GoldFinger1969

I actually think they DO grade on the merits. The problem is the graders are people. They are fallible. They have good days and bad days. There are times in the day when their eyes are super-sharp and other times of the day they are a bit tired. They miss things. Sometimes when they catch them, they disagree on them. Are bag marks on the devices worse or better than in the fields ? The gross misses -- which usually have threads here or ATS -- are thankfully few and far between. That's not to say that gradeflation is not a problem...but if you DO think gradeflation is a problem, then CAC is your Best Friend.

I have 1 or 2 CACs but they are Morgans.....don't have any Saints but hope to once I have replenished my bank account.

No Saints ?

I think most here would disagree that CAC is a gimmick. If a coin has the sticker, it's strong for the grade. It's highly unlikely it would ever get re-graded LOWER -- if anything, a bump-up is a distinct possibility.

"You look like a tough guy, can I call you knuckles ?" "Sure, but why knuckles" ? "Because I'm gonna put FIVE across your lips !!!" - Fred G. Sanford....and the "G" stands for Golden Gloves !!

A price guide is not an agreement to buy/sell coins at stated prices....it's not a live Bid-Ask spread. It's just data points. He has a great price matrix for every Saint-Gauden for 2 or 3 grade levels in his book.

No, I don't think it's a question of integrity with NGC or PCGS. The problem is just bad, wrong, or lagged data. What is better is to use the price trend charts over a longer period of time as a good indicator of where prices have gone over the last 6-12 months and even going back years. THERE I find them pretty accurate for a quick ballpark guestimate of where prices have been. Again...it's more time consuming....but the best is to match up auction and actual sales prices at the points in time of interest to you. But this will take a few minutes if not longer and most of us want to get the price in seconds. RWB's DOUBLE EAGLES book has a price matrix for each Saint in the book from 1976-2015 which no doubt required lots of work.

Got it....what about DE after 1907 ? A little higher ?

Just want to make sure I understand....for Liberty's and/or Saints (or maybe all coins ?)....you are saying 0.46% of total mintage is a good approximation for the total of NON-TPG GRADED coins out there ? Presumably, that number has to be slightly adjusted DOWN over time, right, to account for stragglers sent in for grading over time, right ? As more of the non-certified stash comes out for grading, the number will adjust downward ?

The asking prices and even completed sales prices have gone nuts the last 2 years.

I like Silver coins including commemoratives:

Looks like a WONDERFUL collection, congratulations ! Can I ask how you came to acquire it ?

We are a patient group. I don't think we'd have a problem if a newbie asked some questions on Saints or Morgans for which there were threads....it's easy to miss things or not find them. But most/many of the newbies are here to tell us about some coin they found that they are sure is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars and 99.99% of them are not.

For rare coins and trophy coins -- as I detailed above -- yes, prices can move bigtime all at once. That happened in August when Simpson put some of his trophy coins up for sale and EC and Half Dome went at it (EC and Half Dome....sounds like a couple of street toughs headed to a rumble !! ). For more liquid, common coins...prices are pretty stable and close to other FMV transactions. I've seen multiple coins...same grade....both appearances close to one another.....and sometimes the price difference is $0 or $50 which on a $2,000 coin is nothing.

Mets owner Steve Cohen has opened the checkbook this year, can't complain. And I think the Mets are middle-of-the-pack in terms of food pricing. Yankee Stadium much more expensive. If you are going by their price table or their graphs....they tend to lag, both PCGS and NGC. The graphs are GOOD for long-range pricing moves....but to get accurate pricing in the PRESENT (now or 6 months back), you need to check recent sales for actual auction prices. What I'm confused about is why their official prices or the graphs are off but they sometimes have the most recent actual sales listed in another grid a few days/weeks after it happened. FWIW.....common Saints in MS-65 are probably $2,200 give-or-take....low-60's should probably be $1,800 I would guess. Those are off the top of my head but I doubt I'm off by more than $100.

Nah....I'm gonna try Logan's Run.

The SSCA was going from SanFran to NYC.

RMS Republic.....different than the SS Republic.

I was thinking more about ships travelling from one part of the USA to the other.

Heavy Hitters Corner: Real big moves UP in trophy Saints the last few months. The MS-69 deemed "The Best One" from the 1908 No Motto Wells Hoard went for just under $287,000 (w/bp); the same coin sold for $95,000 back in 2005. A 1927-D was sold for $4.4 MM. This was the Dallas Bank-Simpson 1927-D (Simpson has another rated 67) which is believed to be the 3rd best. Our friend EC has an MS-66+CAC. A 1924-S sold for $930,000...remember, at one point decades ago this was believed to be the rarest of the Saint series. EC, Half Dome, and a few others are dragging up all the trophy Saints.

Since we knew about the SSCA, wouldn't it stand to reason there were no other big quantities on any of the other shipwrecks ? It would have been known at the time, like the SSCA was known in 1857 (and probably helped give the economic downturn of that year more bite).

Outside of that 30-year quest with the missing maps that we talked about earlier in this thread (name of ship escapes me)....I don't think there are any sizeable Liberty or Saint DE hoards or supplies in known ships that sunk.

You use 0.46% of total mintage to guestimate non-certified survivors in the present ?

Yup, forgot that amount....but where'd you get that estimate ?

Actually....I wasn't. I get the total population count from NGC at 768,890 and for PCGS at 749,105. Clearly, there are cross-overs (double-counts) and while this is above my pay grade I believe a ball park figure is to haircut the total by about 40% from what I have read (correct me if I am way off). So eliminating about 40% of the PCGS count and summing up gives me just over 1.2 MM coins.