Heath McAlpine's observes, "Many of the issues in Krause that catalog for a few bucks or less are terribly difficult to find." I suspect that this results from a coin issue being held in a vault after manufacture and never released, especially in the case of modern world coins.

Just last week I was outbid bigtime on an eBay lot for a circulated (!) Sudanese 10-millim dated 1971. It catalogs for "a few bucks", but ended up hammering for well over $100. This begs the question, "Should the catalog values be increased to reflect actual scarcity, whether real or artificial, or should they be kept low in anticipation of an eventual release which might or might not occur in my remaining lifetime?"

Here's a possible hint for Heath concerning getting some of those coins for his birth year set. I took the lead from another E-Sylum subscriber, Ed Krivoniak, who has a 1949 collection. My birth year is 1952.

In 1952 there were 132-134 different coins struck in the world. I have about 110. There are a couple of rarities: coins struck, and then melted back to bullion, with only a half dozen pieces known; and about 20 gold pieces with me having only one. I cannot justify the price on the others.

The low cost common world coins are so cheap you don't see them listed on eBay - it just doesn't pay anyone to do it. Here's the hint for finding them.

For example, Brazil has 5-6 denominations in 1952. In uncirculated condition are all worth less than a dollar. What I did is look for a dealer on eBay selling Brazilian coins (who resides in Brazil). I contacted him and offered to pay him a "finders fee" to locate the 5-6 coins and mail them to me.

I paid via PayPal 2-3 dollars for the coins, the postage and an agreed-upon fee. I acquired a number of low cost uncirculated coins that way.