Star City Homer

Hello,

Could you consider type sets for Italy by reign.  Specifically I'm interested in a denomination set (not including gold necessarily--or one with gold and one without) for Vittorio Emanuele III.  As a separate set I'd still like a set for Albania under the Italian Occupation too--also with good old VEIII on them. 

Thanks for considering!

A few posts above I showed a Japanese coin I bought from a European auction house.  This is a European coin (Albania) from a Japanese auction that arrived recently.  

Life is weird in world coin collecting.  It's actually the second 'difficult' Albanian coin I've found in Japan, which makes me wonder about a Japanese collector of Albanian coins.

On 7/24/2017 at 8:31 PM, The Prince & the Pauper said:

I joined NGC 3 days ago just for the fun of starting a Competitive Set in NGC and PCGS coins.  My big mistake was believing the internet that I could put in both NGC and PCGS coins in a set.  I now have to compete against people who have both in their collections.  Do you really think I would PAY to have my coins re-graded to NGC?  You can keep my money for the year, but you will never see another dollar of my money.  This was done for pure greed.  

Would you characterize the PCGS registry the same way?  Just curious as some people get so incensed over both TPGs having aligned rules, yet the ire is disproportionate.

I get what you are saying, but I find it all somewhat odd that people seem so much more angry with NGC for doing this when all they are (almost) doing is exactly the same as PCGS.  

It's like if Company A kills puppies and kittens and Company B only kills puppies but announces they are going to start killing kittens now too.  And now everyone wants to boycott B for doing exactly what A has been doing all along.  

Personally, I have very much enjoyed the customer service and responsiveness from NGC.  The registries are much more in line with what/how I collect which is why I have NGC sets.  

Mostly I have world coins though and my sets date from after the PCGS coins were removed as an option, so I never felt the pain of having the rules changed.  Perhaps I'd be more angry if I'd had a mixed world set and lost half the coins in it.  Don't think I'd run ATS though.  

Keep it as a custom set which is something I think is done very well here.  Also, having seen the new registry format preview, I think it's going to look loads better (after the first couple months of angsty-ness as people adjust to the new software.  I can tell you it will make me take more photos though--really going to love it for my pride of place custom set).

Good question. 

36 minutes ago, bbtoepper said:

New to the Forum and the Registry,

So my understanding and from what I see is that PCGS slabs cannot be included in a Type Set Only NGC or NCS, but they can be included in custom sets. Why is it when I look through the top ranking Type sets I see PCGS slabs?

Because ones that were in place prior to the rule change are allowed to stay, just no new ones to be added.

A recent buy from a European auction house/seller (cracks me up buying Asian stuff from Europe and taking delivery in North America)...alright see if I can link this right...

4 hours ago, RWB said:

  Thanks! Never had a nickname before; although a good nickname is a diminutive of the person's real name, not to be confused with and epithet.

But, yes, you are correct that Walter Breen should not be referred to as "Walt," "Wally," or even "Wall-E....." Maybe we should take a line from Homer and refer to him as " "Walter 'the nymph with lovely braids' Breen?"  (Sorry, Calypso and Circe , that's unfair to goddesses.)

We should not make fun at him -- pity, might be more appropriate -- or maybe forget about him as one would any other perverse, misguided personality who accomplished much good work. Keep the good and discard the rest.

A serious question: Breen's independent biography says he had a graduate degree in sociology from USC Berkeley. Did his work for John Ford, Jr. suppress what Breen should have learned of research integrity?

Perhaps "Walter-the vile pedophile-Breen", and pity is not the word I would choose.  

Funny story (or not), I lived in Berkeley in the mid 80s and at one time in the pre-Internet era looked up his wife in the phone book as I knew she lived around there (or perhaps it was right across the border with Oakland...I can't quite remember).  I was about 20 and house-sitting one Spring break and was literally a mile from the address and being the Sci-Fi nerd that I was I walked by the house.  I used to kick myself for not having the nerve to bring a book and knock on the door for an autograph (yea, I know,  that would be pretty stalker-y but it wasn't really a word then).  But I didn't.  Years later when I found out what was going on there I wondered what would have happened...other than getting yelled at for bothering them in such a rude (and stalker-y) way.  Might I have figured out there was something awful going on?  Of course not, but there has been a tiny part of me that wondered if I missed the opportunity to intervene/call the authorities--and I think part of my gut deep virulent response to all this partly has to do with a not-logical 'maybe I could have done something' feeling.  

Anyway, I ended up passing on the auctions with his books even though that was a gut-response (and an over budget one) as they were not autographed or anything.  I did pick up the other books on 1/2 cents, large cents and 2 cents so perhaps I'll learn something anyway--perhaps enough to see if it's a collecting direction I might want to take.  IIRC it was an internet bidder who picked up one of the other large cent book lots that included a Green book, and the single Breen book lot was passed (starting bid $50, and the auctioneer was not cutting the bids lower than the start).

Oh, and as a Berkeley grad I must point out it's UC Berkeley.  USC is some minor school further south   ( for any USC grads...unless it's a University of South Carolina person who is merely an innocent bystander...and am I the only one who would dearly love to see the two USC schools battle it out in a bowl game???).

4 hours ago, WoodenJefferson said:

As a child, my Mother always told me, "If you have nothing good to say about anyone, then don't say anything."

She was wise in her ways.

Don't think this applies to criminal conduct.  

It's part of what kept letting Breen back into places where he had access to victims...people didn't share information (pre-internet).  Specifically he was banned from some SciFi fandom events but was allowed back as there was concern he was being unfairly maligned (who wants to believe such a paragon is capable of such acts).  Turns out an organizer of subsequent events was not aware of the previous events/arrest and he was back.

2 hours ago, DWLange said:

Walter claimed that Moira, his daughter, was delusional, so it's hard to know who was telling the truth. I knew Walter and met his son, Patrick, on one occasion, but I never encountered Moira. In any case, it was a sad and dysfunctional family, and Walter's legacy will always be overshadowed by his personal life and criminal convictions.

A typical mechanism of a sociopath.  It's not like there was a single accuser with an ulterior motive, delusional or otherwise--but oh many times the sociopath likes to claim the accuser is mentally deficient....  

There was no motive at the time she came forward and his was a pattern of behavior, not some one off thing.  Not that a one off sexual assault on a child is anything to brush off, but here we have a documented pattern of recurrent behavior.  The sociopath is quite skilled at minimizing, deflecting, victim blaming and of course flat out lying in a wonderfully (yuck) believable and charming fashion.  

If you have the stomach for it you can see some of the sworn testimony given by his wife, among other people.  A more foul and disgusting couple is hard to imagine given their assaults on children.  I'm sick whenever I think of how many of his wife's (and her lover's) books I purchased and read when I was younger.

11 hours ago, coinman_23885 said:

After reading an essay written by Breen's daughter recounting the extreme abuse she and other children were subjected to by Breen and his wife, there is little doubt in my mind that he was a sociopath.  Sociopaths are notorious for lying compulsively about pretty much everything even in the absence of a reason and for trivial things. It does not surprise me that he would be flippant or outright make things up for his books like some of his "specimen" coins that have never garnered mainstream acceptance.  I would be hesitant to rely on anything he has written unless it could be independently corroborated by works from more reputable researchers.  If I had encyclopedic knowledge of all of the minutiae of U.S. coins needed to fact check his works, then I wouldn't really need his books at all.

 Exactly.  His personal character informs his professional.

My dilemma remains--do I buy the books (knowing a transfer of a used book conveys no royalties to whatever organization owns the rights...and with his history I would have to know), and utilize them with a boulder of salt, or just pass altogether?  I don't collect many US coins other than my type set, but I would like to study US coins more.  Hard to decide if these are the resources to use.

I finally sent mine in...this is the 'goldine' one (aka brass).  Still working on the copper and silver ones (both of those came back as 67 UC).

(since then I've also had a board-software enforced name change--eyeroll).

22 hours ago, RWB said:

In the minor bits of research I've done, the approach is to summarize existing material as a background, then start from the beginning in locating original sources plus previously unknown sources. This is not so much of a problem as it might seem since Breen, Taxay and others rarely present any useful sources, and quotations are commonly incomplete or sometimes contain transcription mistakes. Once the sources have told their story, I can go back and see what prior authors have written.

From my research perspective four categories of "issues" occur in Wally Breen's publications: 1) in-fill and extrapolation errors; 2) incomplete data when referenced sources contain much more material; 3) falsehoods and baseless assumptions; and 4) ignorance of Mint, Treasury and economic operations and technology.

The result is that for me, everything Breen wrote has to be "fact checked," much like the present cabal in Washington. Much of Breen's work is exemplary, but "you must know enough to know what to be skeptical of before you can know what he knew." Ya' know what I mean....?

 

Considering his absolutely reprehensible actions--repeatedly and over the course of decades-- I find it not surprising his research contained, for lack of a better phrase, shortcuts.  

One can be told to 'separate the art/book from the artist/writer'...a phrase not surprisingly now used about Breen's wife.  Yes, her writing had much positive impact on people when read in a vacuum.  However, going back with the knowledge of her own proclivities and actions (as admitted under oath even), one can find it reflected in her fiction.  I re-read a few things and it turned my stomach knowing how it related to her actions...not so much fiction as wish-fulfilment-voyeurism (vomit).

As for Breen, it wasn't a 'lifestyle' but an exhibition of a persistent and complete absence of anything but pandering to his own twisted desires at the expense of the most vulnerable.  I suspect that a person with such a lack of a moral compass would not be bothered if he had to 'fill in the blanks'.  Being an expert/guru would bolster a self-important self image...facts/lack of facts being irrelevant if they stood in his way.  Adding incorrect information might even have been a thrill...if he was even conscious of doing so.

Funny this topic is front and center now.  There is a lot of numismatic literature I was thinking of purchasing, and some of Breen's work is included.  On the one hand there is some valuable information, on the other hand the deficits in careful research combined with the disgusting human being he was has not made me enthusiastic to purchase the books.  I might...I'd certainly never buy them new without understanding where any royalties might go (I have no idea about his, his wife's go to a 'trust' that supports an individual complicit in their behavior...).

I don't collect Canadian but from what I've read other people saying, ICCS is very well respected. Some differences in terms of what %red will get you a red vs. red-brown type of thing, but for the non-copper types that's not an issue.

Thanks Ali. I sent an email. I don't have examples of all those coins , but I included what I could pull of the collection manager (and one # from an ebay coin...not mine).

Here is a picture a forum-ite sent to me for posting--the gold and aluminum ones are the less common types. If I remember correctly he bought it for some small multiple of bullion. I'd like to get bullion like this!

Hello Ali,

I was wondering if a few sets could be added.

Basically sets from countries representing the French Union nations (France, 4th Republic) that aren't present in some form yet. There are several already listed or incorporated in type sets already (Cambodia, French Indo-China, French Oceania, Laos, Morocco, Viet Nam), but I'd love to see the following:

Cameroon (1948-1958)

French Equatorial Africa (1948)

French Somaliland (1948-1952)

French West Africa

Madagascar (1948-1958)

New Caledonia (1949-1952)

Reunion (1948-1955)

Saint Pierre and Miquelon (1948)

Togo (1948-1957)

Most (if not all, I'd have to double check) come in circulation types, Cu-Ni essai and aluminum piedfort essai versions.

If I can only ask for one, I'd like the Saint Pierre set , but really I think they are all pretty cool. Doable sets that don't cost a fortune.

Thanks for considering!

edited to add:

Also, how about a set for Albania under Italian occupation (WWII)? Thanks .

Hi Ali,

Could you please have the slots added for the 2016 silver Britannias (2 pounds has proof and reverse proof versions, plus the whole denomination set).

Also, for the Japan 1000 silver proof yen--the rest of the 2015 earthquake recovery series (young boy and cherry blossom) plus the remaining prefecture series (2015 Chiba and Nagasaki and 2016 Fukushima and Tokyo).

Proof bullion and colorized commems...oh well, we all have our weaknesses

I agree --- these are not problem items. That's what I thought my comment made clear.

Ah, I see. I read that as the third sentence referring to both the previous sentences. And, that you were equating a fantasy piece to a counterfeit. You meant to draw a distinction not show a similarity.

My apologies for being so snippy...I was getting irritable from earlier comments and did not read that correctly in my haste.

Fantasy pieces are just what they are. Unmarked replicas of real coins are illegal. Their manufacture and/or sale is unethical in my opinion.

An unmarked replica of a real coin is a counterfeit, not a 'fantasy piece'.

The set in the OP is mine. The set is clearly an art piece that is reflective of historical designs. Odd as it is that it would be submitted as a 'coin' (given that the items were never used as a means of payment), that is an issue with the organizations that classify them. There is no previous coin to be replicated that has those designs. It is 'fantasy' only in that it is a concept model of what might have been.

The medal posted later is clearly described as an 'after' piece on the medal itself and in no way could be mistaken for the original Wyon medal. No deception.

Why the hate on what other people like? Would you like to disparage Art Deco vs. Art Nouveau style medals? Would you like to explain to me why one is better than the other just because that is your preference? Is it 'wrong' that to collect Japanese coins and not Chinese coins? German States instead of British?

 

Interesting that you of all people think these are cool, or like them or whatever. Where are all the haters talking about how these coins are counterfeits and that whoever made them is this or that and should be in prison and all that nonsense?

 

Are these OK because they are foreign?

Why are these not controversial but DCARR fantasy pieces are? They are essentially the same thing, some poor helpless collector could definately be "taken" by one of these pieces 100 years from now could they not?

 

Im fascinated by the fact that these pieces would be totally acceptable but DCARR's wouldn't. Why is that?

I understand the ‘interesting’ comment was not directed at me, but I certainly am included in it as I find the items in this thread ‘cool and like them or whatever’. I even have a DCarr UnaAmero given the equine/mythological design (winged horse version). Because it was ‘cool’.

I collect medals and have always loved the Wyon design for St. George (and wished his had been chosen as the reverse for the sovereigns, but Pistrucci won that contest).

I will never buy the George III pattern and I find it equally unlikely I will ever own an original Wyon medal given the deep pockets of the current collector bases involved. However, I now have two items (the INA retro and the 'after Wyon' medal) that allow me to have something reflective of the original but that are clearly not THE original.

As for being deceptive, counterfeit-like, or controversial, how is that?

The medal is clearly engraved as ‘after Wyon’ and the engraver’s name is included.

The ‘retro collections’ of the OP do not resemble struck coins (circulation, pattern, proof or otherwise). Period. Well, they are round and one of them is silver, so there is that. However a simple look in the standard references makes it pretty clear what their status is…including the fact they carry the X# that I was looking for in the OP.

The 'retro collection' items revive historical themes for coin designs that were either considered, or were similar to others being considered. In fact, they make some pretty amazing designs available for people of more modest budgets.

Not sure why you feel it is important to denigrate someone's choice of collecting material. Your off the cuff use of the word ‘foreign’ and the phrase ‘think these are cool, or like them or whatever' is insulting. It’s a passive aggressive way of reducing the validity of the material preferred by others. If someone’s taste differs does not automatically make it wrong or less worthy. Normal people don’t tear down the preferences of other normal people.

You strongly misinterpret my post. I have absolutely zero interest in the modern fantasy restrike counterfeits.

 

I was saying the *original* George III crown pattern was cool stuff.

 

The restrikes are on exactly the same level as the Dcarr *spoon*.

edited to add, I should have read more before my initial response. The above comments cover this too. Just because you don't care for the same material as others doesn't mean you need to be insulting. No reason not to have an 'after' medal or a modern 'fantasy' piece that is neither a restrike nor a counterfeit.

It would be a boring world if everyone had exactly the same taste, goals and aspirations. Not that the administrator mentality doesn't try to shoehorn people into cookie-cutter solutions. People aren't cookies. People like and want different things. Not cool to call another person's taste *spoon*.

Is that Prince Albert medal yours? I would give my firstborn for one (especially the gold version...but I do warn everyone the firstborn is starting college this fall and will be very expensive to maintain for the next 4 years).

Other than these fantasy pieces the closest I've gotten is this silver one (and a similar one in copper that I don't have a photo of handy). This version is by James Restall "after Wyon".

(I think I'm talking to you on two threads...) Thanks for the other pictures. I called NGC just now, and the rep was able to look up the cert # on the coin you posted and these are slabbed as coins. I would have guessed medals.

Not sure if I'm slabbing these, but it sure is nice to have a reference to look at. The price guide link shows there are aluminum and gold versions. THAT would be nice to find...

Cathy

You are too fast . Thanks for the info, I knew I'd seen something about them before and my library is lacking that book. I thought I had the book too, but apparently not (or I've misplaced it).

Cathy

Digging through my drawers I found this set...IIRC a bunch of these were made in 1999 and were sold in a 2001 Spinks auction and the sets go by 'Spinks Patina or Retro'. It was a bunch of fantasy styles including this set.

Also, I'm sure I've seen a few in NGC slabs (different version but same series) ages ago and I THINK these are in the Krause unusual coins catalog (or whatever it's called). If anyone has that catalog I'd really appreciate it if someone could take a peek and let me know if they're there (and what number they are).

Quickie photos:

I'm asking on multiple sites, so please forgive the repetitive nature of the question.

Hello Ali,

Could I request a couple minor sets? France 5 francs 1960-1969, silver Sower design and maybe a type set for Greece (Greece Republic, coins dated 1973- and 10 lepta through 50 drachmes or so).

Thanks!