2022 alone, the Mint produced well over 2 billion quarters in a single year!
This comparison illustrates that half-cents were never very common to begin with. Some of them were lost, or worn completely flat. And surely, some were melted down by the Mint in subsequent years, so they could recycle the copper and use it to produce new coins. I guarantee that nobody in, say, 1808 was thinking about the supply of 1797 half-cents that would be available to collectors 200 years later!
So it's important for a collector to understand that American coins from the 1700s and early 1800s have always been pretty tough to find, especially in top-notch condition. Some of the more common specimens can be obtained, in lower condition, for prices of a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars, depending on the year and variety.
Paying, say, $700 for a half-cent in a lower grade? I'd say that's a reasonable expectation. For one of the rarer ones, I wouldn't blink at a price of $2000.
While I personally don't pay these prices, I accept them as reasonable, mostly because I'm a fairly well-read collector. Not an expert, but enough to understand some of the issues.
When I take a step back, though, I'm forced to admit that hundreds, or thousands, of dollars represents a high price to pay for a piece of metal with a particular design.
Which leads to the other factor. What else could possibly drive the price of a collectible, other than supply and demand?
The other factor, the one nobody ever seems to discuss, is the economic status of the buyer.
I've noticed, in my reading, a couple interesting points. James A. Stack, for instance, whose phenomenal collection is discussed in a couple of the links above, was a textile executive. Later in life, he became interested in coin collecting, and he frequently visited the top coin shops in New York City to seek out the very best examples he could find. He went to auctions of now-legendary collections, so he could have a crack at the best specimens available.
He truly was a connoisseur; knowledgeable and detailed. But did you notice his occupation? It's mentioned in the previous paragraph. Go back and find it - I'll wait.
Once you've found it, I'll point you to my own post from July of 2023:
https://froogalstoodent.blogspot.com/2023/07/student-loans-arent-real-issue.html
On that post, take a look at the chart of worker productivity vs. inflation-adjusted pay over the years. Then take a look at the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker pay.
A catalog produced by the auction house indicates that Mr. Stack's salary in 1940, while he was building his collection, his salary was $5000 - about 4 times the wage of a typical employee in the United States. His knowledge and skill set may well have justified that rate of pay.
Today, executives in many public companies are easily making 100 times the wage of a typical employee. CEOs of large public companies, as that EPI link explains, average about 280 times the median wage of employees in their respective companies.
Whether their skills justify that level of compensation is certainly debatable. What is not debatable is the impact that will have on the price of...well, of anything! Collectibles. Cars. Phones. Organic produce. Whatever.
There is a certain point at which a person's income insulates them from financial mistakes. They can make a financial mistake, and keep making that mistake over and over, because their income is so high that it washes over their mistake as if it never happened.
Not many people are in that sort of financial position. Most of us have to watch our dollars, at least to some extent. But someone who has spent the majority of his or her career in a very highly-compensated position looks at money differently. Not because they're so much smarter than everybody else, but because for them, money is a virtually unlimited resource.
I suspect that it's those people who paid $50,000+ for a set of three Omega cents.
[I watched part of that auction live, out of curiosity. I was stunned to observe that most of the lots I saw, which was toward the end of the auction, went for ~$70-75,000 per lot! And, of course, the penultimate lot was around $150,000, and the final lot included the canceled dies as well as the coins, which fetched the headline-worthy $800,000 winning bid.]
I suspect it's those people who paid over $45,000 for a proof 1883 Morgan dollar.
I suspect it's those people who paid over $36,000 for an 1858-O Double Eagle.
And I guarantee it's one of those people who paid $6 million, including the buyer's fee, for an ultra-rare Class III 1804 dollar!
For someone with an inflation-adjusted salary of, say, $2 million per year over a working career, spending $50,000 on a rare coin is akin to somebody with a salary of $70,000 per year spending $1750 on a rare coin.
I didn't pull that figure out of my hat; I actually did the math. That's the ratio - $50,000 is to $2 million as $1750 is to a worker on a more typical salary of $70,000. A high-earner can buy a new car with the same level of care as a high-end laptop for you or me!
This disparity puts very rare collectibles totally out of reach of even the most serious and knowledgeable collector - unless that collector happens to be very highly compensated. [See the James A. Stack Class III 1804 dollar that sold for a whopping $6 million - a sum that exceeds the total career earnings of probably 90% of Americans today].
I don't know how much Mr. Stack paid for the coin when he acquired it in the 1930s or 1940s. He probably paid a sizable amount for the time, because it's always been a very rare coin. But he likely didn't pay an entire lifetime's salary for a typical person, as somebody just paid two months ago.
I actually watched the Stack auction Part I live online in December 2025, and there were plenty of lots that went for much less, in some cases $6000 or $7000 apiece. The collector in me understands those prices to some extent, because the coins in that auction are excellent specimens, and some are quite rare.
But my lower-middle-class upbringing definitely shows when I recoil at the prices.
Remember how I asked for that Susan B. Anthony set, at a cost of $6, on that field trip in 1999? At the time, I was half-expecting to be turned down! I was so pleased to actually get the set that I didn't ask for anything else on the trip! (Aside from lunch, of course).
So $6 million for a coin remains absolutely unfathomable to me. Even if I had $250 million, I still don't think I'd pay $6 million for a coin - not even for the "King of American Coins," the 1804 dollar. I can think of many things I'd rather do with that money.
When the price of anything goes flying up - whether houses, eggs, cars, or antiques - people always cite "supply and demand" as the reason why.
They always seem to ignore the other side - wealthy people's ability to bid up the price of anything just because money is so much more readily available to them.
A quick economic lesson
As economists often explain, the price of anything is simply a signal to the market. If I pay $20 for a book, that's because I'd rather have the book than the $20. If I pay $20,000 for a car, that's because I'd rather have the car than the $20,000. And if I pay 59 cents for a banana, that's because I'd rather have the banana than the 59 cents.
After all, it's only one banana. What could it cost? Ten dollars?
The banana is also significantly tastier than 59 cents. Or ten dollars.
Anyway, the supply-and-demand explanation works for the most part, because most of us have broadly similar resources. But not all signals are the same to all people.
Maybe I make $50,000 per year, Andy makes $80,000 per year, and Bob makes $40,000 per year.
Yes, there are discrepancies, but we'll all be in the same ballpark. Andy might be able to outbid me for a house, but Bob won't be able to outbid me for the next one. And Andy isn't so rich that he'll outbid me by $100,000.
But Conor, who makes $8 million per year - one hundred times Andy's salary - might pay an extra $100,000 for the house, without even realizing how grossly he's overpaid for it!
And then, with his flood of extra money, Conor buys the other available houses as rental properties, so Andy, Bob, and I are forced to be renters because we can't possibly outbid Conor for any of the houses.
In essence, very highly-compensated people distort demand. Which changes the signals, thereby distorting the market.
For some reason, economists rarely seem to discuss that part, at least in public venues.
I guess 'k-shaped' stands for 'kick in the pants.'
Or 'kleptomania.'
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