Henri Charriere

On 8/5/2020 at 10:24 AM, VKurtB said:

Even worse than the fates that befell this poor coin, are the highly pixelated over-digitally-sharpened photos. Yikes! Maybe you have some extremely sharp portrait orientation videos for us that you have posted on YouRube? [kidding]

Note:  For the record, this coin [as displayed on my wife's cheap, knock-off] cell is appropriately sharp with detail, color and contrast and, for all intents and purposes, presents as though it were in the palm of my hand. (In point of fact, it looks just as detailed as that stunning SG D/E slated for auction at Heritage, 9/17/20!) My cell is strictly talk and text. [No internet.]

14 minutes ago, MAULEMALL said:

Pocket Pieces have calmed millions of Nerves and I gifted a Peace dollar to my father to use to help with some neuropathy he acquired in his hands after too long on the surgical table.. My Mother (Who turned 96 last week) still has it and I will probably leave it with her when she passes..  

I have heard of tranquilizer touchstones (and beads) but am unfamiliar  with this.  I get it now. So unlike the purported healing properties of a copper bracelet, this is a more tactile product. [I specifically bought a double-thick, pure silver, 1804 dollar from the Intaglio mint but it was in such pristine condition I nixed carrying it around.] Your idea is better. Can't argue with success. All the best!

Oh-oh!  Much like Paulie in Goodfellas (1990) who readily admitted he knew nothing about the restaurant business, I know nothing about ETFs, BTUs -- or UFOs, for that matter. Mr. Goldfinger1969 (any relation to TekashiSixNine? Just kidding!) with all due respect, I have reached an age where engaging in speculative pursuits is not in my best interest.

Goldfinger1969:  Well excuse me, Roostermeister!

QA:  I know. I know. It was temporary insanity.

G1969:  Well, alright, I was only trying to be helpful.

QA:  I know you were and I appreciate your honesty.

Thanks for the reality check. RWB.

44 minutes ago, Zebo said:

Exactly! 

(Oh Lord, this is what they must mean when they say an old thread's got new legs...)

3 minutes ago, Alex in PA. said:

I meant a complete $1.00 set of Silver Certificates.  I like the large notes.

Ha! Ha! Ha! "Horse blankets" was the term they used for the oversized bank notes from another time and era.

20 minutes ago, Alex in PA. said:

1963 was a very good year.  I hope you got the PM?  I share Quintus disenchantment with our hobby in its present state.  I miss the old days of the ANA and ANACS before it moved to Colorado.  

I also have, and prefer, the large notes with a complete set of Silver Certificates.  Hand in there Quintus; this is, an ever changing hobby.

Thank you kindly!  You even threw in a reference to "horse blankets" which I haven't seen in the flesh since the 1960's.  Thanks again, for the memories and encouragement!

On 7/5/2020 at 4:21 PM, cowbaby said:

'Maybe there remains a shred of honest, accurate grading for some of the more common gold coins? If the least marked-up piece is accurately graded MS-65, then so be it.' 

That is YOUR opinion which you are certainly entitled to. I just don't happen to share it. To me it has more to do with what a grader thinks of the coin overall. Of course I think they try to give an honest assessment, its just honesty has less to do with it imo. 

As I said, some pieces were taken directly by the mint people straight from the dies. What this implies to me is certain coins never had even close to a good strike and the designers did 

On 7/5/2020 at 4:21 PM, cowbaby said:

 

I know the real reason why..But for the sake of argument I won't go into it.. 

 

Hate to revive a dead horse but your comment, as excerpted above, has remained stuck in my craw for the past month impervious to dental procedure.  Now that the thundering herd has moved on, may I ask you to reconsider your decision to withhold comment and state forthrightly whatever it is you may know about this matter as I am intensely interested as the rooster-meister who initiated this thread. I am all ears. Tks!

2 hours ago, VKurtB said:

A little cracked corn and they're good to go, right? I started in 1963 too. I just kept up with the industry's changes, deciding to embrace, rather than resist them.

Not resistance, just disenchantment with the hobby in general when "silver" no longer contained any and old-time coins slowly disappeared from circulation.  [I am also less than thrilled with present-day currency. No comparison to Watermelon notes, overprints and the lovely Educational series.]  This Rooster-meister is pretty much retired.

2 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

Are you speaking of intentionally created "monsters", or mere access to the unintentionally created ones? Both are true, and both are the main sources of so-called errors lately. Many unintentional errors, which get into the giant ballistic bags and exit the mint legitimately, are discovered, hoarded, and sold by the employees of firms that do the coin rolling. Hardly a surprise, because many serious errors wouldn't fit in a roll. SOMEBODY about five blocks from where I type this is making a nice side income selling mangled coins.

"Monster" suspicion confirmed. There was a coin concern (I do not recall the name) which had a large inventory of simply impossible errors, like a single off-metal planchet that somehow made its way into the minting process. Probably more difficult to do at the BEP where currency is printed in sheets. Thanks. 

1 hour ago, VKurtB said:

Yeah, I thought about doing that, but if you've read the release, they do not take any responsibility for damage while cracking out, and I have the right tools to do it (not a folding chair leg and a cowboy boot heel),so I do them myself.

Off-topic... with all your experience traipsing around branch mints and having had lunch with the mint director, I wonder whether you can clear up a suspicion I have harbored for a long time. True or patently false: some so-called coin errors are nothing more than the product of a compromised mint employee unethically intercepted after hours by an unknown party with a scheme and a bribe.

1 hour ago, VKurtB said:

I've known the TPGS firms use bare hands for at least 25 years.

Indubitably, my friend. But you did not know that I did not know that.

5 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

You surely are a unique and unicornish fellow in the world of modern numismatics. You need to keep up or you get crushed. When you, and our travel industry, are over this mishigas, might I suggest a course in modern coin grading? Brian Silliman teaches a humdinger of a two or three day course for the ANA. You'll lose the 1970's and 1980's ideas, and you'll learn something.

VKurtB, what a pleasant surprise early in the mrng! A grading course?  I am not buying. And I am not selling. On all numismatic matters, I defer to you. I don't need to forge ahead; I follow in your wake. Incidentally, my knowledge is not '70s and 80's; it's vintage 50's and 60's. All I have now are my roosters. They are like pet rocks (remember them?).  Low maintenance, requiring minimal care. I am just an onlooker now, my friend. I may jump in now and then but no one takes me seriously. And no one should. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

1 minute ago, Zebo said:

Bingo - it is nothing until you have it authenticated - except to you of course (or another owner of it). So roll the dice - if authenticated - it will add nothing to your belief, but it will convince others. If not - then your dream is shattered and no one else gains anything other than some happy electrons flowing across the screen.

Well said. 

7 hours ago, gmarguli said:

 

And I'm not so sure what problem you have with understanding that "prooflike" is used to describe a coin that looks like a proof, but is not. 

I will confide in you the problem I have with this artificial flavoring from my perspective. With this term, we descend unwittingly into the ill-defined bottomless pit of the realm known by its colloquial name: Subjectivity.  After all, just how proof-like must a coin be to earn that honorarium? Where "Used" was once used, we now say "Pre-owned."  Or wait, my cherry-red Corvette stingray may be an antique, but I drove it home from the dealership in 1970 and it's been up on blocks since. Ok, we will call it "like-new." But it still retains it's new car scent!  Like I said, like-new, with low mileage, okay? Maybe we ought to have a grading system for cars. Proof-like is like saying you live on Park Avenue. The only problem with that is Park extends thru Harlem and the South Bronx, the latter described as the poorest Congressional District in the nation. Proof-like leaves a funny aftertaste in my mouth.

34 minutes ago, Conder101 said:

If so the Congressman is wrong.

Notwithstanding New York City's bail reform measure clearly enacted to facilitate the closure of the municipal jails which has also had the effect of releasing on low- or no-bail serial bank robbers and gang bangers -- a number of whom have been referred to the federal courts... I agree. That's petit larceny, or by whatever name known in other jurisdictions.  [Aside: I once found a brand-new $100. bill torn 3x into eight pieces in a Chinatown trash basket which I recovered to piece together later at home, and discovered to my astonishment it was real. The dangling security threads were a dead giveaway. I posited a scenario whereby a local shopkeeper or shopkeepers refused to accept the bill in a transaction due to its unfamiliar features as compared with the old C-notes, and the rejected customer sat down in the local park and tore the bill up in frustration.] He couldn't take it to a bank. Technically, counterfeit bills are supposed to be confiscated though I have been handed back a questionable bill, now and again. A local Chinese take-out once refused to accept my half-dollar and one-dollar coins and even my two-dollar bill, without explanation. I chalk it all up to simple unfamiliarity with coins and currency, rarely encountered. I seriously doubt in a city, where those who cut and rob are only detained briefly, anyone would be arrested for a bag of Cheetos. In fact, any such police officer involved would probably be disciplined and laughed out of the stationhouse. (District attorneys here have publicly stated anyone arrested for marijuana, or other quality-of-life offenses, would not be prosecuted.)

28 minutes ago, RichieRich2020 said:

Im still very curious as to what one might value such a unique coin ... Especially in the case that Im correct and it has a special unique finish which no other collector has ? 

Dang!  I started to tap out a response but the censors overruled me. Briefly, you face a Hobson's choice: echoing some of the heavyweights among us, the coin must be validated, i.e., submitted for authentication and certification, BUT (big but) to do so would make no economic sense.  Suppose you were to roll the dice with a hefty wager and come up snake eyes?  Are you better off buying a slew of scratch offs or lottery tickets with mega long shot odds? There was a gentleman who kindly suggested you shelve your dream, for now. I am inclined to agree. It's a no-win situation.

4 hours ago, GoldFinger1969 said:

I get it.  But if you have even a basic online brokerage account you can buy these ETFs pretty easily in most any account.

If your only reason to want to buy/sell is to move based on price and you don't want to sell your specific silver/gold coins/bars because replicating them down the line would be time consuming, buying/selling the ETFs is a good way to hedge.

Makes eminent good economic sense.  I am unable to offer a cogent argument against it. (Lemme find out someone out there is trying to turn a collector into an invest😊r.)

20 minutes ago, GoldFinger1969 said:

That's because the premium tends to be sticky to both the upside AND downside.  If it rises and then stabilizes at the higher level (admittedly, it doesn't happen too often) the premium will expand with gold flat.

I believe in a few years folks will post here bragging that they bought an MS65 Saint common year for under $3,000 !!  

I don't think I will be doing that but I can state with [shameful] confidence that every raw MS French rooster I bought only last year at a ridiculously low price, has risen way, way past melt value (a term I dislike intensely) as have your beloved double eagles -- and while I may consider selling them, I am not going to disperse my Set Registry compilation -- no matter how high gold goes, even if it surpasses the value of RichieRich2020s newfound treasure, and irrespective as to how VKurtB feels about them. What I may do is send them all back to France for placement in a museum if they're interested.  I was never in it for the money; I was in it for the hunt.  Note: any views as expressed herein above are valid for 37 hours.

6 minutes ago, GoldFinger1969 said:

Simple solution:  buy SLV the ETF as a hedge to lock in the price.  Same thing with GLD or IAU if you can't buy gold coins or bars for some reason.

Easy for you to say. I may have had to give up my rotary phone but I still have my old (yes, manual) typewriter.  I don't know why, but an old dinosaur like me cannot fathom the pleasure a whippersnapper may derive from abstractions like pixelated numbers and letters on a screen. While I may envy VKurtBs giant ME, I am stubbornly old-fashioned. How can an electronic trade compare to the thrill I got redeeming my old silver certificates for a bag of silver at an assay office on Wall Street? You understand.

I don't think the Judge is going to allow me to cross-examine the witness at this late juncture what with argumentation well on its way, but I would nevertheless be curious to know why a former grader, sharing recollections as to the way things were done during the last millennium, sat there quietly, with nary a peep, as various commentators, some presumably experts in their respective fields, regaled the rest of us with tales of roguish rascality including, but not limited to, cracking out coins, questionable re-submissions and errors brought about by purposeful defacement with chemicals one of which is banned in California and from export as a Listed II precursor to at least one South American country? No further questions.

4 hours ago, MAULEMALL said:

Of those on the list I went with feel... The Peace Dollar had the best Feel to it..

 

Topographically speaking, with subdued relief, I can see that. But codgers like me who've had "hold by the edges" pounded into our heads over the years, your reference to "feel" makes me cringe. I only recently heard (hope VKurtB doesn't see this) that the TPGS conduct their examinations with bare hands and not paper gloves as I had assumed. 

12 minutes ago, MarkFeld said:

I wasn’t grading in an assembly line - it was nothing like that. Back in those days, we weren’t even grading moderns, yet. I also spent close to half my time in quality control checks of the coins, grades and information on the grading labels, after the coins were encapsulated.

I apologize for my hasty conclusion, and do so politely.

A woman at a TPGS (ah, what the hell: PCGS) felt obligated to describe the ENTIRE process involved in their hermetically sealed room which left me with the impression that all those cryptic notations left all over my encapsulations, as well as the black coffin in which they were entombed, were the product of a series of internal checks and balances (circa, 2020, the present). Have things changed? Have turn-arounds grown? With the explosion in ERs and FSs and all manner of labels, I would imagine so.  We are rapidly approaching a time when the numismatic collector series of coins will likely come with a certified chronometer reading: No. 9 off the press. And those higher numbers will command an incrementally lower premium than their older-by-minutes hatchlings.

1 hour ago, MarkFeld said:

Like it or not, when I graded at NGC from 1991-1998, I very rarely used magnification stronger than 5-10 power.

You were grading on an assembly line. I am conducting autopsies. Like that all-seeing eye on The Great Seal of the one-dollar bill, nothing escapes my gaze. 

On 8/5/2020 at 1:40 PM, Coinbuf said:

I just want to know when Quintus is going to propose to Richie, its a beautiful bromance.

On another site that routinely, liberally, and some might say, unjustifiably "collapsed," i.e., censored contributors' remarks -- Be Nice, Be Respectful, was their constant refrain -- I would very often refer to their "Moderation Committee" as the "Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue" squad, a real-life entity not unlike the clerics in Kabul who carried little whips to enforce religious edicts like not cutting off your beard (men) or exposing too much face or ankle (women). If I wanted something more rambunctious than simple courtesy and respect, I could always tune in to Jerry Springer. There have been some eloquent orators who have more than made up for the wild cowboys on this thread, now a respectable 200 post, seven page, thread, long enough to be woven into a garment. Great stuff!

I wonder where my esteemed colleague, VKurtB, stands on this.  It was he who, utilizing his Toolbar for added emphasis, lambasted my use of a 30-power loupe (in lieu of a five-or ten-power hand-held lens) as NEVER done. And here we have (the rather aptly named) INSIDER casually confiding that no less than a "stereo microscope" was employed routinely for grading.  This is arguably the most interesting and informative recitation I have come across since I stumbled into this chat room. (I am not even going to ask who Old Crack Eye was.) Thank you so much for sharing your memoirs!