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Return to collecting

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Yarm

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It's only been 12 years!

Part I

Back in the 80's I moved to Southern California and got interested in the coin market when certification was fairly new.

I visited about 20 dealers in the Orange County area and experienced everything from outright hostility to patient education. I wound up purchasing almost exclusively from 3 dealers as well as the big auction houses over a period of nearly 10 years. I was working and didn't feel uncomfortable putting together a set of Gobrecht dollars, proof large cents or high-grade silver type (although there were no Registry Sets at the time). My secondary sets were George III coppers, Canadian colonial tokens and conders.

Fast forward to 2006-Retired now. The death of my mom (Alzheimer's related) renewed my relationship with my dad. What did we spend some time on? Looking through the accumulation of coins I began at age 7, much of it obtained from the cash drawer of our dry cleaning business. Oh, and the run of proof sets we faithfully ordered from the mint. We had sold most of the silver years before during the Hunt episode but there was still a wide variety of material little of which would ever be "slabbed." But it got me thinking about coins again.

So, I started to cruise the coin boards and eventually did an inventory of my safe deposit box. (Where the heck did some of this stuff come from?!) I decided to visit a couple of local coin dealers (Tucson) carrying a box of various slabbed and unslabbed coins that I thought might be sold or submitted for grading or designation review. Bottom line- I gave up after talking to 2 dealers! The submission process had changed in the intervening years and there was little interest in doing the paperwork for me (or even looking through the box!) My old experience was that dealers didn't make a lot of money on submissions but often got "first shot" at buying coins for resale or potential upgrade. Not true, at least with my limited sample in Tucson. So, I took my unloved box of coins (maybe $35K worth!) and went home to subscribe to the certified "clubs".

Turns out that Gobrechts and proof large cents were no longer within my financial grasp but my secondary interests were! I was a bit nervous about making my own submissions so I thought I'd try a "layup" first by having several old slabs from the "pre-cameo" days reviewed for that designation. I was pleased that the group I submitted came back Cameo or Ultra Cameo but then again, they were no-brainers.

Part II More submissions and certified auctions

 

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