gmarguli

But the Mint pushed back sales so they could address their IT problem. Seems like they didn't fix it. That's where my unhappiness lies. FYI, my order finally went through for both coins, so it's not like I'm unhappy that I didn't get them. Every single time my order failed I was logged out. That makes no sense. When I selected my credit card on file, it kept asking me to enter the CC #. It asked me to select a shipping option, but none were available for selection. It asked me to verify I was a human and after I did it told me it could not proceed with the order. Other than getting the errors faster, I don't see what they fixed.

Looks like the D & S versions are sold out in under 30 minutes. I'm not sure what the Mint did to upgrade their system as it was just as infuriating as in the past with it continuing to sign me out every time an order failed and accusing me of being a bot.

Not going to be much help other than confirm that they do appear to be pattern coins. Some are these listed in the Krause catalog, but not all. However, Krause is woefully bad when it comes to patterns. There probably is a catalog on Swiss coins where these are listed, but I don't know what it is. I couldn't find any sale records of them. Gut feeling is that they are probably work a couple hundred each. Contact Marcel Haberling (https://www.swisscoin.ch/) and he may be able to help. He's a reputable and very nice Swiss dealer.

First bullion coin I looked at, 1991 SAE in PR70. $1610 vs $276. 17%. It'll be a little harder for bullion to get crushed as much just because there is the bullion value as a floor and bullion has risen significantly over the past 20 years.. I picked the high price point, but I have no doubt that there were other sales within 20% of most of those. People were paying stupid money for labels. Also, those are only the prices the PCGS site lists. I just checked a coin I sold for $14 and it shows lowest sale at $20. Another coin I sold for $11 shows lowest as $16 (high of $226).

For PR70 moderns, many have. You can pull the sale prices from the PCGS site. I pulled these randomly: 1989 1c - $1380 vs $70. 5% 1976 5c - $4230 vs $144. 3.4% 1999 10c - $1438 vs $23. 1.6% 1991 25c - $558 vs $20. 3.6% 1992 Silver 50c - $1895 vs $45. 2.4% 1972 Ike - $4715 - $240-$312. 5% Admittedly, those are their high and low points, but there is no denying that the prices have been crushed.

Listen to the talk about graded cards and it is a repeat of what was happening in coins 30 years ago. Same BS about a single grade point inflating the value. People are talking about super high grade cards, I guess that is a 10 on the scale they currently use. Common junk, but super high grade. Hum, where did I see this before? Oh yeah, modern coins. MANY PR70s are selling for 1%-2% of their highs 20 years ago.

Replace card with coin and this played out many years ago. Given what they're charging to grade a card, there must be a ton of profit in the business, which can only lead to a crash in prices. Think PR70 coins drop in value.

Perhaps one day, in a galaxy far far away, NGC can find a way to not put any color in the mix and we can get clear cores that allow the coin to be seen better than hidden? We need a core like PCGS uses so we can see the coin clearly, a shell like NGC uses that can take a beating and not scratch, and a label like ANACS so that you can see what the coin is from the top of a box.

It's likely that NGC had some sort of documentation that pointed to this being Estonia. Perhaps the coin came from a mint roll of Estonian coins or even sealed in a mint set of Estonian coins. Or it is possible that the submitter wrote down Estonia and when entered into the NGC system, the person confirmed it met Estonian secs and didn't look any further. Given the fact that there is really $0 value difference between this being from Estonia and Austria or France or any other country, and the coin isn't exactly valuable as is, they probably aren't going to be super strict on documentation.

@Matt G What would be very helpful is if the grades posted before the coins were shipped. It's rather infuriating to see the grades post and see MS63 when the coin was a PROOF, or that NGC put the wrong KM number, or wrong country, or in one case, gave a color designation to a non-copper coin. It'd be very nice to be able to call NGC and report a problem before the coins shipped.

That could be shill bidding, but probably not. You and others were OK at $180. It sold for $200. Most likely someone else wanted it in that range also. If an item is at $180, why risk buying it back for an extra $20, when if you buy it back, it costs you $16+ in fees? Yes, the seller can cancel the sale and get their fees back, but eBay watches this very carefully. There is only one rule with eBay and that is eBay always gets its money. Cancel too many sales and they will yank your account. As always, bid what you're willing to pay and forget about it.

Specimen = Special Strike. It's not a circulation strike, but not a traditional proof strike. These coins were made high quality cameo PL, but not proofs. SP seems like a valid designation. PL6x could have also worked, but that kind of implies that all the examples are PL and some may not be.

I responded to a question on 3/17/21 from you. It's possible I missed another question. When I have hundreds of auctions running, I get flooded with questions and requests. What was your question?

From what I know about these, they were not technically minted in proof. These were issued in mint sets and the coins came full cameo prooflike. Ivanauskas lists them as only coming in business strike. Krause calls them PL. NGC calls them proofs. PCGS called them proofs (before they heavily instituted the SP designation), but apparently switched to SP. My guess is they choose SP instead of MS since the coins were specially struck (hence Specimen) and if they called them MS, people would complain since the coins don't look MS. SP is probably the correct term for them. By the way, I was the submitter of that coin. I sold it back in 2012 to a guy named Mantas in Lithuania. Is that you?

There is no benefit to this. If a seller places fake bids above what the item normally sells for, that fake bid is going to end up winning the auction almost every time. How does that benefit the seller? It's only going to benefit the seller if another bidder placed a bid above normal levels. Considering the seller/shiller is going to have to pay fees on that fake win, that's a pretty lousy risk, hoping for a dumb bidder to come along and overbid. I believe that shill bids just replace real bids the vast majority of the time. Item worth $100 is at $50. Shill bid placed at $95. Item sells for $100. Did the shill increase the sale price? Nope, they just replaced the bids of other bidders that would have bid in the $51-$95 range. Only time shill bidding can really work is if you know the high bidder is willing to pay significantly more than the underbidder. That's a difficult, but not impossible thing to know.

Normally at auction people bid until the one willing to pay the most has outbid all other bidders. However, one of my eBay buyers found a FOOLproof way to pay less. He placed his first bid at $86 and then two other bidders came in and bid higher amounts. He came back with several more bids and was high bidder three separate times before the auction ended. At this point he decided the underbidders had bid too much, so he sent me this email: Could you please cancel the other bidder's bids? They bid this up way too high. Thanks. Yes, he wants me to cancel the underbidders bids because they bid too much. The item sold for $410 with him as the high bidder. When he saw that I didn't cancel the underbidders bids, he tried another approach: My bid of $86 seems like an appropriate price to pay for this item. Could you please send me an adjusted invoice? I think the other bidder got carried away. Thank you. When no new invoice came his way, he tried to reason with me: All the other Israeli commemoratives you have sold of similar types have sold between approximately $68 to $125. Perhaps they did it to be antisemitic. This auction turned into an overpriced disaster. This completely ignores the fact that the other commems were common coins and this was a very low mintage, top pop example. At this point I canceled the order as I prefer not to deal with crazy. He then let me know that he did not want to cancel the order and he was ready to pay $86. When that didn't work, he let me know some awful news: Historically, this is a bad week for the Jewish people. I had a feeling something wasn't going to go right for me. FYI, I received a total of 8 emails from him over a couple hour period and did not reply to a single one of them. Anyway, I'm off to chastise the underbidder (forum member ATS) for bidding this coin up just due to anti-Semitism. I bet he's going to be very confused about being an anti-Semite considering he's Jewish. That's just something he'll have to deal with...

If this were a sophomore paper, I'd be forced to include how COVID was caused by whiteness and I'd be canceled for calling Mr. Grenier Mister, without first finding out their preferred gender pronoun. I'm sure he/his/they/them Grenier would want that. As for my facts, try a search engine.

But the government needs the death total to be high. Look at what the government did: Spent trillions of dollars fighting COVID. Destroyed the livelihood of millions of Americans. Caused the permanent closure of tens of thousands of businesses. Created massive unemployment. Allowed an unconstitutional taking of property from hundreds of thousands of landlords. Caused inflation that will end up harming the elderly the most. Created a disincentive to work, so businesses are struggling to find workers. Inadvertently caused a spike in housing prices that further puts homeownership out of reach of the people they say they want to help. On and on and on... They need to say they did this to benefit us. Look voters, it killed millions, but thank god we stopped it. It was all worth it. Vote for me for reelection. In reality, they massively overreacted. To save face they need to attribute a ton of deaths to COVID.

I believe this is the coin. Listed under India - British, Bengal Presidency, Bengal Coinage. It's page 950/951 of the current 18th century catalog.

It's India - Bengal Presidency. AH1195//22 and based on weight/size, it is a 1/2 Anna. Probably KM-126.

Similar story. Distant relative had terminal cancer. She got COVID and went in the hospital, but she fully recovered and went home. Few weeks later she died from cancer. What was her cause of death? COVID! Even though she was COVID-free for weeks before her death and she had terminal cancer, the government called it a COVID death.

The 64 has some surface residue. The 64+ appears to have a more consistent look in the fields. Over all, not a big difference between the two.

OK, I'll provide facts. Fact: Official COVID deaths is 6 million over the past 18 months. 3 million people die of hunger every month, so 54 million died of hunger since COVID. Fact: People who have/had COVID, but died due other reason were still called "COVID deaths" because the government was reimbursing hospitals at a significantly higher rate for COVID victims. Therefore, the official number is likely greatly inflated. Fact: Dr. Fauci has flip-flopped more than a fish out of water. He is politically biased. He is completely untrustworthy. He is clueless. I have no bias against science, but if you bothered to do even the slightest bit of research on scientific topics, you'd be horrified. Scientific studies that are never replicated for more conclusive proof; money forces scientists to start with the outcome the money wants and work their way backwards; published studies that are completely wrong, but reported in the media as fact; political motives driving the sciences; etc.

If you have a coin that does not qualify for the tier it was submitted under, they will adjust the tier for you and charge you the higher rate. One TPG used to adjust the entire invoice, so if 1 of 50 coins was a higher tier, they'd charge you the higher tier rate for all 50 coins.

At present rates, the stated* COVID 19 deaths is less than the number of people who died from hunger during the same time period. If only there were a vaccine for hunger. *Stated numbers probable 50% higher than actual numbers (except in NY). Personally, I hope some country makes a Dr. Fauci (falsey?) coin with an inlayed Magic 8 ball.