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GoldFinger1969
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Posts posted by GoldFinger1969
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On 7/20/2023 at 9:56 PM, Conder101 said:
But a great many of those attracted will be driven off once they find that those coins they sank so much money into are now just worth bullion value at best. A great many people who get burned don't stick around to sing the praises of collecting, they bad mouth it to others as being a rip off.
People make dumb decisions about life, houses, cars, art, spouses, jobs, investments, etc.
Coins are no different. If they spend more time researching 4 and 5-figure purchases than they do on a $90 Toaster Oven, they'll be OK. If not....caveat emptor.
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The Bass coin was among the museum-like pieces that was rarely seen. Was under control of the ANA but not sure if they displayed it widely or when it was graded or last seen:
"...Approximately 20 examples are known to collectors today, but six of those coins are impounded in institutional collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the American Numismatic Society, the Harry Bass Core Collection at the ANA, and the Connecticut State Library." - Heritage Archives
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On 7/20/2023 at 7:10 PM, Tony Follis said:
We all live in a fast paced world these days and I just don't have enough time to read every coin collecting book ever published.
That's why these forums exist !!
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On 7/20/2023 at 6:38 PM, VKurtB said:
No. Trust me. They didn't. I was there. Oh, by the way, the NEXT sports card I buy will be the FIRST sports card I buy. Comic books too.
I know they generally do NOT make for good "investments" for the reasons I've outlined here along with others....that said....their prices certainly have risen over time, if not comensurate with financial investments like stocks, bonds, or real estate.
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On 7/20/2023 at 6:19 PM, Sandon said:
No one imagined then that people would remove common modern collectors' issues, nearly all of which are superb gems, from their mint packaging, pay grading fees and costs often exceeding their mint issue price, and then sell them for exorbitant prices.
Actually, I bet they did. By the time the TPGs had started up, the baseball collecting craze was just getting started but ramping up bigtime. With cards that used to go in the spokes of bicycle wheels now going for hundreds or thousands of dollars, nothing would have surprised anybody back then !
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On 7/20/2023 at 4:18 PM, VKurtB said:
What professions are lucrative? Only those which erect barriers to entry.
I wanted to be an NBA center and pull down $35,000,000 a year but they said I was missing 18 inches of height, dribbling and shooting skills, etc.
Damn barriers to entry......
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Wait a second, are you or that letter saying that UNDER 50% of the metal got made into coins ? That seems suspiciously low....even back then, they had controls and security practices.
What was the figure for the SanFran Mint, overall or for Liberty Head DEs (I recall them being very prodigious in minting the DEs but didn't realize that may have meant theft from other mints) ?
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On 7/20/2023 at 5:56 PM, VKurtB said:
Okay, I take no responsibility for your bad decision making. Coins ARE NOT INVESTMENTS!!!!!!!! Remember, you read that here.
True, but he does have $$$ tied up in them, as do we all.
What kind of insurance does Hugh Wood (a person or the company ?) provide that basic homeowners -- even a Masterpiece policy from Chubb -- doesn't ?
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On 7/20/2023 at 11:46 AM, EliteCollection said:
I have not seen the Bass in person. People who have seen it tell me that it's overgraded and that my 68 CAC is just as good if not better than the Bass 69. Btw, if you are on MyCollect, you can find me. My username is Elite.
I'll sign up soon, thanks !
I wouldn't doubt you on the MCMVII UHR's. The rankings from experts seem distinct from the actual grades and a 69 vs. a 68 CAC is a slight difference, and that assumes the 69 is legit.
The label on the Bass coin is strange -- darkish green, I can barely make out the writing on it. Never saw that before. In all the articles I have seen ranking the UHR's, I don't recall seeing the Bass coin listed as ranked or even missing because nobody had seen it in so long (if ever). With Chapp and Eliasberg heritage, it's kind of hard to forget so that's strange.
Some guy named Thomas Elder had the coin and it was apparently worth $1,100 in the 1920's. This was 40-50x the value of a regular MCMVII HR. If it goes for $4 MM, it will have compounded in value at 7% a year since 1982; if it goes for $5 MM it's 7.7% a year. Once again, even a trophy coin has trouble producing double-digit returns over a long period of time.
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BW, bid is at $1.95 MM w/BP for that Clapp/Eliasberg/Bass UHR. 21 days left until bidding.
Get your bids in !!
EC, Roger....any thoughts on this coin and the grade relative to all the other 68's out there ?
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On 7/19/2023 at 3:46 AM, VKurtB said:
Gotta agree. “Ugly” is what many U.S. designs have in excess.
Has to be a few coins whose designs you like. Morgan Obverse ? Saint Obverse and/or Reverse ? Small denomination coins ?
Definitely was angst and disgust about coin design by about 1880-1890 in the U.S. as I detailed in the Liberty Head DE book tidbits. They even had a younger ASG and others get together to review potential design changes but nothing submitted was deemed worthy.
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On 7/20/2023 at 10:08 AM, cladking said:
There are only a few thousand advanced collectors right now but there are hundreds of thousands of beginners. Advanced collectors run the gamut of age ranges from very young to very old so their collections will dribble onto the markets for decades and decades but beginning collectors are almost all young and their demand will only grow. You can't buck trends and demographics.
I think there are lots more than "a few thousand" advanced collectors -- I think the Baby Boomers and the generation before them is why prices were in the toilet for 2010-2020. Too many sellers...not enough buyers. How many people wanted to unload Liberty Seated or Walking sets or Franklin Halfs -- and how many were starting to collect them ? Total imbalance, IMO.
I hope you are right on demographics (again, hate to sound like a broken record, but the trade groups and professional associations should have the data on this) and no doubt Covid and the Internet have spiked interest in our little niche. We'll see if it has staying power.
If it has...then a rising tide should lift ALL boats and we should see some substantial new collectors for both Saints and Morgans and rising prices there for more common coins let alone scarce and rare ones, too. Heck, the country has 1/3rd more population today than in 1980 so there's that alone.
We'll have to let the market tell us. Dealers should be able to give us indications of interest and traffic to their websites and B&M stores, too.
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On 7/20/2023 at 8:50 AM, zadok said:
...the green bean routinely generates 30-40% premiums in several series, ive seen coins that were beaned bring double retail for certain dates n denominations...n lets not even discuss premiums for the gold bean....
And if it is true that CAC won't be stickering or severely reducing their stickering as they focus on being the 3rd TPG.....then there's gonna be value to the CAC sticker just like an OGH holder. People will want the CAC sticker even if they know the coin won't upgrade.
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MCMVII Ultra High Relief Clapp/Eliasberg/Bass: It's up for sale in Part 4 of the Bass sale. Thanks to Zadok for jogging my memory.
Here's the listing:
Here's articles on the coin:
https://coinweek.com/bass-collection-1907-ultra-high-relief-double-eagle-at-heritage/
https://www.numismaticnews.net/us-coins/1907-ultra-high-relief-double-eagle-takes-flight
This coin is PR-69. But I think it COULD be the finest of the MCMVII UHRs because the other PR-69, the Trompeter-Morse coin, was originally graded PR-67 and then got a 2-point upgrade over the years and most grade it PR-67+ or PR-68. The Bloomfield, "Wall Street Bond Trader", Hein-Simpson, Trompeter-Morse, and Browning coins are the Top 5 but now the Eliasburg/Bass coin might be able to leapfrog them if the 69 grade is legit.
The Bloomfield PR-68 CAC w/Inverted Edge Lettering, was bought in April 2021 for $4.1MM by an anonymous buyer. In December 2021 a PCGS PR-68 CAC went for $4.75 MM as HA sold the coin to GC on behalf of our good friend EC.
The Norweb UHR was sold for $3.6 MM in February 2021 and is PF-68 NGC w/Normal Edge Lettering.
If the grade on this coin is solid for a 69 or even a strong 68+ (with or without CAC), it could/should go for over $5 MM. We'll have to see, but UHR's have been hot the last 2 years or so.
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On 7/19/2023 at 8:27 PM, VKurtB said:
LOL! I LITERALLY have a Mega Red (4 of them, actually) just across the room on a bookshelf, and I can't be bothered to go look it up. THAT'S how little I care about St. Gaudens $20 gold. Maybe I'll grab it on my way to the bathroom when I need to go, but probably not. I mean, like, Mega Red's are HEAVY.
Me, myself, I prefer The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present when I am there.
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On 7/19/2023 at 7:56 PM, Fenntucky Mike said:
Definitely makes a difference, I used your '28 example and compared it to GCs offer to buy price as Ian posted a pic of a '28, but that does not mean the prices posted would be for a '28 saint with CAC, just me speculating. Are 28's one of the more common Saints? I'm guessing they are.
The 1928 Saint is considered a common coin, though probably not in MS-66+ CAC. Without checking the pop numbers, I know it's not like the 1924 or 1908 NM. The dropoff at MS-67 is pretty high, but it's still available.
On 7/19/2023 at 7:56 PM, Fenntucky Mike said:Do you think GC owned the coins that didn't sell in the examples you listed?
I'm not sure, I'm not an expert on the roles these online firms do with auctions with coins that get no bids or low bid activity...sometimes they do apparently bid on certain coins under certain conditions, it's been the subject of some pretty harsh articles over the years, as I recall. Someone more informed than me can probably explain further.
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On 7/19/2023 at 7:30 PM, VKurtB said:
That sounds extraordinarily high to me. I've never met a Saint collector that I know of, and I get around. On the contrary, I know quite a few foreign gold collectors, and more Morgan guys than you can swing a dead cat at.
Unless they meant Double Eagle collectors (to also include Liberty Head DEs), no, the numbers I've seen from Danreuther, Garrett, the HA folks, Winter, etc....is 500 or so, which I inflate from a few years ago to account for a wider base.
The high prices paid for rare Saints like the Fab Five definitely indicate more than a few dozen registry collectors. Of course, this data could be quantified by the online auction sites and/or the trade organizations and professional organizations and then we'd have 90% or better confidence in the numbers instead of guestimates that could be off by multiples, of that I agree with you on.
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On 7/19/2023 at 10:03 PM, Hoghead515 said:
I do the same now. When I first started I didnt know much about the hobby and bought some already graded. Now Id rather have all my bullion coins in the OGP. I really dont see the point in having them graded for my purpose with them.
Sometimes...SOMETIMES....I'll get 2 of them IF I like the coin or commemorative. One for MS or PF 70/69...the other in OGP.
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On 7/19/2023 at 12:31 PM, Fenntucky Mike said:
Ah, I missed that GF's examples were sans CAC. That makes more sense, $900 smackaroos is quite a premium for a green bean over the same coin and grade that had no taker without one. I didn't realize the increase was that much.
Don't feel bad, I missed it at first until this post.
They must be getting more registry/PCGS players who ONLY want CAC and PCGS. I'm going to be on the lookout now to see if CAC sellers are more reasonable in their asking prices.
The CAC coin definitely deserves a premium, but the "jump" to the next highest grade is being overly discounted (IMO) by some sellers. I can't quantify it, of course....and you never can tell if you WILL get the grade jump on the 3rd or 5th or 10th or 12th submission (i.e., Franklin Gradeflation Thread)...but I think people realize while CAC deserves a premium you need MORE than CAC to assume a jump to the next grade or even a decent shot to get that grade.
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On 7/19/2023 at 11:28 AM, Fenntucky Mike said:
Just saw this posted by Ian Russell, seems odd they would be buying at those prices if Saints aren't selling like they used to. GC is buying $20 Saints: PCGS MS-66+.CAC - $5,600 each PCGS MS-66 CAC - $4,800 each PCGS/NGC MS-65+ CAC - $2,950 each PCGS/NGC MS-65 CAC - $2,860 each Quantities welcome.
What years though ? That's gotta impact the price they are willing to pay.
They seem to have enough supply, other coins had DOZENS of bids, as many as 50. And while many of them were at super-low prices ($3 to $2,000) that would never win, there were plenty of back-and-forth bids in the range of fair value.
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On 7/19/2023 at 9:59 AM, zadok said:
...not restrikes but related as not being able to definitively ascertain where/when coins were struck n also in regards to Mexican gold...the US mint at Philadelphia struck 5 peso n 10 peso gold for Mexico in 1906 which r indistinguisable from those struck at the Mexico City mint...collectors of Mexican gold dont seem to care but collectors of foreign coins struck at US mints can not verify where their examples were struck....
I always found it strange that other countries would outsource the striking of their coins. I get it with a tiny country with limited resources or something like the Vatican...you'd think a country like Mexico, with national pride and enough resources, would want to strike their own coins.
Maybe it's also a trust thing ?
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On 7/19/2023 at 4:57 AM, VKurtB said:
I’ll bet that you do. The entire population of serious "by date and mintmark" collectors of $20 Saints could probably fit in a decent sized bus. Sorry, it's basically a Type Set series. In Europe, "normal" gold coins are 1/5 ounce. (0.1847)
My guestimate from dealers and columnists is there are probably 500-1,000 serious/registry players looking to collect most or all of the Saints in whatever high grade they can afford...then about 25,000 or so Type collectors (like me) who might have 1 or 2 or a dozen or two of the coins....then the investment folks who might not even be aware they have a Saint, just a coin that tracks bullion. This latter group could be a few hundred thousand buyers.
Many of my ex-clients had these coins 25-35 years ago, I wish I had shown an interest in them then.
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On 7/19/2023 at 12:33 PM, Sandon said:
Your coin is definitely not, nor does it resemble, the extremely rare 1958 doubled die obverse cent, of which only three are known to exist and all of which, as I recall, reportedly turned up in the same place at the same time decades ago. It is extremely unlikely that any more will be found. This variety exhibits clear, crisp doubling on "LIBERTY" and the motto "IN GOD WE TRUST", as on this photo from NGC VarietyPlus
Only 3 ????? Are people even aware of these limited numbers...they may think there are hundreds or even thousands ? Or at least dozens.
All these "Is this coin the super-rare...." threads are like finding an old Lottery ticket that matches the latest MegaMillions or PowerBall numbers -- but the ticket is from weeks or months ago !
ASE Newbie Question
in Newbie Coin Collecting Questions
Posted
Lloyds of Lubbock will be insuring mine.
"Odd Couple" reference for those over the age of 50 or who watched it in re-runs.