As recently as one year ago, nearly every date and variety of gold panda was readily available on ebay and major dealers. Today, the list of "unobtainable" coins is growing, partially as a result of strong demand from China. Strong Chinese demand for full dates sets (all sizes of the coin for a given date) has put a lot of pressure on the more scarce coins in each set, especially the fractional sizes. All Panda coins with mintage or population of less than 2000 have seen major price increases, and my guess is that anything in the 2000-5000 range is next.
Difficult (and expensive) gold panda coins now include:
- 1995 all types and sizes
- 1998 large date, all sizes
- 1998 small date fractionals (1/2, 1/4, 1/10, 1/20)
- 2000 mirror
- Coin show panda medals with low mintage under 1000
- 1992, 1995, 1996 proofs
- All bimetal pandas
- Most fractional size pandas from the 1990's
Some candidates to soon move into scarcity may be:
- 1991-P Proofs
- 1990-P Proofs
- 1999 large date with serif
- 2002 pandas
- 2003 pandas
- 2004 panda
- 1997 small date
- Other 1990's date types with lowest population
- Panda Coin show medals with mintage over 1000
1982 and 1983 Pandas have remained stable, but the coveted MS69 grade has become very tough to come by for these dates. PCGS and NGC are not kind to the early date pandas, so top grade prices will continue to reflect this. MS68 premiums are strong as a result of very high MS69 prices.
