BillJones

Personally I have had some very good relationships with coin dealers over the years. You learn to size them up over time. The good ones are the people you look up first at the shows and on the Internet. The bad ones are the last people you see at the shows, and when you do, you go armed with all of the expertise and skepticism that you can muster.

On 11/22/2017 at 3:43 PM, Nutmeg Coin said:

They provide a high level of professional and intellectual rigor to their analysis.  Their sticker on many coins is worth a lot more than sellers will get.  More liquidity with cac.  I often get ebay offers around cac bid from dealers and serious collectors because they realize there is not risk for them.

I cannot agree with your first sentence. I have been disappointed too many times with them. 

As for the next two sentences, that is true because many collectors have been drawn in by the marketing. 

As for the "no risk" comment, an over graded coin is still an over graded coin even with a sticker. When you pay more than the retail price because of the sticker for that over graded coin, you take on a lot of risk. 

Nice 1916-D Mercury Dime, Coinman1794!!!

That coin would at least make VF-35 in a main stream holder under the watered down standards for coins like this today. It might make EF-40.

When I was a dealer I had a want list for a 1916-D Mercury Dime. The customer and I looked at the Gray Sheet and came to the conclusion that he could afford a VF. When I started shopping for the coin I found out that what used to be VG is now VF. The lines on the ax handle were not complete on any of the coins I say. I finnally found a VF35 graded piece that I could call VF-20 to fill his want list for a bit of extra money.

"CAC does review the toning and a sticker is an endorsement that the coin is unmolested/natural."

Not in all cases. Recently a dealer sent me a notice that he had a coin that had been on my want list for over a year. The grade was PCGS MS-63, CAC. I thought, "Great! Now I will be able to complete that set," The price was quite high, $2,000 over the PCGS "Coin Facts" quote. When I saw pictures of the coin I was severly disappointed. When I saw the coin in person my concerns were confirmed.

The coin was an AU-58 with an obvious rub in both the obverse and reverse fields. It also was a gold coin that had been dipped. The dealer admitted that it did not have original color. It could have passed as an MS-62 according to "market grading" but no more. The trouble is the extra grading point doubled the price, and the extra $2,000 for the CAC sticker made it even less viable.

Why did CAC put a sticker on this over graded coin? I have no idea, but this is one more example of why CAC is over rated in my opinion. All CAC has do is say "yes" or "no" to a coin. That's a lot less than the grading services are asked to do, and yet CAC is put up on a pedestal, and there are people who constantly attack those who do not support it unconditionally.

I paid $100 in "tuition" on that coin. In a way it was a bargain. Many of us have learned by losing money.

I don't think it's so easy or inexpensive to get coins re-holdered. I bought that McKinley gold dollar on the day before a Winter FUN closed. I walked it to the PCGS booth to get it reholdered, which cut out the postage and insurance to send it to them. Still I had to pay for the re-holder, something like $10, then there was an $8 invoice fee plus $25 for postage and insurance that was LESS THAN the coin was worth. If I had not under insured it, it would have been another $8. So that was $43 just get a $1,200 coin (at the the time) re-holered. My reaction was "Never again!" In the old days you could get a coin re-holdered at a show for $5. Now they rip you off.

Today, a scuffed up or damaged holder, which I know I can't polish, is enough for me to reject a coin I otherwise would buy.

As for the reason so many holders are scuffed, all you need is for them to go through an auction a few times. Sliding in and out of the auction boxes beats the holders up completely.

One time I got stuck on a coin in a scuffed up holder. It was an 1807 quarter in PCGS VF-30. I thought I could see enough of the coin to make sure it was okay. It was a circulated coin, after all. I cracked it out because the customer wanted it for a Dansco album. When I craked it, I found out why the holder was scuffed. The coin had been polished and given layer of artificial toning.

Why would PCGS grade something like that? Search me, but I learned a lesson. You can't trust PCGS, and I learned I could not trust the dealer who sold it to me. I sent the coin back to him, and asked for $100 less than I paid. If he didn't agree to that, I was going out him. He paid me the money.

The lesson is, if the holder is scuffed so badly that you can't see the coin well enough to grade it PASS.

I had a similar situation with this 1903 McKinley commemorative gold dollar. It was in a damaged PCGS MS-64 holder. I could tell from what I could see that the coin had P-L characteristics with warm, coppery toning. It looked like the Proof McKinley coins that I had seen although I knew that it was not a Proof. I had PCGS re-holder the coin, but it cost me so much after all was said and done that I would never do that again.

I have found that getting the P-L notation on a coin is very hard. There are coins that look to be P-L don't get it, and I don't understand what the standards are because they are inconsistant. I would not worry myself with the P-L thing. The odds of getting it on a gold coin seem to be very low to me. It's mostly something that is connected with Morgan Dollars. The only double eagles that I have seen were dated 1904, which is by far the most common date in the series.

If that coin is going to make P-L, it's going to have to show a whole lot more to me in the future than it is now showing me in that photo. Remember that it has to be P-L on both sides to make that designation, which is pretty rare from what I've seen.

From the one picture it would seem that the piece is smooth enough to grade MS-63, but the dull gray areas, which I presume are from the scuffed holder, make any additional support for the grade impossible.

What grade was assigned to this piece? That information along with a photo of the reverse is essential to rendering any opinions.

And yes, generally an Old Green Label (OGL) plus a CAC sticker brings more money from a fair number of buyers.  

Without a picture, it's impossible to give you even a speculative answer to your question.

Just because the coin is in an old PCGS holder and approved by CAC, does not mean that they got it right. Recently a dealer offered me a coin that is on my want list. I want to fill that hole in my set very much, but I could not do it with that piece given the assigned grade. It is in a PCGS MS-63, green CAC holder. The coin has a rub in the fields on both sides, and the market grade is MS-62 in my opinion. The coin technically is not a Mint State piece. The extra point to MS-63 doubles the price, which makes that extra grading point critical to the coin's value. 

As for grading services, including CAC, the comment about "opinions" applies. Not all opinions are correct, and sometimes politics gets involved with the grade. No grading service is "infallible" or "perfect" regardless of what you have read or heard from collectors and dealers.

8 hours ago, Nutmeg Coin said:

All NGC would have had to do is require PCGS coins included in the registry to pass muster with cac, eagle eye, etc..  Their thesis of non-inclusion was that PCGS was watering down their grading, that would have been a sensible solution.   

I have never seen an Eagle Eye approved coin that I didn't like, but I can't say the same for CAC. I would rather leave things the way they are than to give more power to CAC.

As a collector I used to enjoy working with the NGC registry. I enjoyed posting the pictures and doing the write-ups for each coin. I am a collector who buys the coin and no the holder. I defended NGC ATS.

Now all of that is gone because I have buy NGC coins to go in their registry, and I refuse to do that. I still buy the coin. NGC took away a small part of my enjoyment of this hobby. You can called me childish, but I have a right to angry and fed up, and I am. When the provider fails to please the customer, the customer has a right to walk, and I'm walking.

I might be off base with this opinion, but I believe that it would be much harder to verify a circulated Matte Proof than a circulated brilliant Proof. Many collectors, including me, have enough trouble sometimes verifying a Matte Proof when it is as struck. When you add circulation marks to that along with possible wear on the all important rims, verification becomes quite difficult.

If the Matte Proof has a die diagnostic, like the die break, which I think appears on the reverse of the 1915 nickels, then it is easier to attribute it.

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Just look at yourselves. What's wrong with just buying the coin you like no matter what holder it's in ?

My point exactly. The NGC was superior to the PCGS registry because it accepted both NGC and PCGS coins. Now it's a myopic marketing tool that little to do with the best of anything.

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How long do you give it before those are also not allowed? 2 years? 

If the day ever comes that NGC decides to push all of the PCGS coins out of the registry, I tear down my sets and leave NGC behind forever. I will not even look at an NGC coin for purchase.

I tried to carry this company's water for years on the blogs, and this is thanks I get for loyalty.

22 hours ago, allmine said:

mommam17: was he from the Springfield MA area?

I remember going into Old Man Romano's shop in Boston. He'd be there, smoking in the dark before the shop'd open, and let me in. He'd ell me about 19th Boston Coin Dealers, B. Max Mehl, breaking heretofore unknown hoards, etc. Interesting stories

I never met Corrado Romano who was founder of the Worthy Coin Store in Boston. I bought some really nice coins there, but by the time I came along Corrado had turned over all of the shop duties to his son, Don, who was an excellent numismatist in his own right. From what Don said his father did not feel comfortable coming into the store any more.

Corrado's pride and joy was a Silver Centered Cent. When he died that coin went up for auction along with the rest of his coins in a Stacks' sale. I think the collection realized something like $1.9 million.

After Corrado died and sold his collection, the shop went downhill in my opinion. They held a Saturday auction, and after a while there was just too much shilling going on for my tastes.

I heard that Don Romano died a couple of years ago. He was a troubled person, and after awhile the smoking, drinking and drugs got to him. He was a really great guy, and I was sorry to hear of his passing.

As for Vinny Blum, I remember the name, but can't place the face. I think of him from my New Jersey days, but that is wrong.

I recently purchased this 1839-C quarter eagle in an auction. I have two more coins to go to complete the Classic Head Quater set. They are supposed to be "somewhat common," but I have not had much luck finding them.

5 hours ago, t-arc said:

Would never pay a farthing for anything written by RWB.  We miss him so ATS.

Sorry to mention it, he's back ATS, much to the credit of ATS. As RWS said, Breen was good in his time, which is an opinion I endorsed. Time and research moves on, which is what we have seen.

Breen's personal life was obviously reprehensible, but in terms of numismatics, Breen was a saint compared to the likes of John Ford.

I didn't know much about what Ford was up to in his day before I read the Eric P. Newman biography. I knew from the collectors that were my father's age that he was shady, but I didn’t know how shady.

The only time I ever laid eyes on the man was when the Massachusetts Historical Society held an event with Boston Numismatic Society at the unveiling of numismatic display. Most collectors gave him a cordial reception, a few of them rolled their eyes and said that “He’d steal your eye teeth if they weren’t attached to your head.”

Another well know collector and coin magazine columnist was not on the up and up either. One Boston dealer told me about $100,000 collection that a widow had in 10 double row boxes. Back in those days $100,000 collection would be a $1 million or more today.

At any rate, this person took the collection for appraisal, made up one box and paid the widow $10,000 with a promise to buy more. The trouble was he cherry picked the good stuff and left the widow with all of the common pieces. That was the end of the deal for him.

4 hours ago, Afterword said:

As he is dead, I do not see anything constructive about bringing up his personal transgressions. It certainly contributes nothing of relative interest concerning his ability to research and write about coins.

I can't and will never defend what he did in his private life, but as a collector from the early 1960s and onward, Breen enhanced my enjoyment of the hobby. Comments about him like this always degenerate into what we have here. The man is dead and what he did was very wrong, but running him through the ringer like this every time like this does not prove anything  any more.

22 hours ago, Nutmeg Coin said:

I found his main work to be interesting, and expensive but often purloined from libraries, so you are lucky to find a copy at your local library.

On the other hand no one is irreplaceable, if he hadn't been writing what he was you can be sure many would have filled the vacuum.  As it was many competent writers probably saw his work and wondered what's the use of competing with him?  And you know law enforcement could be a lot better to address serious abuse while it is still green and developing, but that's the defect of how many were taught growing up to not rock the boat, report transgressors that in some magical way karma would work itself out without your reporting bad behavior.  Not the way the world works. 

That was not the way the spread of numismatic information was happened in the old days (1960s). A lot of the big dealers kept information to themselves, and as it is today some of them knew less than you might imagine. A few of them, like John Ford, were bad news. Read the book about Eric P. Newman to get the scoop on that. Others had no time for small collectors and kids like me in 1960s.

There were very few books on die varieties and what few there were are often out of print and hard to find. Dr. Sheldon's early date large cent book was the only one that was easy to get in the 1960s. The coin magazines were not great for information. Breen and Taxay were the leading authors. Collectors don't know how great they have it today.

I looked at a copy of the "Giant Red Book" and came away disappointed. It does devote a lot of space to copper, but when I got to the gold section the detail seemed to disappear. If you are looking for lots of coverage for the minor coinage, it's quite good. Once you beyond that, not so much.

I agree with Mark's assessment of Walter Breen. His private life was reprehensible, but as a numismatic writer he was and remains a very important figure. During the 1960s and for most of the '70s there were very few numismatic writers who provided collectors with much information beyond "The Red Book."

The main experts at that time were Breen and Don Taxay. I learned a lot from Breen's articles, booklets and books. He was a much better writer than Taxay was. His prose was fluid and easy to read. His "Supplement" to Valentine's work on the early half dime varieties brought me many hours of pleasure when I was collecting those coins.

Breen could have an active imagination about some of the facts, and he was sometimes wrong about the rarity of certain varieties, but that was not always his fault. When a new variety is discovered about all you can do is describe it and make a guess as to how rare it might be. Over time you might be proven right or wrong as more collectors and dealers inspect their items and make attributions. It is impossible for a researcher, like Breen, to get that right every time.

Conversely Breen's pronouncements about some items and his testimonial letters were sometimes motivated more by the fees he received than the truth. I doubt that Breen was always paid for what his services were really worth given the lack of ethics that some sellers displayed in the 1950's, '60s and '70s. Therefore he probably needed the money.

Breen should not be roundly condemned as some people like to do. He was an important figure in his time and deserves recognition for the good things he did by modern collectors. Many people like to dump on his greatest work, his encyclopedia. Some of facts in it are wrong, but to date no one was come forward to write anything like it. It still deserves a place on every serious collector's bookshelf.