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About this journal

I am very honored to be one of the recipients of the 2023 David W. Lange Overall Achievement award. I really appreciate NGC recognizing my efforts in pursuit of this wonderful hobby.  I have enjoyed thousands of hours on my collecting journey and if there is an interest I will share some of the things that I have learned during this journey.  

Here is what NGC wrote in their award announcement:

Collector Desert Gold garners a lot of points from his high-ranked US Liberty Gold sets, and this is partly where his Registry name comes from, too. His 692,000 points place him 163rd overall. But in the Registry, he should be better known as the “King of Portuguese Coins.” He is a 200-time winner of Best in Category for his extensive collection of this coinage. He holds the top spots in all type sets from Pedro II through Maria II, spanning eight monarchs from 1683 through 1853. His collection displays similar strength among Portuguese colonial issues of Brazil and the Azores. Due to his dominance of these categories, even with his heavy concentration in one area, he is the 87th ranked competitor for total points among all world set collectors in the Registry.

Entries in this journal

General

An Important Pedigree for Brazilian Coins (cont.)

Five additional RLM pedigreed coins that I purchased after the original Heritage RLM auctions are shown in the pictures above.  The data for these coins are shown below, including the dates when I purchased the coins as well as the change in the price that I paid for the coin compared to what the coin sold for in the original RLM auction.  Other interesting information is also included.    Brazil, 1832-R 6400 Reis, gold, NGC 55, NGC census (33 total, 8 in, 24 better)    I purc
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

An Important Pedigree for Brazilian Coins

The RLM Collection, which was assembled by Dr. Roberto Monteiro, contained an impressive selection of gold coins, gold ingots, and medals from Brazil.  This collection contained examples of most of the rarest gold coins from Brazil and was one of finest collections of Brazilian gold coins ever assembled.  This made the RLM pedigree very desirable.  The RLM gold coins were auctioned during the first three of six auctions by Heritage as shown below.  The last three auctions included medals fr
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

Eight Great Coin Pedigrees

In 2018 CoinWeek published an article by Doug Winter titled “Eight Great U.S. Coin Collections,” i.e., https://coinweek.com/doug-winter-eight-great-u-s-coin-collections/  You may recall that in one of my previous posts I mentioned that Doug Winter is a renowned dealer of U.S. gold coins.  He has written numerous informative articles that you can find on his website.  In this linked article he lists the following great U.S. coin collections: 1.    The Ed Milas Collection of No Motto Half E
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

A Great Set for US Gold Collectors

I think that a great set for US gold collectors is US $1 Gold coins that were minted in San Francisco, see https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/119601/  US $1 gold coins were minted at the main Philadelphia, Pennsylvania mint (no mint mark) and the branch mints, i.e., the Charlotte, North Carolina mint (C), the Dahlonega, Georgia mint (D), the New Orleans, Louisiana mint (O), and the San Francisco, California mint (S).  Below I list the number of dates for each mint for ea
General

Joao V 400 Reis Gold Coins from Brazil and Portugal

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I hope you enjoy the eye candy. It’s calorie free.  Introduction My main goal for this post is to explain why I chose to collect coins from Brazil and Portugal together.  I will use gold 400 Reis coins that were minted in Portugal and Brazil during the reign of Joao V for illustrative purposes. I have created a custom registry set that is titled “Joao V 400 Reis Gold Coins from Brazil and Portugal” to provide additional information about these coins, i.e.,
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

Resources I Used on my Collecting Journey

Many of the things I discuss in this post are “no brainers”, but I’m hoping that some people may find this information to be useful.  I discuss some of the mistakes I made and hope that it may keep other people from doing the same things.  I also briefly discuss some resources that I found useful. My Early Collecting Years When I started collecting coins in the 1970’s as a teenager, I really didn’t have many coin collecting resources available to me.  Since I was only collecting US coi
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

Collecting Pintos – The Jewels of Portugal

In the last post I showed the obverses of two incredible Portuguese gold coins that are called Pintos. Pintos are the smallest gold coins from Portugal.  They weigh between 1.07 g and 1.1 g, and are between 14 mm and 15 mm in diameter for different rulers. They all have a fineness of 0.9166, which leads to between 0.98 g and 1.0 g of pure gold in every Pinto. In order to provide a better feeling for the size of the Pintos I compare them with US $1 gold pieces.  The Portuguese Pintos are sma
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

Collecting Portuguese Coins

Shortly after I started collecting Brazilian coins I learned more about the history of Brazil. This led me to also learn about its mother country, Portugal. Brazil was discovered by a Portuguese expedition that was led by Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500. Since Brazil was a Portuguese colony between 1500 and September 7, 1822, when it declared its independence, the rulers of Portugal were also de facto rulers of Brazil during this period.  Portugal was a global trading and maritime po
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

Collecting US Coins

I stopped collecting coins once I entered college because of a lack of time and money.  Then, after graduating from college, my hobby turned to stock investing.  However, in the spring of 2006 I started reading more and more about the upcoming housing crisis.  The price increases in homes since 2000 were enormous and unsustainable.  This led me to sell off a large percentage of my stocks and I decided that gold and gold stocks would be a good place to put some of my money.  However, instead of j
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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General

The type of coins that I collect

The pictures of the coins in the header above illustrate the types of coins that I collect.  From left to right they include: US 1872-S $10 Gold piece Brazil 1732-R 12,800 Reis Gold piece Brazil 1821 Cuiaba 960 Reis counterstamp on a Charles IV 8 Reales from Bolivia  Portugal 1833 Gold Peca Azores - Terceira Islands 1829 bronze 80 Reis  
Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

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