Her name is Elsie Stevens, and she looks pretty good considering her age! A picture is at the end of this post.

I'll get to Elsie shortly, but first, some personal history.

It was 1995 and I had nine years of Silver Eagles in my collection. We had 2 children under the age of 10 and money was tight, but I always managed to budget for the acquisition of one mint state and one proof Silver Eagle every year. 1995 was no different. I got my mint state coin and my 1995P proof, but the mint had thrown us a curve. There would be TWO different proof Silver Eagles that year!

The American Eagle 10th Anniversary Gold and Silver Bullion Proof Set minted at West Point. All I wanted was the 1995W silver proof, but the only way to get it from the mint was to buy the entire set, which at the time cost around $1,000. There was no way I could afford that, so like many others I had little choice but to accept that there would be a perpetual hole in my collection. eBay had just barely come into existence and was certainly not yet the "go to" place to search for coins, but I was an avid reader of Coin World. In early 1996 I started seeing 1995W Proof Silver Eagles being offered by a few dealers and then a few more, so I started saving my money. Every week, I'd scour the ads hoping I had enough to buy one. Unfortunately, whenever I thought I was close, the prices would go up. Finally, in January 1997, my savings managed to outpace the price increases and I snagged the prize. I knew little of third party grading services then, so it joined my flock of Eagles in the safe deposit box.

My collecting interest shifted completely to US/Philippines coins in 2004. I bought my first TGP encapsulated coin in 2005 (a 1904 Proof USPI One Centavo) and joined the NGC Collectors Society in 2006. For the last six years, I've been planning to send in my 1995W Proof ASE for grading, but with my focus on USPI, it always got bumped by coins I preferred to have graded first. When NGC offered the retro black holder though, I decided it was finally time to move her to the front of the queue. Below is a picture of the result. The grade is no big surprise considering that fewer than 8 out of 100 receives the coveted PF70UC. Now, back to Elsie.

Elsie Viola Kachel and the lawyer/poet Wallace Stevens were married in 1909 and sometime thereafter, they moved into an apartment in a brownstone on New York's lower west side. The building was owned by a German-born sculptor named Adolph Weinman. Weinman had a rooftop studio and asked Elsie to model for him around 1913. She was 27 at the time, and if my calculations are correct, that means she would have been born in 1886. It seems quite fitting then that Weinman's beautiful half dollar design was resurrected exactly 100 years later for the American Silver Eagle.

I've been checking eBay to see which dates are being offered in retro black holders. There are a lot of 2012 coins as one would expect, but there are quite a few others as well. Everything from 1986 on up, but I haven't yet seen another 1995W! Did anyone else send in their 1995W ASE for retro black holder?

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