samclemen3991

@zadok. To the best of my knowledge the last coin club in my hometown ended when it's founder, a man named Glenn died in 1982. There could be some private affair but if so I am not in their loop. A fellow named Brian is one of the sons of Glenn. He has been a vest pocket dealer for as long as I have known him. We speak at least monthly so I would be surprised if he wouldn't have mentioned a coin club to me. Sadly, due to a health crisis in December I have been forced to isolate from the public for the last 4 months. Otherwise I would have liked to attend one of their meetings. They meet at a Perkin's the last Friday of each month and I have an open invitation. If nothing else, I am hoping to find people there who would be interested in some of my many Numismatic books. Neither the Library or the Hospital Aux. group will take them. However at this time most of their members focus on buying junk silver. James

Sorry World Colonial but you come off about as cheerful as a Thomas Hardy novel. Are the skies a perpetual November gray in your world? I have to dispute some of your conclusions. You put the survival of coin collecting on the backs of old white men. I don't think that is true. I live in a small midwestern town. In January I was surprised to see an ad in the local grocery store flyer for a new coin club. The contact person's name is Jose Guerrero and yes he is Spanish. They have 14 founding members. 2 white college kids, 2 females and the rest are of various non white backgrounds but all know each other thru working at the same Turkey processing plant. This may not be the future YOU see for coin collecting, and for all I know this group might be as rare as a sun beam in your world but I wouldn't write the future off. Also, I have yet to get two people give the same definition of woke but that is a different matter. James

It would be interesting to live long enough to see how this is suppose to eventually work out. In one thread you have millions of raw rare coins that are just waiting to flood the certified market. In another you have the total collapse of coin collecting because no one wants them. Somethings got to give. James

I do not slab a great deal of coins myself and I don't know if my feedback is of any value to you. About 2 years ago I was considering sending in about a half dozen Seated coins to have specific designations added. However, before I did, I casually asked whether they as collectors, looked for coins that were all ready labeled or whether they preferred to cherrypick such coins. On three other coin web sites more than 20 people answered and to a man they all said they wanted to do their own cherry picking and in fact avoided coins that had all ready been labeled. That gave me a great deal of pause because why spend what is significant money if in fact it drives away the very people you look to sell to. I am sure this might be very different based on the type of coin or the designation that is being added. IE people pay more on expensive coins if the added description is there. James; good luck

I am a little confused at this point. I was a coin collector in the 60's, 70's, 80's etc. I have never had any interest in mint sets or proof sets. My collecting interest has always focused on coins that were actually MADE to circulate. Likewise all modern coins I have collected came straight from circulation. I take it I am to understand that anyone seeking a high quality coin to collect from this era MUST actually pursue specially made and marketed coins because production levels were so poor? The discussion keeps addressing whether there is an actual population of coins that would please a collector but production amounts of coins made for circulation and coins made as actual collector pieces seem to bleed together. There is no way to distinguish the two from each other, correct? Finally, I tend to focus on Seated material, but have grown curious as to whether there are any actual dealers, besides individuals on E-Bay , who market modern clad coins circa 1965-say 1999? Any information appreciated. james

I have been thinking about your claim that modern coins will become hot collectibles some day @cladking. I think that this will only happen if there is some sort of catalyst. I am in the janitorial supply/cleaning service business. In Dec. 2019 a supplier of mine, Nuance Solution, had a glut of disinfectant spray. I was ordering floor chemicals but my sales person offered me as much as I wanted at a very cheap price. In the end, he pointed out the stuff has a shelf life of a million years and I would recoup the money plus profit over a few years. Remember March 2020? Over night my cleaning service was dead in the water but covid had another side effect. The price of disinfectant doubled, doubled, then doubled again. All before May. the same company was sending me price lists with huge mark ups and instituting strict volume controls. I just can't guess what that catalyst would be. I know some bemoan the chance of a cashless society but who knows how things will bend in the future? James

Jason Abshier your point is well made. There is a tendency for some people to portray coin collecting as some sort of treasure hunt. "Do You have this penny worth 10 million dollars in your pocket?" This valuation as reason for involvement is a mirage that makes the vast majority of collectors cringe. Real coin collecting has at it's focus history, myth, great stories and links to past events. I know I did not get involved in coins because I thought it was a get rich scheme. If any modern coins have a good story to tell or bring people the joy of owning it because it links them to the story of their lives, then they will become sought after items. James

So Cladking, are you saying you cherry pick very specific dates and conditional rareties? as I understood some of the information posted here, they are saying they save wholesale lots of all the denominations and all the dates. also that they leave these lots unsearched. I find that approach puzzling but perhaps I miss understood. james

I am a little baffled by the idea of collecting rolls of coins. I will admit that when i was a kid in the 60's I had a neighbor named Mr. Windy. He had 4 igloo coolers in his basement and each one was labeled with a decade and were full of rolls of Walking Liberty Halves. However, he was obsessed with that particular coin. he even made large wooden copies of the Walker design and decorated them with real coins. Do you fixate on one type of coin? It seems a tremendous commitment of resources for what? something you never look at? Do you expect some kind of reward? Hope this doesn't come off as too combative but I won't lie. I sorta understood Mr. Windy and his fixation but cannot see a rationale for hoarding coins made in the billions. james

I am afraid I set myself up for a disappointment. I was all set to talk about my nearly life long fascination with the New Orleans mint. I guess I will have to just join the Spearmint group. James

I have had very little to do with John Paul Sorosi coins since way back in the 90's when I ordered the silver Washington quarters. However, about a decade ago I did get a ACME letter telling me that the daughter of John Paul was going to continue on with the coin shop. I collect Seated material so I wish her the best but don't think of them as one of my regular coin sites. Are there people who collect BU rolls Cladking? I know one tiny part of numismatics. James

I have no dog in this fight either way but just wanted to share a personal collector experience. Trust me, I had statistics in college too and understand the limitations of empirical data. (Have enjoyed reading thread though) Sometime around 1995 I found an old blue book collecting album for Washington Quarters. The start date was 1960 which is just one date off from my birth year. I found that to be neat but also a rather odd year to pick. At that time I owned three businesses and one of them required a large change supply so I thought it would be cool to fill it. I don't know if you know the Chevy Chase movie where he is trapped in a round about and keeps saying, "Look kids Big Ben!" Even in the 90's it seemed every 3rd quarter was a Bi-Centennial. Those will be rare ten years after the sun does a Super Nova. I was able to fill the silver holes, not through circulation, rather through John Paul Sorosi coins quickly. I am in the middle of fly over country and was able to get a handful of Denver coins from the 60's and 70's plus about two early philly clad dates. Of course coins that were just being minted were easy too, but after about 6 years and only getting about a quarter of the album filled two things happened,.I lost interest and the clothes dryer broke. My collection was released back into the wild. I just wanted to share a personal experience and read very little into it. James

Good luck with your coin collecting. Everybody and their cousin Ralph will tell you to collect what YOU like and that there is no money to be made in coin collecting. Both sentiments are probably true. Having said that Hope truly is the bird that perches in the heart and you never know what life will send your way. Usually things never go as predicted. Case in point. My nephew at Thanksgiving drank too much and loudly declared he would NEVER marry. We got the wedding invitations last week. Set for August. James

Wow. There is a blast from the past. I well remember as a kid NOT so patiently waiting for the drugstore to get a new issue in. could barely afford coins so mag subscriptions were out of the question. James

This reminds me of my daughters Silver Eagle. When my oldest daughter was around ten my mother bought her an Eagle. One day while straightening up her comics I found this coal black disc mixed in with the comics. Sure enough, it was that silver Eagle. Took it all of about 2 years to go terminal. James

I am just beginning to realize I made a numismatic mistake. When we were wrestling our dead dryer of 25 years service out of the laundry room a perfect dryer rubbed quarter fell out of the thing. I put it in my cat bank instead of a 2x2. My bad. James the only unanswered question I have is: "why is it that when someone posts a coin with some overdate, clash mark, or other neat feature I can never see it?"

VkurtB. Just so I understand. You are angered or something because someone is using their acumen and capital to profit in a capitalist society? I think that is just called envy. James

I don't think you know what a scam site is. On the one hand I have been on Cointalk since 2017 and can't even tell you for sure who the moderators are. Neither has anyone affiliated with cointalk tried to scam me. On the other hand, shortly after I joined Cointalk an individual on that site claimed he was starting his own site to discuss Seated coins only. I was told the site would be on something called freelists or something like that. I was intrigued so I asked if I could join. I was only on the site about 5 or 6 days when I figured out that 2 individuals did 90% of the posting. figure A would post a coin and claim he wanted more information. Figure B would claim the coin was some uber rare variety worth thousands of dollars. Then they would try to pressure anyone else on the board to buy the coin. In my case they tried to sell me an 1874-CC Trade dollar. The coin had been heavily whizzed, so much so that they hade to re-engrave the dentils. the CC on back was so large I can only imagine they somehow lifted the C off of a pair of nickels and somehow stuck them on the back . They also claimed the coin was an MS-70 and worth $6,000 dollars. I told them they should send the coin to a third party grading service if they thought it was such a true rare variety. The next day I was banned. Then poster A and poster B told everyone on the site they had discovered I was a corporate troll who worked for those nasty Grading Services. About a week or two after that I got a 401 when I tried to reach the site. That is what I call a scam site. James (Not affiliated with any grading service)

I came across this thread while on hold and found it to be a twisted odd journey. The only question I have at the end of it (Cointalk has been around for years completely legit), is about the original poster. He claims to be the first name in Numismatics or some such thing. I could not but help wonder what his response would be if you asked him about Kenneth Bressett or Q. David Bowers. My guess is he would say "Who?"

A question about ending the penny on another site reminded me of one of my dad's favorite jokes. We spent years working together and traveling. Every time he saw an earth work job using heavy equipment to dig a hole he would say, "Ye Gods. Look, another Dutchman musta lost a nickel there!" Yes, my dad was full Dutch. I am of watered down stock and only use equipment like that when I lose a quarter. James

I think you nailed it EagleRJO. About a year ago we had to replace our clothes dryer. While wrestling it out of the laundry room a quarter with wear just like that on the obverse fell out. James

I recently won a coin with this designation. I used the name on the holder to arrive at, if I remember right, what was a Wickapedia post. there I also found a few articles about these coins. To the best of my knowledge the designation was added by the individual given the task of selling the coins for the court. I personally do not think it adds any numismatic value. Hope this helps. James

This post reminds me of two articles David Q. Bowers wrote for Coin World in the 1990's. In the first article he asked 10 experts who were members of something called the Silver Dollar roundtable to offer their grade on 12 silver dollars. He failed to get even as many as 6 members to give the same grade on any one coin. he was surprised to see grades as far apart as AU to MS 66 on the same coin. In a subsequent article he asked 10 individuals who were currently employed as graders at various services to examine 12 various coins he selected. He asked them to just state whether they thought the coin should be slabbed and if not why? To his surprise he could not get more than 5 members to agree on whether a coin should be slabbed and found a variety of reasons for each coin that was denied. His final conclusion was this, "Anytime someone is showing you a coin that is more than 100 years old and talking in absolutes and universals my advice to you is suspend belief and hold on to your wallet." Good luck in your future collecting. James

I can see corrosion damage but unless you did it yourself it would be hard to be that specific. james

I think a lot of people do what you do Moxie15. I would not do it myself. As you say you wanted proof the coin was genuine before you spent that kind of money. What are the odds the next buyer in line will want the same assurance? To me it is like buying a car and then burning the title. James