Brother Jonathan (BJ) vs Saddle Ridge (SR)

Every once in a blue moon I get smitten (more likely bitten) by the gold bug and the romantic lure of treasure gold.

What was it that Seinfelds Kramer character said about LA ? Oh yes, to quote:

Jerry, its L.A.! Nobody leaves. Shes a seductress, shes a siren, shes a virgin, shes a whore !

Yup, this sale got me, and after the prerequisite hemming and hawing, I final purchased a 1879S $20 Double Eagle. Now let me say right away that the coin is probably

right now, this very second a bit overpriced but I see this as still a decent buy based on my Brother Jonathan experience, specifically:

The Brother Jonathan lot I purchased ( the May 1999 Bowers sale) hammered for $4.1K including the juice. I sold it at the Stacks January 2009 sale for $6.4 K after the seller fee for a 56% gain in 10yrs, so it averaged 5% not figuring in the compounding yada yada...... not great, and not bad......

In the catalog, Mr Bowers was very right in stating that once off the market they will become dispersed, and even single coins will be hard to find. To validate, I checked records from the major auction houses and this holds true, not a lot of BJs hit the block very often.

I strategically stayed in the same grade range, MS62 on BJ, went MS62+ on the SR. this equated to same price range.

The 1865S $20 dominated the BJ sale, a total of 415 lots some of which had 5-10 UNC coins ranging from 1 MS66 to a bunch of AU details, I approximate around 500-550 total coins for the date. For the SR hoard and the 1879S $20 , only 43 total, this I see as is a big plus, as this date wont get overwhelmed by the new coins hitting the populations. but certainly not as scarce a date.

I don't have the SR coin in hand yet, but it definitely looks like much fewer hits, in fact the BJ coin had a deep gash to the cheek focal point that inhibited much more price appreciation, and that is why I stopped my appreciation and sold her. Although my BJ was well conserved, I gotta believe that, in general, staying in the ground long term is much easier than in salt water on gold.

So , concluding, I am guessing that over time SR price appreciation will be decent, possibly slightly better than the BJ sale for the date I picked. The Saddle Ridge Hoard label will probably be somewhat difficult to find as they disperse into estate collections and are held long term by many. I also think the marketing ( cool box, pamphlet etc) will help in making it a family keepsake, and help keep many off the market. Also, the selling via Amazon may also help if some buyers are not active coin collectors but bought the story.

Thanks for reading, What do you guys think ?

Cheers !

Rich

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