"Where Have All the Seated's Gone..long time passing..."Peter Paul, Mary?

[RI AL]

It's a line from an old song...must be from the 60's.

 

Anyway, When I got my 1844 Seated half back from PCGS about 4 months ago...it was BB'd. It's a strong XF or better, nice toned surfaces...but cleaned. (I guess that guy who learned that frying cleaned silver coins in a pan got his mitts on this one). So anyway, I have been hunting sort of half heartedly for a certified replacement from the 1840-1852 series. XF/AU is the goal and some of the dates are very affordable. But where the heck are the coins? I have found a few dogs, some certified pieces but ugly, but the nice stuff is MIA. I am wondering if these are really much scarcer than the price guides seem to indicate?? I'll probably wind up having PCGS "Genuine" mine and just be happy with her. Any thoughts?

 

 

[physics-fan3.14]

The 1871 that JJ Teaparty has looks nice. I was going to buy the 1858-O they had a couple weeks ago, but someone beat me to it.

[coinman1794]

It's a line from an old song...must be from the 60's.

 

Anyway, When I got my 1844 Seated half back from PCGS about 4 months ago...it was BB'd. It's a strong XF or better, nice toned surfaces...but cleaned. (I guess that guy who learned that frying cleaned silver coins in a pan got his mitts on this one). So anyway, I have been hunting sort of half heartedly for a certified replacement from the 1840-1852 series. XF/AU is the goal and some of the dates are very affordable. But where the heck are the coins? I have found a few dogs, some certified pieces but ugly, but the nice stuff is MIA. I am wondering if these are really much scarcer than the price guides seem to indicate?? I'll probably wind up having PCGS "Genuine" mine and just be happy with her. Any thoughts?

 

 

Larger Seated Liberty coins are hard to find nice, they are quite underrated.

[RI AL]

Physics...thatks for checking for me...already have the type that includes 1871. I DO have an 1858O that is currently being chewed out of its SEGS slab by PCGS. It will be interesting to see how it comes back. SEGS had it as XF 45. I hope it doesn't come back as "genuine".

 

Coinman...yes, the half dollars in the 1840's era are hard to find. I'm really surprised that listed prices for decent common date circs aren't a lot higher. (Maybe I should shut up until I find one that I would like to add to my collection!!)

[World Colonial]

I do not collect these (or any other US coins) but have wondered about the relative differences between the certified populations of this series and the CBH. The latter census populations are frequently much larger than even the difference in the mintages.

 

There are many other series which also have relatively small census numbers but I do not think of them as scarce. (Some such as Classic Head Large cents are or appear to be an exception but not most of the others.) I have attributed this to the relative popularity because coins that are less popular tend frequently to have lower submisison volumes. The 1853 A&R (a coin I have always liked but never owned) is a potential example to support this opinion and the other Arrows coins seem to also, though the numbers are somewhat less. (Its possible this coin may have been saved in larger volume because it was a novelty, but this was still before the time when there were many US coin collectors.) Is this correct or not?

[physics-fan3.14]

I think there are more certified busties than seated liberties because the series is far more popular. And by far more popular, I mean there is pretty much no comparison. At least, that's how it seems to me.

[DaveG]

Large quantities of the pre-1853 Seated coins disappeared from circulation and got melted when the price of silver (relative to gold) spiked up after the California gold discoveries - which is the whole reason they reduced the size of the fractional (smaller than a dollar) silver coins in 1853.

 

Also, collecting Seated coins by variety seems to have gotten popular in the past several years, so collectors are acquiring more coins than they would have in the past.

 

Judging from what I've seen at coin shows over the past decade or so, I'd say that pre-1853 Seated coins are a lot rarer than the price guides suggest.

[Bugmann1974]

I also have recently started to notice how much harder the pre-1853 seated Liberty coins are to find in nice grades. I have been trying to find nice affordable ones to fill the spots in my 7070.

[prudden]

I get a newsletter from a loooong time coin dealer. Starting two or three years ago he started to mention how he's having trouble keeping seated anything in stock. Especially early Seated,better grade coins. Since then he it's been mentioned every few months or so. Lately though it's gold.

[World Colonial]

Yes, I am aware of the increase in the price of silver leading up the change in the coins weight and the issuance of the 1853 A&R. But any melting must have also impacted the CBH and not just seated coinage because the lettered edge coins have slightly more silver than the later dates. Now I know that there were more CBH minted at least from the 1830's, but the difference in popularity seems to explain it more than the mintage figures.

 

Some of the most common CBH dates have an NGC certified population of over 1000 (including the Overton varieties) and many more must have that number with the PCGS census that I do not have access to. And of these, some of the dates like the 1831 have have a mint state total of over 300 just with NGC which even allowing for duplicates, is a rather large number by my standards.

 

Another date which has a large population is the 1795 with an NGC census of over 600. It includes about 35 in mint state and about an equal number in AU-58. Assuming for the sake of argument that the PCGS census has about an equal number and that every high grade coin was submitted twice, that still leaves this issue with both more graded coins and especially high grade coins than practically every seated half.

 

Is it possible that the early seated dates are scarcer than this coin? Maybe, anything is possible but I doubt it for most of them and it is even less likely for the later dates. The best explanation is that the combination of popularity and the correspondingly higher prices make it more beneficial to submit these coins for grading and increases availability in the market. That is certainly true for some of the coins I collect when it comes to market pricing.

 

But I will add one final point to my post as a counterargument. My step grandmother had a large collection of most everything you could imagine of classic US coinage from 1794 to about 1950. (Unfortunately, I did not inherit any of them. She came from "old money" and I believe her family saved them out of pocket change for the most part though it is possible there was a collector who also bought some.) I only saw it once (in 1975) but I remember that it included about 200 CBH in grades up to XF. I do not recall any seated halves or quarters though she did have dimes and half dimes.

[michael]

Larger Seated Liberty coins are hard to find nice, they are quite underrated.

 

most all original nicely skinned circulated even unc.; above average eye appealling; seated coin is a scarce' underrated coin

and have been hard to find for many years

 

where have all the seated coins gone?

long time passing

where have all the seated coins have gone

a long long time away

why are they so hard to find original

why oh why oh why

please collectors release them for new collectors to enjoy

and fair prices

oh my

my my my my my my my my my my my

 

repeat the above and add a beat with a guitar

 

 

[okbustchaser]

START OF UNSOLICITATED COMMERCIAL

As for finding them try one of the dealers who specializes in seated material such as Dic k Osburn. Admittedly, he doesn't take pics of his coins and many are raw but if you ask him he will do an excellent job helping you pick out the perfect slabbable type coin.

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Simply so that there is at least one coin in this thread...lousy scans of a great coin from the above dealer.

 

 

Edit:

It is truly silly when one cannot type out a person's name without the censor kicking in.

[BillJones]

As many of you well know, I am a type collector. Over the years I’ve been upgrading my set to certified Mint State and Proof coins where it has been economically feasible for me to do so. A couple of years ago I got down to upgrading ALL of the Liberty Seated type coins, and I can tell you that there are a lot of them. There is No Stars, Stars obverse, Legend obverse, No Drapery, No Motto, with Motto, Arrows and Rays, and Arrows only from 1854-5 and 1873-4. All of these coins come in various denominations from half dime to silver dollar.

 

I finally got down to one Liberty Seated type coin, and that coin oddly enough was No Motto, With Drapery half dollar. I was looking for this in MS-63 or 64, and I had hard time finding it even though I was quite willing to buy one from the 1856 to 1865 era. My first impression was that this was one of the more common type coins, but I found out differently. A number of the pieces that I found, even in slabs, were over graded or had some problem that bugged me. A couple of pieces I saw slabbed had artificial toning.

 

Finally at the last Baltimore show, I spotted two coins in PCGS MS-64. The first one was at best only okay because it had a reed mark in the field that I did not like. To top it off, the dealer wanted $2,350.00, which was $600 over Gray Sheet bid. That seemed like a lot for what I viewed as a marginal coin.

 

Then I found a really nice one in a PCGS MS-64 holder. It was very PQ for the grade and had wonderful and colorful original toning. The price was $200 more, but given the step up in quality and the fact that I would really enjoy owning the piece, I went for it. Here it is, and it took a long time to find it.

 

 

I’ve found that the With Arrows half dollars from the 1850s are easier to find than the Not Motto type. You would not think that this would be true given that the mintages cover so many more years, but that’s been my experience.

 

Finally I think that the Bust half dollars are easier to find because so many of them were stored in bank vaults as backing for the banks’ paper money. Despite the changes in silver content, many of these pieces remained in storage because the bankers did not bother to go through them and make changes. And you must remember that the change in weigh did not make much of a difference in the melt value since the price of silver was depressed for a lot of the 19th century.

 

 

[RI AL]

Great information, guys. I guess I'll just have to do with my 1844 half, raw right now but BB'd as cleaned. She will be going in for a coffin, and "genuine' will have to do. Maybe I'll work on gathering up my "problem coins" and gee ready for their submission to PCGS. Still saving my 5 NGC certificate for some better foreign.

 

So it's not just me having trouble finding a decent XF AU pre 1853 half, huh?

 

GORGEOUS pictures, by the way!!

 

Thanks for the education..as usual! RI AL

[Conder101]

Bill is right about the bust halves and the banks. In fact during the bank holiday in 1933 some banks were found to STILL be holding bags of these coins as part of their cash reserves almost a hundred years after they were discontinued..