GoldFinger1969

8 hours ago, World Colonial said:

It's not accurate to think of coin values as a specific price point which is how every price guide I have ever seen is published.  It's actually a price range.

Totally agree.

If there are enough transactions, maybe throwing out the lowest and highest sales price (2 sales prices ?) would narrow the range a bit.

1928-P....what ?   Saint-Gaudens 1928 (Philadelphia)? 

There's so many 1928's out there, there's wide variability particularly in the lower grades below MS65.

FYI, I bought a 1923-D MS66 in an OGH at FUN a few months ago.

10 hours ago, USAFVET said:

Just wanting to buy some rattlers, preferably 66 or 67.  I'm set on gold in regular NGC & PCGS holders, although I feel NGC's grading on gold is much more accurate.

I haven't seen to many Saints in the OGH or Rattler holders, dating to 1995 or before.  I presume you've checked HA, Stacks, and GC ?

Even a common Saint in MS67 in a rattler/OGH is going to sell like it is already CAC'd.  And if it has that......

14 hours ago, RWB said:

The point of licenses TGL-4 and TGL-4A was that the holder could acquire gold as used, scrap or unrefined material and had to keep it in that form until deposited at a Mint or Assay Office. This was specifically intended to prevent melting gold coins (foreign or domestic) and casting into bars, or mixing scrap gold with melted coin to imitate a bar of scrap. This was in response to smuggling of US gold into Canada as scrap bars. It also covered Treasury's policy of buying gold scrap at the daily market fix, and legal tender coins at face value.

Wait a second.....after gold was raised to $35/oz., the smuggling would have ended, right ?  So that wouldn't have been a factor.

And regardless of the price of gold, what does the Treasury care if a dealer (or even a non-dealer) is melting used gold, scrap, coins, or bars ?  As long as smuggling has stopped -- which presumably it has, since the domestic price is now higher -- would they have cared what the few dealers or licensees did with various forms of gold ?

They just wanted to prevent hoarding and export -- which reduced the domestic stock and by implication, the money supply.

1 hour ago, MarkFeld said:

B. Max Mehl, who was my grandmother’s uncle, was a dealer, not a collector.

To my knowledge, Heritage, formed by Steve Ivy and Jim Halperin, has no ties to “older gold” (or other) dealers.

 

Thanks Mark....that's interesting because I guess I just assumed that every dealer, even if they look at it as a business, have to have some emotional attachment to the hobby and "collect" at least SOME coins. 

But maybe not. 

I guess when you see all the coins passing through your inventory, maybe it's not as special to those of us who are strictly collectors.

Can the human naked eye even SEE that depth ?  After a certain point, the increased resolution just isn't processed by our cones and rods.

2 hours ago, numisport said:

I think it is just a matter of priority for updating price guides. 

Agreed, it's not that hard to get recent auction data from some online sources, including NGC.

It's the actual CHART going back several years -- and longer -- that is very useful, IMO.

That's what I liked so much about Roger's new Saints book -- a 1976-2015 price table for every year/mint.

Roger, when did gold get revalued up to $35/oz. ?

Any particular reason for the rattler ?  Or is any older slab good ?

20 hours ago, World Colonial said:

Price guides seldom reflect actual market which changes constantly. It's more accurate for common frequently sold US coins but much if not most of it is just made up.

I see the same "lag" on other Saints too, WC, and they are sold pretty frequently.  It looks like they have the raw data -- recent auctions -- uploaded, whatever they do to calculate price is just off. 

Maybe it's a smoothed monthly average or something, dunno. 

What's up with the chart and numbers for the NGC Price Guide, NGC ?

This is -- or could be -- a REALLY USEFUL tool for collectors and investors, especially novices.  Instead the numbers are all over the place.

Let's check out an MS62 1907 High Relief.  Should go for about $12,000 give-or-take.

But the chart has it at $19,000:

https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide/united-states/gold-double-eagles/70/history/19135/62/

I'm not sure what the algorithim is to calculate the latest prices, because I only see sales data from late-2019, but even that isn't anywhere near $19,000:

https://www.ngccoin.com/auction-central/us/saint-gaudens-20-1907-1933-pscid-70/auctions/1907-high-relief-20-ms-fgrade-62-tgrade-62-coinid-19139

Am I using this tool correctly ?  I don't expect it to be super-accurate, but within 5-10% shouldn't be a problem.  30-40% seems really off.  I think the trend of the chart is still useful over longer periods of time, but it would be better if the end-point for the recent data was closer to reality.

2 hours ago, MarkFeld said:

This is my personal opinion, only...coins are listed by their owners at prices of their choosing. Heritage is not making any representation regarding the “worth” of the coin. That said, the “suddenly” part and the much higher price are no secret. Obviously, both are strongly influenced by NGC’s change in theair designation of the coin.

Something similar has occurred on multiple occasions, with respect to percentage asking price increases, when coins have received significant (numerical grade) upgrades upon one or more resubmissions.

Fair points, Mark.....like you said, HA doesn't set the price.  But it sure is strange not to see any commentary below on ANY special or unique or pricey coin detailing the lineage, what makes it special, etc.

I'm going through some of the catalogs from HA I picked up at FUN -- it's amazing what you guys have on some of those coins.

Both you guys should report back and share your information/reports.

The Survey Monkey site is down....I'll try again later.

On 5/17/2020 at 4:45 PM, RWB said:

From what kbbpll dug up --- Got to be embarrassing.

Can Heritage maybe speak up as to why a coin that has appeared twice on their system in less than 8 years is suddently worth 20-30x as much ?  It does nobody any good -- including HA -- if some sucker with lots of $$$$ buys this at the asking price.

BTW...it IS an asking price.  It hasn't been sold for that amount.  And for any coin costing over $10,000 -- let alone $100,000 -- you better have a few paragraphs below indicating something special about the coin.  There's nothing there except "Learn More At The Newman Numismatic Portal."

If that book was published in 1954...and he was offering to buy (sell ?) 1930-32 Saints for only $100, that is really a ripoff.  And like Roger said, he's buying numismatic coins with $33.86 worth of gold for $30, and that doesn't take into account the numismatic value.

Mehl died in 1957, BTW.

40 minutes ago, RWB said:

Reminder - those are Mehl's buying prices. He was buying double eagles for less than $35/T ounce bullion and ripping off anyone ignorant enough to send him an 1860-O or 1861-O DE for $25. His full name was B. Max "Me" Mehl. He was an avid promoter of collecting coins for his fun and profit, and no more honest than Farran Zerbe and other selected fraudsters.

Who were some coin dealers from the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's who had good reputations for paying fair prices and not ripping off someone whose coins might be more valuable than they thought ?  Any names come to mind ?

13 minutes ago, Conder101 said:

And before they formed Goldberg Auctions they either owned or were the principal partners of Superior Galleries which was one of the premier auction houses.  Not quite on the level of Heritage but close.  Once the Goldbergs left Superior it started going downhill and I believe disappeared in the early 90's. 

Yes, I saw that name a few times along with Parmount (I think David Akers worked there).

It's fascinating to read about the gold dealers and collectors from the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's.  Israel Switt's jewelry shop is still around I think....alot of the coin collectors like Mehl and FCC Boyd had associates or themselves active in the 1950's-1970's.

Do Heritage, Legend, or Great Collections trace their lineage to any of the older gold dealers as far as you know ?  Clearly, Stacks is still around from 1937.

Would be interested to read a book -- or maybe an internet posting, more likely -- tracing the creation and dissolution of all those classic firms including which of today's firms they may have morphed into today.

I have a 1970's Red Book for pre-1973 gold prices.  I am trying to collect all current and past books which have yearly reviews on Saint-Gaudens and Liberty Double Eagle coins.

(1)  Does anybody know who "Ira and Larry Goldberg" are ?  Their names keep coming up in the sales records.  Are they dealers or collectors ?

(2)  Sometimes coins didn't sell in the listings for Akers and Roger's books.  Isn't that kind of strange, since they are the top-of-the-line pieces ?  You would think the auction companies knew the market and their buyers and wouldn't set the reserve too high.  Unless maybe the collector set an unreasonable price and the auction house had no choice but to hope for a miracle ?

6 hours ago, Conder101 said:

Until about 1935 in order to back gold or silver certificates the metal had to be coined.  By 35 the gold certificates were gone but they were still coining unwanted silver dollars to back the silver certificates .  Finally legislation was passed allowing the certificate to be backed just by the bullion and that's why the Peace dollar coinage ended.  All further silver purchases were just left as bullion and certificates were issued with that as backing. (If you look at the earlier certificates they say will pay so many silver dollars on demand, later ones say will pay so many dollars in silver on demand.)

Thanks Conder....Roger's book mentioned the bullion vs. coin backing of certificates and I had forgotten about it. 

What still is somewhat intriguing is why SanFran Saints ("S") would end up in European banks -- I would think that the Philly coinage would head across the Atlantic to Europe, and the SanFran coins (if needed) headed over to the Pacific for Asian settlements, if any. 

I doubt we ever ran short of Philly coins and NEEDED SanFran or Denver coins.   It certainly didn't make sense cost-wise or time-wise to ship coins from SanFran or Denver over to Europe vs. Philly (unless maybe some were already shipped to New York ?).

Mint-domiciled Saints:  The amount of San Francisco and Denver post-1923 mintmarked coins which just sat in the vaults there is amazing.  At least most of Philly's production for most/many years was used in international trade.  But it seems with some of the "S" and "D" yearly production runs they just kept accumulating.  And this was during the 1920's, The Roaring' 20's, when times were good economically and trade pretty healthy.

Why mint so many unused coins ?  Did they think that if we were still on the gold standard in 10 or 15 years that we'd just keep putting millions of coins every year into vaults ? Eventually you would have needed new warehouses to house them.

Too bad we couldn't cut down on the Philly production and used some of the SanFran and Denver coins to send to Europe and/or South/Central America.  May have preserved some of the modern rarities from being destroyed to the degree they were under FDR.

9 minutes ago, RWB said:

I wonder if this lengthy thread has readers from other message boards? I ask because members have asked some excellent, thoughtful questions and those questions might be a lot of help to other collectors. Maybe GoldFinger1969 should assemble a PDF "booklet" he can send out?

I'd do that, no problem.  I have to give props to the book and you for participating in the thread -- you helped with some great questions and made the thread super-interesting.

I reiterate that many gold and coin investors may not even be aware of Saint-Gaudens coinage.  I didn't hear about them until AFTER I bought the 2009 UHR and saw the references.  And anybody who buys modern gold bullion for investment/insurance purposes should be looking at generic common Saints as an alternative or addition.  Just bought a 1915-S MS63 at FUN instead of an American Gold Eagle or Buffalo for my pure gold bullion collection.

1 hour ago, coinquest said:

All of Roger's books are a great read! I especially enjoyed the "Renaissance" volumes

Yup...according to a post on another forum, at least 1 of the Renaissance books is sold-out.

Have you bought the Saints book ?

Ultimately, these countries are 1-party corrupt states who milked the companies during the good times and then acted shocked when production and equipment fell off a cliff during the bad times.

Totally mismanaged.