gmarguli

Looks like it might have some PVC on it.

Around 35 years ago I saw my neighbors toilet seat and it had coins in it (both the lid and the part you sit on). It had to have been very old at that time as I recall there were unc Buffalo nickels and Walking Liberty halves in it, among many other nice looking coins. Besides, she never updated the place and everything in it was very old, so the seat had to have been very old. When she died they had an estate sale and I went over to buy it with the hopes of freeing the coins. It was gone. I asked about it and was told that someone stole it off the toilet earlier in the day. Someone unhooked it from the toilet and snuck it out of the house without anyone seeing them. From what I understand, freeing stuff from Lucite isn't super difficult for most objects. You can freeze the Lucite in liquid nitrogen and then smash it with a hammer. You can also soak smaller pieces of it in acetone and it will dissolve.

Forum: Here is some constructive criticism that could better help get your point across and inform the forum members. Insider: I'm right, you're wrong.

Even if they collect all three varieties (business strike, proof, & satin finish)?

There doesn't have to be a massive investment pool of coins for it to make sense. I think you'd be surprised to know how many small investment pools are out there. It also doesn't have to consist of mega-rarities. Do a search for private investments for accredited investors. As for why someone would invest, especially a non-collector? To make money. You can buy fractional ownership in a vineyards yield. In a collection of rare Whiskeys. Groups of paintings. There are tons of investments deals out there for accredited investors looking to dump $50K-$1M in alternative investments. Many of these pools have redemption restrictions. I may not drink wine or like whiskey, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't invest in it if I thought it was a good investment.

You're absolutely 100% dead wrong. Coins are financial assets. Collectors derive pleasure from owning them which creates their value. However, collectors also expect them to hold their value or increase in value. No collector buys a coin expecting a loss. Investors don't care about the underlying asset, they just want it to go up in price, but they don't care what they buy. So of course investors will sell the fractional ownership in the coin as soon as they find a better use for the money. Does that surprise you? Is there any reason to think they wouldn't? That doesn't mean that this idea will fail. The coin market and the investment world is very different from 1989 when people went crazy bidding up everything without knowing what the fund was actually going to invest in.

Fractional ownership is absolutely the wave of the future. It all makes perfect sense to allow people with less means, knowledge, or time to invest in areas they think will appreciate in value. It's here in stocks and real estate on the consumer level. It's available for other big ticket items like old master paintings to higher net worth individuals. I'm currently entertaining fractional ownership of elder care facilities. I think there is tremendous value and future demand in these facilities, but I don't want to invest $1M in a single one and have to spend time figuring out how to run it, so 50 people get together and put in 100K each and someone buys and runs 5 of them. Less risk with more properties, no time spent running the places, and the investors collect the dividends.

That's really cool. Never saw it before. I wonder if David picked the Kennedy 50c to be in the sample slab. I rarely see anything other than a 10c or 25c in sample slabs.

Minus one who is routinely rude to me. No joke: "I'm too busy right now to accept a submission" while casually chatting with a coworker and not busy at all. After asking someone at the table the submission cutoff time and then being there 30+ minutes before, "We're no longer accepting submissions". I thought the cut off was 30+ minutes from now? "Not anymore, because I said so". Tore up NGC submission form and walked right over to the PCGS table and submitted the ~80 coins to them. Walked up to the table with a friend who wanted to submit coins. Asked a question about a submission. Upon follow-up question, "I don't have time for this" and walked away from us. As we walked away my friend asked me "why does she hate you"? Friend ended up submitting the 300+ coins to PCGS. I believe my friend has never used NGC since. Now I'll wait until David Lange is there to drop off a submission as he's always nice. Other than this one person, everyone at NGC has been awesome and super friendly.

A very bizarre list. Deep pocket collectors - Who cares about them. Dealers that have done nothing for the hobby that didn't make them more money. Some scummy ones on the list. Some well known names, but I couldn't name a single thing they did for the benefit of the hobby. Extremely US-centric list. And of course there were people who made significant contributions to the hobby, but for one reason or another they are too controversial to put there. I'd have much rather seen several list broken down by type of contribution (numismatic research; collector outreach; advancing the hobby; philanthropy, etc).

You're all very dismissive of my amazing discovery. I took this close up pic so you can see the Braille more easily. Does this change you mind?

No company, not matter how big or how much market share, stays on top forever. I think that it is highly likely that another company comes along within the next 20 years and displaces one or both of them. Technology will replace the human grader at some point. Right now it is the eye appeal factor that computers cannot nail down. Once this problem is solved, we'll have a company that has a computer that can assign an accurate and stable grade to a coin within a couple of seconds.

After reading this forum for a while, I think I have found an amazing discovery worthy of posting here. An 1821 Capped Bust 50c with an experimental finish. I believe the dots are actually the Braille language which was invented just a few years after this was minted. It's been in my family for years. I found it when going through my grandfathers stuff. I didn't even know he collected coins. He was a firefighter and I though he only collected antique fire damaged items. Before showing you my amazing discovery I showed it to a bunch of experts who told me it was damaged garbage. Even though they all refused to make me an offer on it, I know they just wanted to pay me pennies on the dollar for it. Coin dealers are all scum. Will NGC certify it as the "Braille Discovery Coin" for me?

The last time I recall Congress thought about the prospect to stop minting the cent and start to round transactions, there were screams from the Dems that this would hurt the lower income people the most. Businesses would round up and the poor would suffer. Even studies done showing this was not true, businesses would round both up and down and there would be no loss to the consumers did not stop the screams. It was quickly dropped. Hard to get common sense things done when there are so many stupid people looking for TV time.

I didn't mean that the ANA Board overfunded it, but rather the amount of funds set aside for it was way more than needed. Maybe 10 years ago I received a donation request card from the ANA and it asked where you wanted your donation to be applied. A person who was "involved" with the ANA posted on the forums that everyone selects the YN section and that there is more than enough money set aside for YNs while other parts of the ANA were struggling because everyone wants to support the YNs. I don't know if it was true, but the person was a credible source and the reasoning sounds very reasonable.

I would not trust the mintages with semi-private mints. Even some official mints are slimy. I've been told you don't need to be a royal to purchased freshly minted bullion coins from past years with one mint.

1) I thought that some sister company of NGC already graded sports cards. 2) Having card collectors post in the coin forums is not an acceptable way to increase traffic to these forums.

It is my understanding that there are areas of the ANA that are overfunded. For example, supposedly the Young Numismatists is over-funded. Perhaps the ANA needs to get tough and stop allowing donations to be restricted to certain areas. It should be, "Give us your donation and tell us where you'd like it applied (but there is no guarantee it will be applied in that area if there are more pressing concerns)." Maybe they should refuse donations of coins if the person donating requires that they not be sold. Flat out, if you can't trust the ANA to do what's in the best interest of the ANA with your donation, then you can keep your donation.

The mint played very loose with the dates on these. They released a few years all at once. I don't recall the specifics, but something like in 2007 they released the coins for 2007, 2008, 2009, & 2010. It would not surprise me to find out that these were minted sometime well after 2007.

This is actually their standard operating procedure. Many years ago I sold a raw coin and the buyer said it was fake. I knew it wasn't, but no big deal, just return it. Buyer refuses to return the coin "because he is concerned I'll just resell the fake" and he still demands money back and says he will destroy the fake. I even offered to have it graded by PCGS/NGC (his choice) to prove it was real and he refused. I refuse to refund and he gets eBay involved. eBay sided with him and let him keep the coin and processed a refund for him automatically. It was only after I make it clear to eBay what my next course of action would be (and pointing out my eBay fees neared 100K that year) that they decided to be magnanimous and compensate the buyer out of their pocket rather than stealing money from me. And the coin came from a dealer who is an internationally recognized expert and is an outside authenticator for a TPG.

It's been a few years since I've been there (the cost of the trip was becoming out of line), but the entire time there were very few slabs. There were a couple dealers with lots of slabs in their cases, but those were expensive coins. Nothing like you'd see at a US show where there were $30 coins in slabs.

While there are many high end dealers there, there are also a lot of dealers that have lower priced material. I've gone to the show maybe 5 times (all when held at the Waldorf) and it was held in 3 different rooms. Rooms 2 & 3 were filled with lower end dealers. Several dealers brought binders or boxes with coins in 2x2s and most were priced fairly cheaply. I've bought lots of nice stuff for under $20. Also bought lots of nice stuff for thousands of dollars there. There is something for everyone. You will find very few slabs there. This is a nice thing if you are good at grading. You can pick up some gem stuff cheap.

Best I can tell, the ANA has an endowment of around $45 million. I would not call that MASSIVE on any scale. It appears that almost all of it is in stock in a private company. An extremely risky endowment. Harvard has a $40 billion endowment. That is a MASSIVE endowment. While I am a Life Member, I don't keep up with the day-to-day happenings at the ANA. I just hear stories of happenings and read things online. I would have a hard time donating to the ANA. I feel there is a lack of trust, openness, and competency there. I may be 100% off base, but that is what I feel as a casual observer.

Unfortunately, most surveys are done to confirm the direction that an organization already wants to go. They don't care about the wants of a customer.

لا قيمة لها.