Key 20th Century Half Dollars
Many years ago, I decided to concentrate my coin purchases on key coins and gold. Key coins in particular seem to almost continually rise in value, and if I wanted to maximize the investment potential of my collection, these were the coins I should acquire.
How long did I stick with my key coins/ gold strategy? Not long, as there are just too many U.S. coins that I like that are neither keys nor gold.
Key coins are the coins in a series that every collector needs to have a complete date/mintmark set but that not every collector can have. Typically, the keys are the coins with the highest values and the lowest mintages.
There are two kinds of keys: mintage rarity keys and condition rarity keys. Mintage keys are the dates with the lowest mintages and presumably the lowest survival rates, whereas condition keys are the coins that are relatively common in lower grades but decidedly uncommon in higher grades. An example of the former would be the 1893-S Morgan dollar, with a mintage of just 100,000 pieces and high values in every grade. The 1892-S Morgan, on the
