'If you buy $1 million worth of stocks, it could go down to $20,000,' he says. David Albanese, president of coin dealer Albanese Rare Coins (no relation to John Albanese) estimates that rare coin values are up by almost 25% over the past year. With the stock market tanking, many high-net-worth investors have started paying attention to rare coins because they have some degree of inherent value. Some of these coins are not known to exist in this precise condition, but this is the only way to make an apples-to-apples comparison. These are theoretical values-they assume that each coin has a grade of MS-63 (on a 1-70 scale), numismatic lingo for very good condition. Our values of these rare coins are courtesy of, a collectibles evaluator run by software developers and engineers that generates pricing data by processing actual-sales figures through a set of proprietary algorithms. Rounding out the top five is the $4.4 million 1861 Double Eagle, of which only two examples are known to exist.

The star-crossed 1933 Double Eagle is second on the list at $8.5 million, followed by the 1913 Liberty Nickel at $5.9 million-bizarrely, one of the only legal coins ever produced without the knowledge of the U.S. The 1804 Silver Dollar is one of four coins worth more than $5 million in good condition.