Modern Mexican Coin Market Surges

The market for modern Mexican coins has reached a new level, as exemplified by a 1998 silver onza Libertad graded Mint State-70 that realized $46,125 at a GreatCollections auction in June. According to the firm, this price would have been unthinkable for the issue only a few years ago.

Over the past five years, GreatCollections has seen a significant increase in bidder interest in modern Mexican coins, including the Libertad series in both silver and gold. Over the past six months, that interest has jumped to another level entirely, with bidding activity from all over the world. Much like the silver American Eagle market of the past 10 to 15 years, backdated Libertad issues are now in strong demand as collectors work to complete their sets. There is, however, an important difference: collectors, dealers, and institutions never hoarded monster boxes of the backdated silver Libertads the way they did with the U.S. series. The supply available to today’s collectors is therefore far thinner, so when a key date appears in top grade, the competition is intense. The 1998 issue is considered one of the key dates of the series, with a mintage of just 67,000.

The Gold Libertad

The same dynamic is now unfolding in the gold Libertad series. Struck by the Mexican Mint since 1981, many of the backdated gold issues were produced in small numbers. As collectors move from assembling silver sets to their gold counterparts, GreatCollections has seen the same pattern of rising interest and thin supply, especially for the scarcer dates and the smaller fractionals in top grades. The company expects gold to follow the trajectory silver has already traced.

Classic Mexican Issues

The firm is also seeing this strength extend to classic Mexican issues. For example, in August GreatCollections will be featuring a complete set of Mexican gold 50 pesos—the celebrated “Centenario”—dated 1921 to 1947. The set includes the rare 1931/0 overdate and the key first-year 1921 issue, the two prizes of the series. First struck to mark the centennial of Mexican independence, each 50-peso coin contains 1.2057 ounces of pure gold. According to GreatCollections, “A complete, uniformly NGC-graded run is exactly the kind of fresh, high-quality material driving today’s competition. We will be watching closely to see what the set brings.”

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