GoldFinger1969

If they had cared about the numismatic community, they would have filled a few bags with all the various years and mint marks for Saints and Morgans before they were melted and saved them for posterity !

Nobody was looking at the coins from different Mints too closely like under a magnifying glass. As long as the major details were pretty clear and not "mushed" the higher-ups probably felt it was good enough for circulation and/or storage bags. It wasn't until decades later that enough people cared about strike quality and other quality control stuff.

Curious Gmarg....I know you rely on your grading skills, but does the year of certification -- the type of slab -- enter into your decision to resubmit and/or crackout a coin ? We know that certain slabs and labels were associated with -- correctly or not -- tighter or looser grading.

Collectors send in a certified coin to the same TPG that certified it -- and sometimes it gets a new, higher grade (with a new label and slab, I presume) ? Am I reading this correctly ?

Fascinating Roger, thanks .....will I read those details in FMTM ?

Roger or another veteran can pine in, but having just finished Bower's RED BOOK on Morgans (I'll finish the Double Eagle one tomorrow ) I can tell you: The striking quality of Morgans at the New Orleans (O) Mint were consistently lousy. Why they never got better over the years I have no idea. Clearly, they weren't reading this website. San Francisco Mint had usually the best-struck coins for Morgans. Philly and Denver (when they got in the act) were usually 1st or 2nd or 3rd for a particular year. From a collector/numismatic POV, strike quality and luster matter. From a minting perspective, the higher-ups at Treasury or Philly may have not given a hoot. They figured all the coins were either going to get worn in circulation or stay in bags -- who cares about luster or strike quality ? Anybody who complained could just go buy the proofs, if available, right ? Anyway, the lousy surface quality and strike quality for Morgans comng from New Orleans and the usually good quality from SanFran easily got drilled into my head from Bowers' RED BOOK. Not sure I got any Mint segmentation on quality from Bowers' DE RED BOOK (finishing up) or even from Roger's SAINTS magnus opus. The details are there, I just can't recall any particular pattern Mint-wise 8 months after reading the book.

Whoa, that is a HUGE jump in grade, from 65, let alone 64 and 63. You've had this happen many times ? What coins are you talking about here ? Pics would help.

I doubt you'll see anything with Covid on it. People just want to turn the page and forget. I know I do.

Yup, this is what I was referencing. But for some reason I thought folks were submitting a slabbed coin from TGP #1 to TPG #2 and figuring it either gets a higher grade in the new slab or gets returned. In other words, nothing to lose except maybe the submission fee. I can see now I was confused. Thanks Coinbuf and Mark.

Thanks Mark......If your last sentence is true (I have no reason to doubt you)...then I must have mis-read what folks were doing here and elsewhere.....it must be owners taking a risk by cracking out the coin themselves in the 1st TPG slab and re-submitting it to TPG #2 in the hopes of getting a higher grade.

Is IT the same coin ? I see that indentation in the left cheekbone in the toned coin and I don't see that in the 1st coin.

Can someone define what you are all saying by "failed to cross" ? Means that the 2nd TPG wouldn't take the coin out of the 1st TPG holder because they didn't see it as going up by a 1-grade increment ? Or maybe 1/2 grade ? Thanks....

As I've never submitted and the whole crossing thing is a bit cloudy to me, bear with me...... but you're implying (and I always assumed) that a CAC'ed coin from one TPG had a great chance to gain a 1-grade or 1/2-grade increment from the other TPG, right ? And this didn't happen ? Or it isn't happening now with increasing frequency ? I presume if you wanted to "cross" at the same grade they would have allowed that if you OK'd it, right ? I recall someone with a 1927-D Saint-Gaudens once wanted a LOWER grade so it would then qualify for a CAC sticker. Ah, the games people play.....

I'm just disappointed the bootleggers didn't hide some Saints in some hoards we can uncover 90+ years later.

Well, the alcohol problem had to have subsided a bit during the 1920's, right ? Prohibition.......

Yes, I remember that from your SAINTS book. I never knew it was microscopic facets and ridges etc. that caused luster and shinyness....always thought it just meant the coin was smoother and more polished. Fascinating....

It's all guestimates. I actually bought a 1970 RED BOOK to see where alot of the Saint prices were right before we went off the gold standard and the hyper-inflation of the 1970's. I wasn't old enough to know the prices back then. If you focus on 1 or 2 specific coin types, it's easy to come across decent prices and charts that you can use to see if current prices are historically expensive, cheap, whatever. I have a bunch I've come across over the years for the Saints. But as you get into a rarer and rarer coin which trades less frequently (esp. in higher grades), you have to realize that 1 or 2 sales can skew results.

The great thing about RWB's new SAINT-GAUDENS book is that it has a yearly price going back to the mid-1970's. I think the best thing to do, is if you are looking into historical returns, is to actually punch up recent and past prices on a website like HA and use that. Don't be as fixated so much on the specific numbers but rather the overall trend since price rises/spikes tend to happen quickly and bubbles deflate over many many years. At least this is the case for the series I usually track like Saints and Morgans. I'm not familiar with the SLQ but he either uses his own personal standards/biases or he focused strictly on higher-priced coins. As I noticed with the Saints, he didn't have links for common/generic Saints (which trade more like bullion) but higher-priced coins that sell for a big premium to the underlying gold content. But sometimes more common, bullion-type coins outperform pure numismatic coins. For non-PM coins (small denomination stuff), more common stuff might be better at certain times. For a rough guestimate, like I said, it's not bad. You can get some quick-and-easy numbers. It can also tell you where the current price is relative to past periods especially pre- and post-bubbles like 1979 and 1990. You can see if the coin came all the way back or only a fraction of the way. My understanding is that non-Morgan and non-Saint coins (small denomination coins) which went up 5-20x in the bubbles are still down a ton from their all-time peaks. I didn't check out the downloadable stuff since I figured you have to pay for that. Best way to figure out investment returns is to go back and look at specific auction prices or use RED BOOK prices and then compute it to the current price. I am curious about his downloadable prices (where they came from, how extensive) especially for Saints...maybe I'll do a bit more exploring.

I don't even remember the 1928's being mentioned in FMTM, another reason to start re-reading the book. Yes, the dust thing was how they recognized something was amiss and as I recall it was alongside a bunch of bags of 1933 Saints, too ! Which sorta ties into the whole issue of Izzy Switt's 1933's.

I can't recall if this is in FMTM...but how the heck did blowing sand at high-speed not mar the finish on the Saints or even the dies for the other coins ? I could see it maybe working today with all our technology, but back in the early-1900's ? They had problems not busting dies, aligning the press with the planchets, keeping things aligned on the press, etc..etc.......and NOW they're gonna improve the finish of a coin by high-speed sand blasting ? How fine was this sand anyway ? Sort of amazing for the times, when you think about it.

Maybe....but with illiquid pricing given that we don't have a liquid, multiple-sales traded item (like stocks) it's tough to compare. But at times common PM coins like Morgans or Saints can track bullion and outpace more numismatic coins. For very rare or semi-rare dates in high-grade....a few dedicated price-insensitive buyers can clearly keep the price up over time and skew the results for that particular coin and grade. Go a few grades lower and it's a different price environment over time. Key dates for silver/gold might also be different than small denomination, non-PM coins.

I am a finance guy too so we share that in common. I checked out that site -- it's not bad, better than nothing -- but I believe that some of the prices for specific grades are somewhat limited (i.e., Saint-Gaudens DEs). For smaller denomination coins, you may find it adequate. I also am not sold on the actual prices for the grades listed. They tend to be focusing on very long time frames so that their more recent prices won't skew the CAGR results. But if you are a finance guy, you know that using a starting point of 1950 is ridiculous. The period for PM's and gold/silver before 1973 (floating exchange rates) is fundamentally different since then. You had the demise of the gold standard, floating exchange rates, and a couple of PM and numismatic bubbles. This makes using ROLLING PERIODS much more important than arbitrarily using certain starting points. As you know, rolling periods show that stocks almost always generate positive risk-adjusted rewards over 10-20 year time periods, and ALL 30-year periods. That is NOT the case with coins, whether small denomination, silver, or gold coins. I believe that the site is more of a marketing vehicle to steer people into buying coins, and specific ones at that. Lots of ads. And the focus on more expensive "key dates" for the Saint series rather than cheaper commons is very telling. Best source of data today is actual auction sales at HA, then GC, SB, and maybe Ebay.

Actually, considering the proximity to easy money (gold), it appears that rank theft from the mint was pretty low. I have to re-read any relevant sections in FMTM but they seem to have had pretty good controls. That bag of stolen 1928 Saints from the Philly Mint is one of the biggest I know of, though I believe the SanFran and Denver Mints had their own famous heists (since rumoured to have been found in various hoards). Even with proper screening, you can't get 100% honest people working in a mint anymore than you can in a bank or a drug store of the times. The modern methods to screen workers daily for even minute traces of gold or PMs were not available back then. Employee theft was and is part of the cost of doing business, sadly.

The label on the slab...where it says PCGS or NGC. Sometimes the pedigree is listed, who owned it in the past. Steve Duckor's name is on a bunch of Saints labels/slabs.

Right, but I wonder if the label says it was owned by members of the ASG family. I've never seen such a label but then again I've only seen pics of 3 or 4 of the UHRs.