Way back in 1985 (I think it was 1985) my husband bought a high-quality commemorative silver coin with numismatic value of $1700. I'll talk about what happened to the $1700 at the end of this blog.
What would that $1,700 be worth today, if we had invested it in the S&P 500 in 1985? According to a chart provided by the NYU Stern Business school, our $1,700, had it been allowed to compound (reinvest all dividends automatically), would have been worth $178,145 by the end of this year.
The chart offered by Stern shows a year by year breakdown. I've looked at other sources that suggest less would have been earned, but still the earnings would have been significantly over $100,000. I've no way of knowing if that's true, but it's obvious the initial investment would be worth a lot.
What if we had put the same money in a house? According to one site, Amortization.org, that money would be worth $5,240 if it had been invested in a home. For my family, a home was a great place to put our money. Our investment all the way back in 1974 grew to 20 times its value by 1923, when we sold that home. Over those years we also had a roof over our heads--a place to live. There were expenses, but basically we lived with a very low rent because we owned our home. So we must add that value to the absolute increase we would have enjoyed.
What about gold? What if we had bought 1 oz. of gold in 1985? What would that be worth today? According to the site Macrotrends, the $1,700 would be worth $24,278.00 today.
How about a bank account? What if we simply put the money in the bank and let the interest reinvest? One site, Measuring Worth, characterizes this as a 'short term investment'. According to this site, in 2024 (the last year offered for growth analysis) our $1,700 would have been worth $5,620.
But wait a minute...those are 1985 dollars. We can't compare the 1985 rate of growth to today unless we consider inflation. How much would inflation have eroded the value of our 1,700 if we did nothing with it? According to the Minneapolis Fed, we would need $5,088 in today's dollars to match the value that $1700 had in 1985.
If we go by the Minneapolis Fed's inflation numbers, a bank investment barely keeps pace with inflation. The other investments beat inflation significantly.
Of course if we had done nothing with the money...stuffed it in our mattress, the original value, because of inflation, would have been dramatically eroded.
Oh, this does get complex, doesn't it?
What we do with our money should be mostly a rational decision, but that is not always the case. People have different comfort levels.
My husband and I are not sophisticated investors. We tend to go with the familiar, with what we know and understand. Except for investing in our home, this has not yielded us the most profitable results over the years. I can see that now. But even knowing what I do, would I do anything different? I'm not sure.
Handling money should be a rational act, but it is not purely that for many of us. So, what about our $1,700 coin? Why did my husband pay so much, what was the strategy?
Sorry about the blurry picture. Can't find the wire to upload my camera's pictures.
To start with, I won't claim the purchase was strategic. My husband loved looking at coins and buying them. He would go around to coin shows and even to auction houses with his friend Myron and my son. It was always an expedition. It was an outing, an exercise in aesthetics, and also an adventure in history. Most of the coins my husband bought were modestly priced. This 1921 commemorative was one of the most expensive.
Another blurry....
$1,700 was a lot of money back then, so of course he hoped he was making a good investment. He always thought he'd put something aside and maybe leave it for our children, a hard asset that would hold value over the years.
My husband was right on several accounts. The coin is beautiful. My son loves the coins he purchased with my husband. Myron is gone, taken out in the first year of the COVID pandemic. Can't look at the coins and not think of Myron. That's the emotional part of the purchase.
My son doesn't want to ever sell any of the coins unless times are really hard. My daughter doesn't feel that way. She wants to know what they are worth. When the time comes that these belong to my children, they'll have to work out this difference in attitude. My husband and I hope we never have to sell them. But who knows?
The question remains, were they a good investment in financial terms? The answer to that has to be, so far, a firm, "No", not if you compare it to other things we might have done with our money.
I looked up the coin's current value. This is tricky, because value is entirely dependent on rating, and on the market. This one was rated choice brilliant uncirculated. The organization that rated it was Stacks Bowers, a very solid rare coin auctioneer in Manhattan.
I checked out recent auctions of this coin. The selling price (list of 50) ranged from a low of $360 in November of 2024 to a high of $7800 in September of 2025. Most auctions for this coin came in at under $1000.
Here is a picture of the jacket the coin came in. You can see we actually paid $,1750 for this. I realize that now as I look at the picture. The 2X2 is important information. Apparently the Alabama 1921 with a 2X2 marking is more rare than one without it. There were 64,038 of the coins printed without the 2X2, 6,006 with it (Wikipedia)
To be sure, these are not good days for coin sales. But, even so, I would say, going by my experience, coin collecting for the average person is more a vanity pursuit than a serious investment.
I love that coin.
Thank you for reading my blog. Peace and health to all.
Hive on!