GoldFinger1969

1908 Wells Fargo No-Motto MS-66 OGH CAC: I have it in the Wells Fargo Hoard Thread, too, but this coin is so lustrous and with great eye-appeal I felt a 75-page thread about Saints had to have the pics, too. Maybe it's the lighting -- because the 1908 NM's are supposed to lack in strike and luster and overall eye appeal unless you get up to MS-67/68 level -- but this is one of the BEST-LOOKING Saints I can recall, next to the MCMVII UHRs and the 1908-S MS-67 CAC Norweb Saint. I'm not surprised that CAC and JA signed off on this Wells Fargo coin, a group they've got a low sticker rate on.

I actually think I understood RWB's 2nd explanation. I'm not sure this was covered in the DE book but it might be in FMTM1 or the upcoming FMTM2. I have to check out YouTube and look for some classic and modern coin presses in action with close-up shots of the various mechanisms. It's tough to comprehend from READING about them...you need to SEE it.

So....the seller needs to wait about 400 years for the market to come up to his ask price, huh ?

Basined dies...as opposed to flat or flatter dies on Saints ? Is that it ? Why would "easy abrasive removal" of clashes and other defects be an issue -- the (Liberty DE) coins get struck, that's it, right ? They're not worrying about clashes or surface defects unless the dies are flawed, right ? I'm very weak in my understanding of the striking process, so excuse my ignorance here.

Missed it by THAAAAAT much, as Maxwell Smart used to say. Like I said, I have no idea what the coin is worth. And I proved it !!!

This is the kind of coin that is still probably in tens of thousands of collections and mostly raw....what if a few dozen were pristine and could grade high-MS ? This is what we are going to find out as the kids who collected in the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's get up there in age and either sell their coins....or die and their heirs or estates do it for them. When the TPGs just got started.....those collectors were in their late-30's to mid-50's. It's now 35 years later.....do the math.

I know nothing about the Franklin series.... but with no floor for metallic value that supports a $10,000 coin (let's assume that's the real FMV)....this is the type of coin that can get decimated by gradeflation of the series or new legit MS-66 CACs even if it was FBL (what is 90 FBL, 90% ? I never heard of that before). You could see a coin like this go from $10,000 to $3,500 in a few years if the supply increased by a decent amount I'll bet.

It was shot down by FTX insiders as too expensive. She should have taken the deal but I'm sure she won't be hurting for $$$. It's not because Taylor Swift did any financial analysis of FTX. I doubt she can balance her checking account.

Hmmm...I'm gonna say it's to coat the floors to make it less slick for people walking around ? Maybe to help move machinery around ?

Different coins might attract different types of investors, I don't know. EC here owns the 1933 DE, it would be interesting if he chimed in with how long he intends to keep that coin and what might cause him to change his holding period. Holders of a CSA coin might be very different from other U.S. Coin collectors and someone might want to hold that coins for decades as opposed to years. I'm not sure how long Bob Simpson has been collecting, but he's been a seller for a few years. Duckor started in the 1980's and unloaded everything about 30 years later. Others of a bygone era had their collections sold by their estates or heirs.

Q Says: "My considered opinion: he is not smart enough to be Evil. This schlub will tell them everything they want to know. The real shame of all this is a lot of people lost a lot of money on something they cannot even begin to explain." You would think anybody worth billions would realize that if he is caught he's going to lose it all AND go to jail. So a part of me DOES believe that he may have thought he was only "temporarily" borrowing the funds and would replenish after a no-lose, no-risk gambit made the money back. Or something like that. This $2 billion Binance buyback, even if bought with phoney-baloney tokens, is interesting. Gotta wait for Special Master Ray to untangle this. Lots of parties with different interests here and lots of them (all of them ?) are lying.

We should talk about SBF and Crypto in the SBF Crypto Thread. Keep this on Roosters !

There are other coins that have large numbers of survivors (i.e., Saints, Franklins, Liberty Walkers and Standings, etc.)....die varieties don't seem to have taken off for other coins. I think your DE book is the only book or article that mentioned die varieties for Saints. Nothing as detailed or voluminous as the VAM designations for any other coins.

The Binance CEO -- known as "CZ" -- didn't exactly knock it out of the park yesterday when CNBC grilled him. Today I believe Jim Cramer said your money might be safer with DraftKings* than with Binance !!! * Gambling & Fantasy sports website

You would think that with the ability to do HiRes scans of coins they can tell which ones are being re-submitted or "sneaked" in for a higher grade. You don't want different graders or a grader on a different day just giving the higher grade after 5 failures. The example given -- the 1912-S Nickel -- was very instructive to me because even though I am not familiar with the coin, you only had 8 of them through 2012 and then you got another 40+ by 2017 (wonder if there are more since ?). 2012 was 25 years of TPG existence so it's not like a population census increasing from 1992 when they were only around for about 5 years. So you think Salzberg cherry-picked a particular coin and this isn't or hasn't been a problem with populations increasing over time ? Again...population increases from new coins/hoards is one thing....I think it's where you have a "kink" in the price and lots of coins graded right below that level with a few then sneaking higher over time and slowly increasing the higher-graded population. That's been the subject of the various Gradeflation Threads and complaints. I think someone still collecting or starting out today HAS to run into the TPGs right away. I could see your grandmother who probably started collecting 50-75 years ago not being totally aware of the TPGs during her later years just like somebody who grew up watching TV with "Rabbit ears" may never have thought of cable TV in the 1980's or 1990's. But today, you have to have cable (or streaming or the Internet). I know for the Saints DE book that RWB didn't just add up the PCGS and NGC totals...he incorporated an algorithm of some type. I think over the next 10-15 years we're going to see lots of estates and collections have many coins come up for sale....we'll see how many are either scarce by themselves or scarce in a particular grade.

The fly in the ointment is this relationship with the other 800 pound gorilla in crypto trading, Binance. Turns out Binance owed 20% of FTX and right before the collapse FTX bought back that stake for $2 billion. That's REAL CASH and assets for something that was seed corn a few years earlier. Part of the transaction was apparently paid for in the FTX token which Binance said they'd be dumping all $500 MM of -- and announced on Twitter. You NEVER announce a sale of stock on Twitter.... and certainly not half-a-billion dollars worth !! . When FTX's in-house proprietary token collapsed in price following the announcement/sale, FTX was cooked. Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" fame, an investor and spokesman for FTX, thinks Binance DELIBERATELY drove FTX into bankruptcy to have a monopoly in the market. This expenditure -- done so FTX supposedly could get licenses in new jurisdictions (Binance would not comply with disclosure rules as long as they were tied to FTX) -- was huge compared to the other monies siphoned off. Maybe the Binance deal was the final nail in the coffin...maybe combined with other questionable transactions it stretched SBF and FTX to the limit...whatever. We'll see what Special Master Ray says.

OK, it looks like the Thread title and the OP have been changed by the author and now the focus is on relationship between the graders and Friends & Family. I would think there are controls in place such that a grader can't bring in his own coins or they have to be graded by a special committee or even submitted ATS. It's no different than a financial firm prohibiting an employee from doing outside trades on another platform. Or at least having to disclose it. Some people here have worked for or knew people who worked for a TPG, they can better tell us what restrictions employees have (if any) on submissions, collecting, etc.

Yeah, I guess the ones I saw were at least MS-63. I don't recall ever seeing a PL designation until the other day. Or maybe I just never paid attention. Larger mirror-potential in the larger clear fields of a Liberty DE than a Saint DE from my perspective but maybe there's something else.

I think if the increased supply comes from hoards -- either a surge or a trickle -- that's one thing. But re-submissions and crack-outs are another.

First, I would think you'd be a bit more discreet given that this is an NGC Forum. You ARE in their house, after all. Second, do you have an example that would prove your accusation in the OP and Thread title ? It's a pretty serious accusation to make. I agree more or less with Kurt. And I would also say that while mistakes and over/under grades can take place, that does NOT imply corruption. The systems that the TPGs employ are designed to eliminate the possibility of a rogue individual skewing results but of course no system is 100% perfect. This hobby IMO is better with the TPGs like NGC.

LIBERTY vs. SAINT PL DESIGNATION: No threads on PL or Liberty Head DEs, so I'll ask it here. I see that some Liberty Double Eagles have the PL designation (at least from PCGS). I'm wondering if the "cleaner" fields of the Liberty DEs allowed the PL appearance to take hold. No Saints have the PL designation, AFAIK. Can't be dies or the striking press. Could it be the reduced area in the Saint fields because of the rays and/or olive branch ?

I didn't see this article years ago but a friend forwarded it to me (he's a nickel collector). https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/pcgs-ngc-address-rising-population-for-rarities.htm Just goes to show you what hidden hoards or unseen supply can do to prices !! ___________________________________________________ The heads of the two leading third-party grading services (Professional Coin Grading Service and Numismatic Guaranty Corp.) traded words in an unusual public debate of sorts as they compete for market dominance. On Jan. 17, NGC chairman Mark Salzberg published a letter on NGC’s website titled, “Salzberg Advises: Research PCGS Populations and Prices.” The letter addressed the NGC announcement at the end of 2016 that PCGS-certified coins would not be eligible for new inclusion in sets on the NGC Registry. Salzberg wrote, “Over the last five years or so, I have noticed a perplexing trend at PCGS. There has been a dramatic increase in the grades assigned by PCGS for a wide range of coin types and, consequently, I believe this has caused an extraordinary reduction in the value of many PCGS-certified coins.” Salzberg pointed to the 1912-S Liberty Head 5-cent piece, where the PCGS population in MS-66 has increased from eight in January 2012 to more than 50 today. Of course, when the population of a scarce coin moves up substantially, the prices are bound to fall. Salzberg cited the sale of a PCGS MS-66 example in January 2012 for $37,375 compared with a sale of a comparably graded example at Heritage’s 2017 Florida United Numismatists show for $3,525. Salzberg noted, “This is a staggering loss of $33,850 (or 91%) of the coin’s value in five years,” before concluding, “How is it possible that eight 1912-S Liberty Nickels were graded PCGS MS 66 in the company’s first 25 years and 44 other examples were graded PCGS MS 66 in the last five years?” PCGS President Don Willis responded two days later on the PCGS U.S. Coin Forum, writing, “We set the standard for third party grading 30 years ago. Every other grading service has attempted to copy that standard and has been playing a game of catch up for all those years.” Addressing the population increase of some coins, Willis wrote, “We confess to being the most popular grading service. We process many more Vintage coins than NGC,” noting that populations rarely decrease as “there are always hidden collections, accumulations or hoards that come out.” Willis pointed out that several original rolls of high-quality examples of 1912-S Liberty 5-cent coins have come to market in the past several years. He said, “These rolls were handled by some of the most knowledgeable dealers in the business. We are proud of the fact that these individuals, who have great insight in the coin market, chose PCGS to grade their coins.” Salzberg, however, concluded, “An informed buyer is a smart buyer,” and advised collectors to research how a coin’s population and price have changed over time, before buying. The back-and-forth behind these two grading leaders is unusual as it provides a bit of transparency to these normally opaque matters that impact nearly all coin collectors.

So he was the guilty party....hope someone made him pay the price somehow for his double-dealing.

Fascinating....all this attention by Morgan afficionados, I get it. There isn't the same focus on other coins like Saints, but it's why I study and read alot about the background on the coins since the number of varieties itself doesn't match up with Morgans or other coins. Niche specialization and focus are always of interest to the human mind. The unique is of interest.

Smartphone set to maximum pixel resolution....about 12-24" away....angled at 30 degrees to avoid glare.