GoldFinger1969

FYI, as I recall, the lira exchange rate to the dollar was about 600 to 700 in the 1960's and 1970's.  So this was a small denomination coin.

On 2/26/2024 at 9:32 PM, USAuPzlBxBob said:

My 2013 Red Book is the only copy I've ever seen, so I don't know what other year versions state regarding the SS Central America. I'd be curious to know what other members find in their Red Books for years other than 2013, relating to this upside-down flag assertion. Coming across the assertion was serendipity for me, to say the least.  I had no idea it was stated in the Red Book. The other ships that leant help may have written in their logs mention of the upside-down flag. Ordered Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea today; hard cover, used, very good condition. (Amazon)

My Whitman Double Eagle Red Book (not the Annual Red Book about all coins) has 5 full pages on the SSCA.  There's only 1 edition of this book (2004) but there is a bit more information that has come out on the total salvaged and a few other items, if they ever do a 2nd edition. 

My Annual Red Book is the 67th Edition, (c) 2013 like yours.  1 1/2 pages on shipwrecks and a bit under 1/2 page on the SSCA.  There's an error on the SS Republic where they say that 1,400 DEs were found dated 1838-1858.  DEs weren't struck until 1850 (excluding the sole 1859).

Congrats on finding the bill !!   I am curious as to where you "found" it, if you would let us know.

Here's the grading definitions used by PMG, the leading currency grader.  I woul say your bill is either in the Very Good or Very Fine buckets....probably VG-10 or VF-12 as the bill has tears and gaps along the sides.  It is also very worn.  Not sure if it is any special print which would add to the value. 

https://www.pmgnotes.com/paper-money-grading/grading-scale/

Still, I bet it has a FMV of $100 or a bit more.

Great article, I commented in another thread. 

On 2/28/2024 at 2:32 PM, zadok said:

...all u say is viable in the discussion, my main query is whether the owner of lets say a set of saints is representative of the hobby or is he an outlier n skews the metrics...im sure there r many true collectors that only collect one area or denomination of the hobby, large cent collectors come to mind, im just not convinced that most of the saint registry set owners r real collectors or just owners, its not important to the hobby overall just an inquiry...saint collecting is definitely diff than collecting say short foreign bullion sets where the entire set can be assembled in a matter of days n usually in mint state due to the non-circulating of the coins involved, again not important to the overall hobby...my experience is that true collectors collect more than just one area of any hobby....

You probably have some MCMVII HR and/or Saint and/or gold or silver HOLDERS....who never add to their holdings....never look at them....don't know what a slab is (unless they inherited one)....and are never on forums like this.   I agree.  We won't see or hear about their coins until they die and their estate/kids/beneficiaries liquidate the holdings. 

You've said -- and Kurt backs it up with his PA excursions -- that lots of people purchased raw coins and/or inherited them and they are sitting in safes, garages, or SDBs.  Again, I agree.

It might only be 5-20% of the current population grades for some coins...but that is ALOT of coins for those coins/grades that have seen no or little movement in the population census in years/decades.

I agree:  true collectors are ACTIVE and are involved in more than 1 coin type.  But lots of people are just coin or bullion HOLDERS -- not collecting, not buying, not selling, not active -- especially for older collectors and/or their estate inheritors.

Was a Chicago mint ever considered, Roger ?  Denver's population in 1906 couldn't have been that large.

On 2/27/2024 at 3:47 PM, zadok said:

...not totally relevant to ur comment but came into my mind while reading it...knowing ur obsession  with saints n my thinking that saints r not coins that r aggressively collected, however the number of registry sets do not support my premise...

The big factor with Saints is you are talking about a big 1 ounce coin....so at current market values, you are talking about a floor of about $2,000 to get into the game.  And obviously numismatic-quality coins are mostly in the $2,500 - $4,000 range depending on the rarity and grade.  That explains why many gold afficionados will collect Quarter or Half Eagles instead....MUCH less expensive, right ? 

If you want to get in the game for ASEs, you can buy plenty of stuff for < $100.00.  Not so with Saints or modern AGEs ! 

I can't recall where I read it (Doug Winter's blog ?)...I know I posted it before....but I read where one guestimate was the following:

• About 500 serious registry collectors of Saints.
• About 25,000 serious Type and partial collectors of Saints (I'm in this group ).
• Several hundred thousand buyers for investment purposes only (I used to have clients in this group).  

On 2/27/2024 at 3:47 PM, zadok said:

one thing u mite want to consider, r the owners of those sets really numismatical collectors? do they have other collections of coins or r they "one trick ponies" like another member here on the forum that collects only 14 coins?...r they collectors that have big bucks n just want to dabble in the coin collecting world n saints seem to fit what they think a coin collection should look like?...would those same collectors collect 3 cent silver pcs?...i have a couple of friends that collect rare cars n rare bourbons n scotchs n they collect only mexican gold 50 pesos just because they like the size of the coins n like to call themselves coin collectors...just a thought that crossed my mind n i know u like to use the term "serious collectors"...r these registry set saint collectors "serious collectors" or "one trick pony" collectors?...i doubt we will ever know but the question is interesting to me....

It IS an interesting question, Zad...and you ARE right.  There is no 1-size-fits-all and yes, while the coin type(s) and quantity are limited, I would say your friend who collects the Mexican Gold 50 Pesos IS a collector.  If someone has 5 or 14 or 30 coins but is not ACTIVELY buying/selling/adding to their stash -- numismatic or bullion -- I guess it's a matter of semantics, right ?

I am sure there are lots of people who own 1 or 2 gold coins, maybe a Saint, and haven't bought a coin in years or decades, if at all.  Most likely inheritances.  Certainly, a significant percentage of the MCMVII High Relief coins were originally bought by people who were not serious coin collectors....who knew only it was a "special" coin.....and maybe because it was a coin created by the famous sculptor ASG whose art work they already admired.  I'm not a wine collector or big drinker, but I couldn't resist buying a case of wine when my favorite Met growing up, Tom Seaver, released his vintage wines some 15 years ago. 

Anyway, that MCMVII HR has since most likely been handed down 1 or 2 times.  Is the successor owner a coin collector ?  Probably not....like a person who inherits some family jewelry, they probably keep it for sentimental reasons ("Grandpa owned it" or "my mother gave it to me").  Without these strong hands holders of this coin -- and maybe some others -- the price would probably be much lower. 

We have tons of posts here and elsewhere where folks and dealers say that the MCMVII HR is annually chosen as an "overvalued" coin that trades at much higher prices than it should based on (available) supply...without accounting for the demand for a rare, high relief coin that is unique and has a fantastic story attached to it.  I don't share that view....I think coins reflect (available) supply and demand.  But that "available" supply could be much lower for the MCMVII HR -- and other coins -- and thus accounts for a higher price than what some of you think it should be (I'd be interested in hearing what some of you think an MCMVII HR AU-58, which goes for about $12,000...should cost if supply and demand were more "normal").

On 2/28/2024 at 6:45 AM, Zebo said:

1858 Pikes Peak Gold Rush occurred and the Carson City Mint closed in 1893. 

Yeah, and Cripple Creek and other Colorado gold finds also hit...but by 1906 when the Denver Mint opened, they all had to be on their last legs, no ?

SanFran Mint opened a few years after California gold strikes....the Denver Mint opened a much longer period of time after Cripple opened.

However.....those mines STILL produce gold today, so maybe it was still pretty active in the early-1900's.

What was the reason for the Denver Mint ?  The Comstock and Cripple Creek finds were winding down or done (nearest supplies)....San Fran's mint was there because it was built shortly after the California gold finds.

Why was a 3rd mint needed...and why Denver ?  Small denomination coins ?

And where did those coins go once turned into bars ?  Same place as Miss Galore and her acrobatic circus.....Fort Knox, Kentucky ! 

Everything about Fort Knox (but nothing about the electrical system that electrocuted poor Oddjob  ) from the illustrious RWB  :

https://coinweek.com/the-national-gold-bullion-depository-at-fort-henry-knox/

Interesting comments on Saint pricing from John Albanese. 

It's from late-2022 but I think his Big Picture on Saints is that prices/premiums have/had fallen to the point where you don't need the CAC or CACG endorsement to get VALUE for your purchase if you do your DD:

JA:  "...I’ve had similar conversations about Saint-Gaudens and how strict we are with MS65 here. But I have to tell you, the MS65 Saint-Gaudens prices have come down so low in price for non-CAC coins that I may disagree with the grade, but I don’t disagree with the value. If that’s their standard, that’s their standard. That’s okay.

Interviewer: It’s kind of difficult to get one of those in MS65 these days where Liberty doesn’t look like she lost a knife fight.

JA:  "Yeah. I remember, I bought some. I bought a nice little grouping of them that were not stickered-nice. They’re relatively nice. They weren’t stickered coins and at the time, 64s were $1,950 and 65s were $2,020. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the prices on the screen. At $2,020, I felt very comfortable buying. I would buy a hundred, I bought half a dozen, but I would buy a hundred at that price, because forget the grade, forget everything else, but the fact with gold at $1,650, looking at these coins, I would pay $2,020. Even if they were out of the holder, I’d pay $2,020. So, I didn’t feel as though anything was askew. Again, not my standard, because to me, MS65 means “Gem”...."

So basically he's comfortable with 65's trading at a 20-25% premium to gold. 

Sandon, how can you tell that the Barber -- or any coin for that matter -- has FULL luster ?

I can see full luster on coins that have it...I can see NO luster...but I have trouble seeing "luster breaks." 

On 2/25/2024 at 5:01 PM, VKurtB said:

That “Ship of Gold”stuff provides a TEMPORARY bump in prices that fairly quickly evaporates. Here is the rub. You can’t get one during the hype without paying up. You can’t buck the system. If you want to pay a normal price, you have to wait for somebody who has one (or their heir) to sell. Then you can do business. 

I know.....premiums on the $50 re-strikes were about 700% to spot gold when they first came out.  I got one about 10 years later for about 10% premium. 

On 2/25/2024 at 3:33 PM, USAuPzlBxBob said:

As I have an 1857 US gold quarter eagle minted in San Francisco — an important piece of my Puzzle Box Gold type set — my Owner Comments for the coin includes the mention that it pays homage to the SS Central America and that the ship had "its Stars and Stripes flag flown upside-down to signal the steamer’s dire distress." That info was garnered from Wikipedia, but there is no reference cited there.  Literary License?  Could be. One of my current research projects is determining the truthfulness of the flying of the flag upside-down.  The famous painting depicting the ship's sinking does not help. Gary Kinder's Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea may be a future purchase of mine.

Bowers Whitman Red Book on DE's has a good accounting of the SSCA.  There were also some documentaries about 23-24 years ago.

On 2/25/2024 at 4:39 PM, Henri Charriere said:

Nyet! Nyet! Learned colleague!  Toning, per se, is not one of the five (5) variables which may lawfully be considered by any TPGS in assigning a grade.  1. STRIKE, 2. PRESERVATION, 3. LUSTER, 4. COLOR, and 5. ATTRACTIVENESS (Eye Appeal).  Full stop!   🐓 

But they all, even CAC/CACG, do take it into account via either market or net grading.  Maybe not on all coins, but on some.

Not sure if toned is worth as much in the Barber series as it is with MSDs.....I'll go with MS-66.

I know that the coins sold at huge premiums to gold bullion because of all the hype...but is anybody aware at that time the coins were GRADED if the coins were overgraded, undergraded, or pretty much spot-on ?

It appears that the bulk of the coins would have been certified BEFORE standards started to loosen about 2003 or 2004 or so.

Most of the commentaries I've read seem to imply the coins are properly graded, just a question of how much to pay up for the SSCA hype.

On 2/23/2024 at 8:28 PM, dragon said:

<<<  In my opinion (others will disagree) almost all of the coins are overgraded. Here's an example that is supposed top be "MS-65." You can decide if a common date Eagle of that grade should have deep cuts and bumps in prominent visual areas -- or, in fact, anywhere.  >>>  I agree with RWB 110%.   From the small sampling of coins from this collection I've seen online and 1 or 2 in person, I felt they were pretty much all extremely liberally graded by at least 1 full point if not more.   

No pics showed up.  Would like to see a Double Eagle -- or Eagle -- you say is overgraded.

On 2/24/2024 at 3:58 AM, Teddy R said:

My area of interest would stay the same but the grades would dramatically improve and I would add gold to my 20th Century Type Set. 

I would consider becoming a Coin Dealer. Shows only, no brick and mortar. The focus would be on meeting and talking to collectors rather than profit.

I can see the value in that, Teddy.  Do what you CAN do and enjoy it rather than the drudgery of work.

All kinds of shows...small ones, big national ones ?

Maybe Mark or someone who has worked as a grader or knows their operations can answer this question:  am I correct that these "grading sets" I am reading about are actual high-quality (and expensive !) actual coins that the graders and the companies use as guides to help in grading ? 

I read that JA intends to spend "millions" on sets and have his graders look at them weekly.  

Why would TPGs do this when ultra-high resolution photos can do the same thing at a fraction of the cost ?  Why spend millions accumulating all kinds of different coin series, years, and mints.... and also presumably on ultra-rare coins ?

Is CACG really going to go out and get a lower-graded -- but still super-expensive -- 1927-D Saint or 1930-S ?   Has this been done in the past ?

On 2/22/2024 at 7:44 PM, Henri Charriere said:

Interesting thought.  Makes me wonder, when was the last time a recognized celebrity promoted a coin or coin collecting, in general?  

RWB and others here said that the actual coins owned by celebrity coin collectors like Buddy Epsen and Adolphe Menjou were much smaller than what was sold under their auction name.  In other words, their names were used to sell other coins they didn't really own.  The power of celebrity.  

Question:  how much is a common year MS-65 MSD or Saint worth ?  Now....how much is that same coin worth if it was part of a "collection" owned by Taylor Swift ?   

On 2/22/2024 at 7:44 PM, Henri Charriere said:

Interesting thought.  Makes me wonder, when was the last time a recognized celebrity promoted a coin or coin collecting, in general?  Then again, that could be a double-edged sword with a lot of people jumping into the hobby resulting in a robust hobby, but higher prices. Ah, well.

These "influencers" get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions to follow them.  We saw it with baseball cards...NFTs.....meme stocks like GME....now you see it with NVDA. 

We're gonna see something happen in our sector somewhere down the line.....someone is going to extrapolate a silver or gold move to the move in MSDs or Saints during a previous bubble and say that prices can rise 5-10x based on a doubling or tripling of the underlying metal price.

If it happens, someone here ring the bell to SELL......

Do any of you recall threads discussing lost/stolen shipments 10 years ago ?  20 years ago ?  

On 2/18/2024 at 10:53 AM, RWB said:

A very large proportion of material generated by current semi-AI products are wrong. The products are useful in making quick summaries, or simple calculations. I've tried some numismatic things with Chat GPT and it has failed all but the most basic. Someone on PCGS message board tried it for coin grading, and the results he posted were uniformly incorrect and misleading....no value at all.

It could be that the nuances of our hobby and coins are so detailed and based on "eye appeal" that no computer will be able to recreate useful coin stuff until we get to Star Trek-level neural net processors. 

Seriously, I think for me right now this AI thing would mostly be good for translating voice commands into work applications (if it can do that).  For instance, I am very slow in the Office365 stuff like Excel (and Word) and if you had an AI voice command where I could TELL it what I want the pages or sheets to look like instead of having to manually do it, that would be something I would pay extra for because I am a beginner/intermediate with those programs and I would expect AI to be at Expert-plus level.

OTOH...if AI could somehow crunch hundreds of auction results from books...websites....catalogs...etc...that would be of use to our hobby.

On 2/18/2024 at 8:13 PM, RWB said:

AI is (and will be) only as usable as the data on which it is trained. I suspect that if one took a huge data set of TPG graded/authenticated coins, the AI output would be mush. That is what would be going in. Coin "grading" has devolved from somewhat objective into entirely subjective and money driven, not a good situation for any system based on 1's and 0's, only. A "quantum" computer might have a chance as would an entirely analog device.

At a minimum....AI can scan hundreds of sources...create a few paragraphs.....have that checked/scanned by an auction house worker for any obvious/gross errors...and now all auctions have a few paragraphs of information that used to take hours or longer to compile. 

Roger, how long did it take you to come up with that 2-page HA commentary for the 1928 Double Eagle bag and the story of the 500 stolen DEs ?  A few hours ?  A few days ?

Now imagine something getting 90% of that same story and information in a few seconds or minutes !!!