World Colonial

On 11/20/2019 at 4:10 PM, Senex said:

I underestimated the potential of this coin, as it is up to $1K on eBay now. I don't know how many people who collect ASEs collect them all but I'm willing to bet more than 30K do.

This is my assessment of this coin and the ASE series:

1) A buyer (notice I didn’t say collector) base of maybe 250,000 attempting to complete a set, of some sort.

2) Most of this base is low budget, either cannot afford this coin or won’t buy it even if they can.  I estimate about 80% of all collectors won’t pay over $300 for a coin.

3) At minimum, a substantial minority are predominantly “silver stacker” financial buyers, not hobbyist collectors.  Many likely own one or more coins in this series (aside from the bullion coin) in multiple for speculation.  They don't care about this coin as a collectible and many will dump it when they find better uses for the money.

4) A substantial minority (at minimum) only collect the basic set, excluding reverse proof, enhanced finish…They aren’t looking to buy this coin either.

5) There are potentially more random collectors and speculators buying this coin (or the 95-W) than (hobbyist) set collectors.

6) Almost no bigger budget buyers collect this series as one of their primary sets, unless they primarily buy other NCLT.  It’s a sideline collection.

7) Dealers have an outsized influence on the price (versus most other coins) for some ASE because they own a noticeable proportion of the supply, all the time.

So, I agree with you that the ASE collector base is greater than 30,000.  I am also telling you that this isn’t particularly relevant with this coin, as most ASE collectors will never own it. The profile of the ASE buyer I described is primarily a low budget collector who can’t afford what they would actually prefer to buy or is primarily buying it for financial reasons.

I reach this conclusion because there isn’t much collecting associated with this coinage and this is what I see anecdotally in reading coin forums for over a decade, regularly.  A noticeable proportion (mostly older collectors) don’t consider it (and much or all other NCLT) to be real coins.  Additionally, anyone who has the money can literally buy the entire series in one day, unless they want some arbitrary number on a TPG label or toned examples.

The reality is that even though it was just recently issued, it is literally already one of the most overpriced coins in the world.  I’d rank the 95-W second, so this 2019 is hardly a compelling numismatic or speculative bargain.  The 95-W has been “dead money” for years with the 70 losing noticeable value as the TPG populations have increased.  This coin may appreciate as you imply despite its merits but it’s already an absolutely awful relative value, both as a collectible and financially.  The supposedly low mintage doesn’t change my analysis because this coin is more common in high quality versus every single competitor at a similar price.

If this sounds harsh, I’m not knocking it, only telling you that most hobbyist collectors don’t really find it (or the series) that interesting since there is no challenge to it. To the financial buyer, the most (or only) interesting aspect is their desire to make a windfall. 

This coin is only interesting enough to most buyers under the assumption that they can recover most, all or more than their money back.

23 hours ago, Conder101 said:

Yes but are them more than 30K who are willing to pay $1,000+ for it.  So far the answer appears to be yes, but a LOT of mint issues go high right out of the starting gate and then latter fall back.  Sometimes it can take years before the finally reach their bottom and stabilize.  And sometime the stabilize high well above issue price and sometimes they crash and eventually end up below issue.  It is too soon to say what the final price of this coin will be some years from now.  Look at the 2001 silver proof set.  Sole for $32, jumped to $300+ and stayed there for something like 12 years.  Then started sliding.  I think they are around $60 now and may still not have reached bottom.

Not relevant, prices are set at the margin.  With 30,000, it probably takes only a few hundred buying it at any one time to support the price, whatever it is now or later.  I can see several hundred selling per week, indefinitely.

The mintage on this coin was set intentionally low.  As absurdly overpriced as I believe it to be, even I don't see it returning anywhere near the issue price of $65 for the foreseeable future.  I just don't think it's a compelling financial value at the prices I have seen quoted in the forum posts I have read.

On 11/17/2019 at 12:42 PM, Senex said:

I think you underestimate the potential of this coin, which IMO will hit the $1000 level by year's end. It is the key to the series now, like it or not and I'd wager there are more than 30,000 SE collectors out there.

You ignored what I wrote.  $1000 is a lot cheaper than the 95-W, so yes, it could sell for that.

I said that the collector base is potentially a lot lower than for the 95-W because not all ASE collectors buy these ‘“extra” coins.  If some noticeable proportion don’t want it, no it isn’t the new key date.

It depends upon your assumptions which may differ from mine.  Sending this from my cell phone but can elaborate further later.

On 11/15/2019 at 5:40 AM, Zebo said:

This may replace the 1995-W as the key to the series. A lot of interest. 

I'd rate the chances of this coin replacing the 95-W as the "key date" in the series as essentially nil.  The 95-W has it's price mostly by reputation, not any actual scarcity or the supposedly low mintage.  There are hundreds (at least) available for sale any day of the week, somewhere.

Going by anecdotal comments on coin forums and patterns of collector behavior, the collector base for these additional coins (which I consider to be marketing gimmicks) such as enhanced finishes, reverse proofs, etc. is noticeably lower than it is for the "regular" proofs.  It's "necessary" for a "complete" set if you allow someone else to define your collecting but not otherwise.

With coins like this, at issuance much of the "interest" isn't in real collecting but financial speculation.  I believe there is noticeable speculation with the 95-W as well but given the general popularity of the series and the relatively stable price over time, I assume that most who own it are actual collectors.

On 11/15/2019 at 3:20 PM, FairTradeAct_1935 said:

Yes that is a possibility and the frustration I hope was worth it. If it even touches the realm of the 1995 W IMO it was worth the headache..lol

It almost certainly won't because the number of collectors for the non-standard, extra coins or whatever you want to call it (special finishes, reverse proofs and so forth) isn't as large (probably nowhere near as large).  The 95-W is an outlier and almost certainly going to stay that way.

22 hours ago, RWB said:

It should be noted that numismatic books in English are in the minority. European publications go back centuries in every major language, with German and French dominating.

Maybe but how useful is this material to collectors today given what they buy?

I'd guess that what you describe is a lot more useful to European than US collectors, most of the time.  German references in German I can see because there appears to be noticeable collecting of German coinage by US based collectors.  French coins, only a low minority seem to be in high demand from what I have seen.

I'm aware that both languages cover more than their own coinage but from what I have seen, the more recent references are predominantly written in English by either American or British authors.

The only foreign language references I have seen that might interest me are in Spanish but have bought only one, a pamphlet on the Potosi colonial quarter real issued from 1796-1809.  I haven't tried to translate it yet but bought it as it is the only material I have ever seen for this coinage from any mint.  Cayon has written numerous volumes for Spanish and colonial coinage but I don't collect hardly any of the coins in it.  

Unfortunately, many times there is no book to buy.  Most of the series I have collected either still do not have one or it was issued only years after I started buying it.  Only one series has what I would describe as reasonably accurate rarity estimates.  Two books for this series with one issued in 2017 and the other in 2018.  The earlier one issued in 1999 is "ballpark" accurate but differed noticeably from what I actually saw.

I have mostly had to find out (to a point) through trial and error.

On 10/26/2019 at 3:06 PM, RWB said:

All I'm at liberty to tell you is that one is in Switzerland but owned by an Italian family. Another is in France but the core was originally Russian. A third is supposed to be owned by a Dutch family business, but the source was skimpy on details.

In addition several excellent European collections were stolen by the Nazi SS, but only partially recovered and repatriated.

Any idea of the composition?  I assume most of the holdings are a combination of European, ancient and maybe colonial coinage.

I have on occasion wondered if some of the rarer and best quality (not necessarily measured by TPG grade) coinage is owned by "old money".  Some banks like Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS) used to have coin departments as part of their wealth management divisions.  (It's now Sincona.)  A few other Swiss banks also but never heard of any others.  I doubt they made much (if any) money off of it but offered it as a customer accommodation to their wealthier clients.  

SBC sold at least of the few of the better Spanish colonial collections which interest me most.  One is Sellschopp.  However, I suspect that as with what is available publicly, that there isn't much better material in hiding from colonial Spain.

58 minutes ago, Zebo said:

Roger, what are the European collections that you mentioned? 

I'd like to know too.

For the last five or six years, my core collection has been limited to pillar 1/2 real, one real, two reales and four reales from Bolivia (1767-1770) and Peru (1752-1772).  I'll also buy Guatemala if I can find any decent coins within my budget but these coins literally almost never show up.  It can be defined as three series (one for each mint) or twelve (one for each denomination from each mint.  I don't hardly ever buy anything else.

I could have completed Bolivia if I had prioritized these coins, though proportionately many would be in poor quality.  This mint has 20 for all five denominations (including 8R).  Many of the Peru dates never show up for sale.  I now look on eBay practically every day and on occasion find one but only four (one a relatively common low grade date, one cleaned but decent and another with minor rim damage and VG with no problems) that I bought.  The rest I saw but did not buy were impaired.  This is over two years looking every day.  It's dubious I'll ever acquire all 84+ coins.  For Guatemala, I'd like to upgrade my current type set.

I used to have more series (none US) in my core collection but finally concluded that I will never have the financial resources to complete all of it.  I still have most of what I previously bought.

On occasion, I have also thought about working on one or more cheaper and much easier series so that I can buy more coins regularly.  I don't do it because I know I will regret not spending the money on coins I would rather own.

On ‎9‎/‎28‎/‎2019 at 2:01 PM, Mk123 said:

Eliasberg mostly dealt with US or was he also into World Coins?  For the 21st century it would have to be the Tyrant Collection for world coins.........wow wow wow!

Stacks sold the Eliasberg world gold collection in 2005.  It consisted of about 3600 lots, though I don't recall what was in it.  I have not been able to find anything for world crowns and minors.

I don't know what is in the Tyrant collection except by reputation.  I'd put it above Simpson or Hansen precisely because the latter two collections only include US. 

The other collection many US based collectors would presumably consider a contender is Pogue.  It's one of the best US federal collections ever put together but never heard it included US colonial or territorial gold and can't remember anything about patterns.  To my recollection it's predominantly US circulation coinage (including some proofs) dated up to 1834.  Versus the other consensus elite collections, it's claim to fame is quality measured by increments in the TPG grade and whether the coins in it are eligible for CAC stickers.  There are numerous (though not an absolutely large number of) other collections which owned most of the coins in it, just in (slightly) lower quality.  I don't place anywhere near equivalent emphasis on this type of quality difference as most of the more affluent US collectors do today and in the recent past.

Ultimately, it is dependent upon someone's subjective criteria.  However, I'd never rate a collection as elite if the primary criteria for acquiring it is an outsized checkbook to predominantly buy coins that aren't really that hard to buy except for having the money, and this includes exaggerations by US collecting since TPG grading came to predominate.

How much is the change in the forum format and how much is the stagnant price level?  I ask as to my recollection, the participation had already decreased substantially prior to the format change versus 2006 when I first joined.  I don't post pictures but don't see that the format change should make any difference.  It isn't any harder to type a post than before.

Of those I know, I'd rate Eliasberg first or maybe Norweb, definitely above all the most prominent today except maybe Tyrant.  My criteria gives a lot more weight to the scope and the number of rare and elite coins in the available quality versus using the TPG grade or "eye appeal".  Common is common no matter how nice the coin looks.  I also wouldn't ever rank any collection first which is was overly concentrated in one area.

The Norweb collection was "world class" in many segments which is evident in how they sold it.  B&M sold the US portion while multiple firms (to my recollection) sold the rest.

10 hours ago, LINCOLNMAN said:

I dunno. I think of a hole filler in a more negative sense, as a pejorative. In your example, I would be content with a 58. If I filled the hole with less than an AU I would not be content (nor would I do it). 

I don't consider an AU-58 16-D in a Mercury set a hole filler, not if it's still a nice example. It's ultimately a matter of intent (to replace or not) but I don't consider the quality difference between AU-58 and MS-65 to be so great here where it isn't acceptable, unless someone is now going to tell me that most AU-58 16-D's are usually actually much lower quality which is another issue entirely.  (That would be "gradeflation".)

Conversely, I would consider practically any other date in the series in AU-58 to be one in a MS-65 set because the coins are both not particularly expensive and common or very common.  The other exceptions would be the 21 and 21-D (semi) key dates.  Both of these coins are still quite expensive (to most collectors) in AU-58 and somewhat scarce in this grade.

On 9/7/2019 at 10:29 PM, jgenn said:

I have a few holes left in my Colonial Mexico City 8 reales sets that are very scarce to rare varieties that I would fill with any grade level and would not exclude "details" coins.   It all depends on what series you are trying to complete.

You know this but there are different levels of quality in "details" coins.  If the coin is a nice one (by my definition), I would rather own one with noticeably more detail than a numerically graded one with a lot more wear, especially in my primary series where most of the coins have no color or toning.

Example:  The first of the three 1755 Peru one real (JM variety) I bought is now in an "XF details" holder.  It is a fully struck coin with gold and blue toning with the most noticeable wear on the two globes (on the pillar side) which are flat.  It has hairlines on this side but there is nothing wrong with the coin and it's easily better than the overwhelming majority of the low proportion from the original mintage which survive today. 

I am never going to complete any of my primary sets, so by the US definition hardly any of the coins I buy are "hole fillers" since nothing or hardly anything better is available to be bought.  I have several duplicates which are all among the likely best known.  I keep all because the proceeds won't make any real difference to me.

The OP coin is much better than I have normally seen for a VG of this coin but it's an example of what I would never buy even if I collected the series.  Since most coins are not hard to buy, I would rather save up and buy an example I want to keep, as upgrading usually results in "slippage" which I would rather avoid.

I submitted one medal but don't think it is usually necessary.  I'd never pay a noticeable premium due to the grade either.

Most of my better coins are graded, none of which are US.  It takes me a while to accumulate enough for a submission and only do so every few years, probably including 2020.  I have slightly over a dozen Bolivia and Peru pillars to send in.

7 hours ago, Revenant said:

I think there are still plenty of raw older coins out there that could be graded though because there's many out there that don't want slabbed coins. But, because of that, I doubt many of those raw coins are streaming into NGC or PCGS.

Agree but an inference from my prior post is that most of these coins will never be submitted because there is no point to it.  If by 10G you mean classic eagles, I could see a lot more being prior to sale (especially with higher gold prices) for authentication.

Proportionally, there are potentially (probably in my opinion) more 19th century and earlier US classics outside of the population data than in it going by the survival estimates such as Coin Facts.  My opinion of these estimates varies but the variance with the counts even considering resubmissions is proportionately large.  As one example, Coin Facts claims 35 survivors for the 1802 half dime while the TPG data records 14 (excluding PCGS details coins which I haven't see included) and there are probably some duplicates since NGC records three AU-50.

However, even if most of the remaining US classics economically worth grading are ultimately submitted, the total number probably isn't that meaningful relative to current total volume.

I didn't mention it before but if the TPG are pinning their hopes on much higher meaningful volumes from world coins, it isn't going to happen.  First, most non-US collectors outside of a handful of markets (China and South Africa) don't really like TPG.  But even if they did, for most countries, the coins economically worth grading don't exist in sufficient numbers where the volume will ever be meaningful.  In Europe outside of the highest TPG grade eligible coins, there is also the likely reality that the supply is far too large to be absorbed by any forseeable increase in the collector base.  The coins are "cheap" because most are too common or are lost in a sea of obscurity.

13 hours ago, coinman_23885 said:

I also think it is pretentious.  

It is yet another marketing gimmick.  Much of TPG grading is marketing and has nothing to do with collecting anyway.

I keep on wondering how long it will be before submissions and then revenues don't start declining noticeably.  There is a finite population of coins where it makes sense to have it graded.  For many years, I have assumed that NCLT represents an increasing share of submissions with much of it at bulk discounts.

Both services are trying find additional revenue sources from somewhere and these labels and holders are one way to do it.  From my standpoint, it sure beats raising grading fees which have increased noticeably since I first submitted.  Doing that consistently in the current flat or falling market will discourage submissions.

For my primary series (pillar minors from Bolivia and Peru), I will buy coins that otherwise do not match with those I own since that's all that is available.  This can be a low quality coin without problems or a higher grade one (based upon wear) with minor problems.  I don't buy noticeably damaged coins no matter how rare, such as holed.

I'd never buy fillers for a coin or series which I consider to be common, including those which US collectors consider to be scarce, due to price.  I'd just do without.

The examples in Mark's post are actual rarities and very prominent coins.  "Rarity" as predominantly used in US numismatics for the last several decades?  Not even close.

As for this grading tier, I presume the fee will reduce the incentive to have every or even most condition census coins in it.

5 hours ago, Conder101 said:

Part of the problem is and World Colonial has said, the mint has gone to the trough too many times.  The collector has gotten tired of ponying up his money again and again for "special" coins that are uninspiring, overpriced, and most of which then fall in value in the aftermarket.

I presume part of the reason for the US Mint's recent releases is to offset revenue loss from crashing sales of proof sets.  I know this has occurred in the last few decades but don't recall for others.

I don't know about anyone else, but I consider the coin examples used in the OP as gimmicks.  (The Liberty medal is a medal.)  A reverse proof is a novelty when issued in isolation but not interesting when offered repeatedly.  Same for different finishes such as satin.  A 5oz "coin" isn't a real coin but a bullion round and a mintage of 100,000 isn't remotely "low" especially with an issue price of $224.95.  In 2600 years of coin history prior to NCLT, a handful near this size (or larger) have been issued but at least it was a real coin, like the Spanish 50 reales or 100 escudos.

For commemoratives, it's also mediocre art work and themes mostly of dubious merit issued to satisfy some minor political constituency.  The 50th anniversary Apollo coin (1oz silver and maybe gold $5) is one of the few recent ones (as in the last few decades) which I think will have lasting appeal, though it's still to common to appreciate substantially.

In writing this post, I found the Coin Week article below.  Apparently, the author couldn't find a better reason to buy this coinage either other than future "flipping" opportunities.  Decades from now, most of this coinage is destined to be mostly forgotten, lost in obscurity buried in a sea of endlessly mediocre material.

https://coinweek.com/modern-coins/falling-commemorative-coin-mintages-why-it-happened-and-how-to-profit/

There is no organized collecting in the Congo that I have ever heard or if it exists, it is immaterial.  To my knowledge, the only African country with anything resembling "critical mass" measured by the collector base in Africa is South Africa.  Overwhelmingly, most collecting of African coins (concentrated in colonial and earlier such as this one) occurs mostly elsewhere.

To "read between the lines" in the OP question, the coin may be rare but there is nothing unusual about the scarcity or rarity of die varieties. 

I don't know anything about this coin but it's unlikely to be worth much.  I'd grade the coin as average circulated to somewhat higher measured by wear and the surfaces look ok, but not particularly attractive.  It looks like it has been scratched on the obverse and the reverse cleaned.

I won't be using it. 

I consider the authenticity aspect somewhat useful for coins which have a higher probability of being counterfeit, more US than otherwise.  First I have heard of it and would need to read the guarantee, where I assume there isn't one.