Prominent auction sales and scarcity

[World Colonial]

Recently, I acquired a copy of the 1996 Bonham's catalogue of the Alexander Patterson collection which contains the largest selection of pillar coins I have ever seen.

 

Other auction sales which I consider significant for my series include:

 

The June 2 Heritage Pre-Long Beach sale which included the Whittier collection of South American coins. The recent Lissner collection sold by CNG had higher quality examples but was a lot smaller for the coins I collect. Whittier was not as high quality but still very good and is by far the largest of Bolivia Republic decimals I have ever seen. I bought nine coins at this auction, including five pillars and four from Bolivia.

 

The November 2006 Spink's Remick sale of South Africa Union coinage. It is the sale which put these coins "on the map" by proving price discovery.

 

The on-going Calico sales of the Isabela Trestemarca collection. I have bought three pillars so far and possibly will buy some more in the next one which I presume will include my avatar coin.

 

The reason why I consider these sales useful is because it is one of the primary sources which helps me to determine how scarce many of these coins actually are. For the most part, these sales have confirmed my existing opinions which I have written about in my prior posts.

 

I don't believe this applies as much to US coins (since this information is more widely known), but it might for specialized collecting such as die varieties where the coins don't sell for much (yet).

 

Anyone else?

[physics-fan3.14]

Major sales are always a great way to judge the value of scarce coins - for many of them, that's the only time they appear. Just a comment - was the Whittier sale broken up into several parts? I just bought a Whittier coin from Guatemala at Heritage in January ( a lovely prooflike half-real).

 

For the type of coins I collect, there may be an appearance at auction every couple of years, if that. An auction appearance is really the only possible way to establish value for these coins. Some of the common ones (such as the PL 1904 Lib $20) appears several times a year, but even the high grade examples of things like this are rare.

[RWB]

One difficulty is eliminating duplicates. Easier than with TPG populations, but sometimes impossible with coins other than major rarities. (He was in the Spanish-American War -- fought next to Teddy Roosevelt.)

[World Colonial]

Major sales are always a great way to judge the value of scarce coins - for many of them, that's the only time they appear. Just a comment - was the Whittier sale broken up into several parts? I just bought a Whittier coin from Guatemala at Heritage in January ( a lovely prooflike half-real).

 

The Whittier sale wasn't large enough for Heritage to sell it in multiple installments. I wouldn't consider it valuable enough either by US standards at maybe $2MM.

 

I agree with you on the pricing but this isn't what I find most useful. It is obtaining an idea of whether any particular coin is available at all and the quality distribution.

 

Recent and upcoming landmark sales of US coins such as Newman, Gardner and Pogue don't fit this description to me. Yes, they are better than the ones I listed but there are enough people who know what is in them, so it really isn't new information. The reason for this is because most of them aren't actually that scarce, just among the best quality and those that are actual rarities are well known because of the price.

 

To give an example from the Lissner sale, I bought an 1865 NGC AU-55 1/5 Boliviano. Whittier had an ungraded average circulated coin and I have never seen another anywhere near as good as this one. There are any number of other coins in my series where the same is true. I have seen these coins either once in "high quality" or maybe a few but that is all. Many never at all.

 

That a coin is excluded doesn't automatically mean it is rare, but when combined with other data points provides a much higher likelihood that it is. As another example, I recently wrote a series of posts on the pillar coinage. The 1760's Peru (LM) issues, few are listed in the census and I haven't seen them anywhere else except in isolation, even in average circulated grades.

 

The Patterson collection which had thousands of predominantly low grade pillars, didn't have more than a few and only one that is currently not in the census from the descriptions, a 1762 2R. This is further confirmation to me that these coins are at least close to the scarcity I believe them to be, though I admit that the current low price level creates a margin of error.

[World Colonial]

One difficulty is eliminating duplicates. Easier than with TPG populations, but sometimes impossible with coins other than major rarities. (He was in the Spanish-American War -- fought next to Teddy Roosevelt.)

 

Agreed. I suspect that some of the coins in the Patterson collection are now in the census and possibly in other lots I have seen for sale. An example would be the Rudman registry set of Mexico pillars A few of the Guatemala coins were recently sold by Heritage.

[Forest City]

Sorry to dig up an old post. But I was just reading this and wanted to say that even after years of studying Peru coins, I am still shocked at how low prices were in the Whittier sale.  For most Peru coins in the sale, perhaps 75 percent of them, the average price today has doubled or more.  Some of the lots of raw coins did exceptionally poorly.  I finally got my hand on the physical catalog for Whittier and I was surprised that every Whittier Peru coin I own is photographed, so that wasn't the problem. But regardless of prices, it was a landmark sale.  

 

On the other hand, prices were very strong for 1826-1856 Peru in the Lissner sale.  Less so for the 1858-presentm but still better than Whittier.

[World Colonial]

On ‎9‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 0:35 AM, Forest City said:

Sorry to dig up an old post. But I was just reading this and wanted to say that even after years of studying Peru coins, I am still shocked at how low prices were in the Whittier sale.  For most Peru coins in the sale, perhaps 75 percent of them, the average price today has doubled or more.  Some of the lots of raw coins did exceptionally poorly.  I finally got my hand on the physical catalog for Whittier and I was surprised that every Whittier Peru coin I own is photographed, so that wasn't the problem. But regardless of prices, it was a landmark sale.  

 

On the other hand, prices were very strong for 1826-1856 Peru in the Lissner sale.  Less so for the 1858-presentm but still better than Whittier.

The Lissner coins were usually better quality than Whittier's.  I know because I bought some coins from both and Whittier was the first floor auction I followed closely.

As for the prices, in general, I don't think that either Peru or world coinage are that low.  It is the US price level which is vastly inflated and an outlier.  The primary reason I see world and ancient coinage increasing in price is for two reasons.

First, US collectors have a disproportionate influence on the price in most (and maybe all) other markets.  The supply is lower or much lower (especially in better quality) and US collectors buy them both due to interest but also from being priced out of the better US  coins.

Second, the financial buying (aka, "investment") so prevalent in US collecting is spreading to other markets, even though it is only a few now.  This has also inflated the price level.  This applies to at least China and South Africa.  China has speculation in practically everything and there are an outsized proportion of financial buyers in South Africa.  It also appears to be somewhat true in Australia, the UK and maybe Canada.

[Forest City]

I think prices for Peru coins remain fairly low (in my view) because not many are putting together high end sets due to the either 1. Difficulty or 2. Impossibility depending on the series. (And prices for Peru at the Whittier sale were absolutely rock bottom for many high quality coins).  Even though 2006 seems recent, it was just the beginning of world coins being slabbed.  It seems the slab market started picking up steam around 2010 . 

And even by type, prices sometimes remain low.  I paid 320 for my 1886 Cuzco Dinero in MS 62, a one year branch mint type coin.  This is better than either the Whittier or Lissner coins, which were not mint state.  It's tied for top with one other coin.  It's needed for type sets.  320 seems pretty low.  Given, there may be more out there in Unc, there probably are.  But I've never seen another raw Unc or even close.  They are tucked away in Peru if they are out there.

If there were only two known Unc examples of a US Carson City dime, it would bring 50-100k.  Of course, I agree with you that the US prices are highly inflated.  And I think that Peru and L.A. coins have a lot of room to move.  Yet, doesn't help that most collectors in their home countries don't care much about a holder or grade and will settle for a nice AU.

[World Colonial]

I have written on this subject in other contexts but it doesn't interest most collectors.

I doubt the coins you reference are nearly as scarce as you seem to believe.  Not saying it isn't scarce at all but the likely supply is probably a noticeable multiple of what you see.  This is invariably true of most coins.

From Peru, I only collect the pillar minors.  There are about 80 in the combined population reports graded AU or better for all 80 date/MM combinations but most have either one or zero listed.  I own about one-third of this supply and even higher when the most common dates are excluded.

These coins aren't that expensive either though somewhat more I believe than the series you describe and to my knowledge, preferred by a substantial margin being behind only better cobs and contemporary gold.  As an example, I recently paid $695 for the 1759 PCGS MS-62 Real, there is also now an NGC MS-61 and I also own the NGC AU details.  The Patterson collection also owned one though I suspect it is the PCGS MS-62.  Then there is the Norweb collection which I understand was donated to the ANS whose holdings are mostly complete though I have no idea of the quality as it isn't described.  Aside from these, I suspect there are a few others but it cannot be many.

The supply for these coins has increased noticeably in the population reports partly due to somewhat higher prices but only proportionately.  However, I am waiting to see Brad Yonaka's book which I understand is a follow-up to the one he wrote for Mexico.  He collects the series like I do and if this forthcoming book is similar to the Mexico edition, he will include data from a rather extensive sample of known specimens.  For Mexico minors, it was about 5000.

We exchanged correspondence from which I understand he is in agreement with me on the scarcity of this series.  I'd say completing any of the denominations in "high quality" is effectively if not actually impossible.  Completing it in decent circulated grades even for the more common 1/2R and 1R is probably possible, but it isn't likely hardly anyone is going to do because it is so difficult.  I have been collecting it since 2002 and diligently since 2006 and can't find hardly any of the post 1760 dates at all.

To really get a good idea of the scarcity for your series, you'll need someone to perform a similar study, as I doubt you will see many of the coins show up in  slabs.  Most collectors outside the US don't like it.

Lastly, while I don't know much about collecting in Peru, I haven't seen any indication that there is that much of it.  It's certainly a lot more established than Bolivia which I both visit and collect but my suspicion is that most of the good coins are elsewhere, probably in the US and Europe.