World Colonial

I doubt it. Gold coinage, Morgan dollars, and even those 1912-S nickels are almost certainly outliers, not the norm. Unlike forum participants, most collectors and definitely non-collector owners who I believe own a lot of coins (like my now deceased step-grandmother I previously profiled) don't see a need to spend money for grading, may not have even heard of TPG, and the coin won't get graded until sold, whenever that is. Take a look at Coin Facts which provides estimates for every coin they cover. Many I consider obviously wrong and cannot be reconciled to the TPG data. Still, I think the estimates with a large gap versus the TPG data are often "directionally" accurate. Some are just "made up", but others must be from those who have collected or dealt in it for a long time.

This is because very few US coins are actually scarce and not as scarce as most collectors seem to believe either. Haven't read it lately, but I used to read regular accounts of how coins were submitted multiple times, occasionally until the "right" grade was received. Sure, it happens. But usually, there are going to be (far) more that have never been sent in versus resubmissions. Only a very low minority of coins are worth enough to make it potentially worthwhile while concurrently only a very low minority of collectors can grade "accurately" to TPG standards. There is after all (maybe in most instances), the equal possibility of a downgrade too. PCGS Coin Facts itemizes up to the 10 "finest" known specimens for each coin they cover. Some (where known) have the provenance included though most do not. Where it isn't available, it isn't clear to me whether PCGS knows there aren't any duplicates, though I suspect some may be. Concurrently though, it's evident just from the Heritage Marketplace that there likely aren't that many. Last I checked, they had five (yes, 5) 1798 dimes in MS grades up to MS-64+, both major varieties. Duplicate (high) MS for several other dates too. Right now, an AU-58 of a coin in my series is up for sale. It's one of two in this TPG's data and there is a third in the other. The other one sold in 2020, I compared the images, and it's not a duplicate either. The third may be a duplicate with one of the other two, don't know but assume not until proven otherwise. The point is, this is a four- figure coin and while cheaper than Bust dimes and many other US coins, it's easily scarcer than the vast majority of US coins US collectors consider scarce or rare.

I assume they had custody until the end of the sale, but sent it back to the consignor in error. This is a guess, not fact. All I know for certain is when I paid for it, they couldn't find it, refunded me, and then it shows up again. Sorry, I didn't intend to imply Goldberg did anything wrong.

It wasn't intentional by Goldberg, and I did not mean to make it sound that way. I spoke to Ira or Larry (don't remember which one) and his first question was, how did we pay the consignor and send the coin back? That's what happened. Goldberg made an error somehow, where whoever was in charge on inventory control sent the coin back while whoever was in charge of paying consignors paid them. No clue how that happened. The consignor was dishonest for trying to sell the same coin twice and tried to hide it by re-grading the coin. If someone is going to do that, they should at least consign it somewhere else, not the same place.

I don't consider those two grades representative. In the coins I have collected which admittedly are not US, both are often interchangeable. I own coins in both grades. Admittedly, my sample is quite small, but it seems that "sliders" sometimes get bumped up for something like "eye appeal". One coin I bought in 2005 was in an AU-58 holder when I bought it the first time from Goldberg. They couldn't find it and refunded my money. In their next auction a few months later, the same coin shows up in the current MS-61 holder. The consigner was paid and then tried to sell the coin again, double dipping. He just happened to get caught because I wanted the coin and recognized it as the one I bought. For this coin, either grade could be "correct". The coin (1847 Mexico 4R) is untoned but looks like it has been dipped on the obverse. The reverse is semi or fully PL. I don't see any indication of wear, but there could be some, somewhere.

1) Reading and posting, here and on the PCGS Forum. Read Coin Week too. 2) Looking for coins that are candidates to buy. This is mostly auctions, eBay, and a few dealers. (ANS MANTIS is another source I have looked at too.) But I also have a list on a spreadsheet of coins I know exist (which I have mostly never seen for sale) from reference books (plate coins), prior auction catalogs, and the TPG populations. These are potential coins I may approach dealers or even the collector who owns it, at some point. 3) Identifying coins in my current collection that are candidates to be sold. I'm in the process of selling a partial six coin set right now. Outside my primary interest, there are two "side collections" I am interested in continuing. Most everything else I would get rid of, at the right price. 4) Keeping up with coins I do not collect and almost certainly will never buy. This is mostly auction results (such as to put together the data for that series ranking per a prior thread) and becoming familiar with Coin Facts. I look at Coin Facts intermittently to compare estimated survivorship to my primary interest, Lima and Potosi pillar coinage.

Sounds like an accurate description to me.

Yes, I get it. Point is, I don't know who the custodian is for crypto accounts. Probably read it somewhere and missed it or worse, there isn't one. They had no internal audit function, according to what I read. That's who normally does this type of review. I don't remember who their external public accountant is or if they had one. It's a colossal failure. But then, institutional investors like Sequoia and (I think) some Canadian Teacher's pension plan apparently did (virtually) zero due diligence either. You have a lot more faith in regulation than I do. If regulatory authority is extended to crypto (which it probably will be), the biggest "success" will be in expanding moral hazard. There is no reason to regulate crypto. Crypto is nothing. Anyone who pays something for nothing should expect to lose everything. It's stupid.

Designating funds as "customer" versus "firm" in an accounting ledger in and of itself doesn't mean anything. This appears to be all that FTX did. If I read correctly, FTX had no (real) board of directors, no audit function, and I'm not clear on their risk management practices either. This is all "101" for any financial firm or for that matter, pretty much any large or public company. It can differ somewhat for privately held firms but shouldn't much. They obviously had poorly defined job functions, limited if any segregation of duties, and who knows if any accounting controls such as reconciliations which should have identified this problem. This is all based upon what I have read. Is there such a thing in crypto land? I have never heard of such a firm.

Just read an SEC statement on CNBC.com. The charges include violation of securities laws. Once again, regulators waited to close the barn door after the horses are out of the barn. I'm going to make the wild guess that the customer funds are gone and little if anything will ever be recovered.

No, US Mint did not forget. I don't remember the specifics, but it's been discussed here and other coin forums. My recollection is that the TPG decided to designate an (S) "mintmark" on the label since these coins were struck in SF. To obtain the (S), the submitter had to submit a "monster box" of 500 in the original box shipped from the Mint. Something like this. I've never checked if this (S) "mint" is included in registry sets. It's the only "collecting" reason I can come up with why anyone would care.

It's another TPG marketing gimmick. An imaginary mintmark that isn't there, basically what the prior posts stated where it was struck at SF, but no MM was added.

He made the mistake of not fleeing to a jurisdiction without an extradition treaty.

My inference is that some of the premiums for the older holders is due to the belief that the holder itself is or will become more valuable. I know some holders are considered rare and are collected. I wouldn't think that PCGS OGH will ever become rare (except in combination with the coin inside of it) but who knows. Otherwise, seems it's also speculation on future upgrade potential, though I consider it unlikely an MS-65 would upgrade anytime soon to a high enough grade to recover this premium. This price behavior also partly reminds me of a prior Coin Week article in which the author recommended the purchase of older (pre-1965) original unopened rolls, not because of the coins in it, but because the roll (the wrapper) was rare. Made absolutely no sense to me (and I told him so in a comment), but it isn't my money.

I've heard the same sentiments. Seems to me at some point, the better coins in older holders will have been cracked out for regrading and only average quality for the grade will remain. I don't know if this has happened, yet. I have a few PCGS coins in old holders but not OGH. I bought both in 1998 the year I resumed collecting. One is from South Africa and the other is from Mexico. I consider both undergraded, but only the second is possibly worth resubmitting.

Yes, but this was more than offset by the much lower prices, adjusted for inflation too.

Yes. FMV is at a specific point in time. (More) Common coins sell more regularly, usually very regularly. FMV for all other coins is a (wide) range. There is no method to pre-determine FMV in advance. When one of the most prominent coins comes up for sale, contributors here and on the PCGS Forum provide wide ranging estimates.

I didn't say the "history" is on the label. I also know what you are talking about, still almost never has anything to do with the coin. Obviously, this marketing angle (if used) is not explicit, as then the claim would be exposed for the absurdity that it actually is. The common (inferred) claim can be made for a few coins such as: 1902 South Africa veld pond struck during the second Anglo-Boer War, First Jewish Revolt (66-70 AD), 1861 CSA original half dollar, and commemoratives struck at the time of the event...see the difference? For practically all other coinage, it's either irrelevant, exaggerated, or invented romanticized fiction. (Every object has a history, but usually that's not what's being implicitly marketed.) Anyone can make the same claim for many if not every coin. As an example, the Kennedy half dollar. The difference is no non-collector will buy it for financial reasons, but that doesn't negate the "history" associated with this coin. Whether accurate or not, for the highest profile coinage, the prices and premiums are still (completely) disproportionate to the significance of supposed connected events. On the PCGS forum, I took this position (mine) when debating the 1794 SP-66 dollar and 1933 DE when both came up for sale. The non-collector doesn't care about any of the attributes on these two coins (or any others), other than to the extent it impacts the price. That's what distinguishes collectors from non-collectors, which is a fact so many coin forum participants (and dealers) won't accept because it's contrary to what they want. If this minority collector belief was true, more wealthy non-collectors would have bought it. Saints generically are somewhat different but that's because the premiums on most are much lower and there are a lot of gold buyers who buy different forms of gold. Yes, but you are already a coin collector. If you are referring to existing US coin collectors, your claim is valid. If you are attributing it to anyone else (including coin collectors outside the US), it isn't unless they are buying it for "investment". This is the only reason some Saints sell for more, because US coin collectors buy coins (usually not expensive art), and the coins are more liquid because it's gold there are more coin collectors. The reason I used this as an example is because you're trying to claim historical appeal for this coinage as a reason to buy it. St. Gaudens' artwork logically has at least as much "history" as any Saint.

The software running this site is terrible. I tried to add this reply to my above post but couldn't find your comments. I know you disagree with me, but the history to which you refer is nothing more than marketing. This is true for practically any coin. Practically any coin is too generic where the supposed history has any actual connection. The coin exists, sat in a cabinet for decades or longer until it might have made it into a TPG holder, and that's it. Had nothing to do with anything that happened then or since, whether it circulated or not. It's probably compelling as a marketing selling point to those who are already inclined to become collectors, but not anybody else. If someone is interested in a (supposed) historical connection for a specific time and place, there are far cheaper options than some "investment" coin. This is especially true for the most expensive US coinage generically. With Saints, I have posted a couple of times that on one occasion, I discovered that most or all of St. Gaudens artwork is a lot cheaper than the most expensive Saints. It's on either the Christie's or Sotheby's websites. This tells anyone everything they need to know, if they will actually look at the subject impartially, which most coin collectors probably won't because it is contrary to their personal preference.

The only time this seems to have happened was in the 70's. More recently, gold has trended with other asset classes.

That's not rare for a proof of this era or for any coin where I can reasonably presume most which exist are still "UNC" equivalents. Were these melted in large proportion too? I've never heard of a coin specifically made for collectors being melted in quantity, unless it didn't sell out. "Collectible" date presumably means it's the only date that historically sold for any "noticeable" premium to the metal content, not that collectors don't collect it. Most common world gold of this era (or later) have/had little premium to the metal content, at least until collectors started paying higher premiums for labels on plastic holders. It's only US gold coinage which is an outlier. Were most of the 1900's melted? Believed to be? Someone has to know something even if an estimate of how many, or else you can reach my inference. I ask because I have never heard of any coin from this era with anywhere near this mintage being hard to buy, unless it happened. Being a French coin, it should be readily available in high grade, unless it was melted in very high proportion. Most European coinage (at least from the larger population countries) subjectively dated after about 1775 isn't particularly scarce. Most of it is (very) common. Usually, it's going to be scarce because of an initially low mintage. Or it's a narrow scarcity, like a die variety, transition coin, or something like that. These aren't circulation strike coins either. A prototype is a pattern and "made rare" or at least scarce. The blank sounds like a type of error, though not always. There are South Africa blank Ponds available, though these aren't particularly scarce.

The Morgan dollar is so common, it will never be noticed.

How much does a complete set cost in the highest grades? However much it is, it's a lot less than completing any US gold set even in "collector grades", except maybe the Indian Head quarter eagle. The Indian Head quarter eagle has its current "popularity" partly because it's the only US classic gold set within financial reach of a noticeable proportion of the US collector base, maybe the top 20% financially or somewhat more.

Last sale recorded in Coin Facts for an MS-64 is 72K @ Heritage in October. NGC has 126 grading events and PCGS 195. Combined, 155 in MS-64 and 40 higher. Yes, I know there are (potentially many) duplicates. Coin Facts estimates 943 total, 900 UNC, and 45 in MS-65 or higher. Unless there are a lot more from hoards, this estimate seems way too high for a series I'd describe as predominantly "investor" at this price. There is a big gap between 321 (less duplicates) and 900+ for a coin fitting this profile. Still, 72K is a lot of money for a coin of this scarcity. Yes, I know it's "popular" (has a high preference) but I am going to guess the number of duplicates isn't that high.

I believe the Rooster series is widely known among US collectors of any earlier (as in not "modern") world coinage. The British Sovereign is by far the best known, but the Rooster is known along with others like the Swiss 10CHF and 20CHF. For those who want to collect a series of non-US gold without breaking the bank, it's an affordable choice.