Fun new pick-up...

[Revenant]

While I'm continuing to mull over the fate of the 1875...

 

In the midst of trying to decide what I want to do with the PCGS-graded 1875 Netherlands 10 Guilden, I found an 1887 for sale on eBay. It's only an MS64 where I mostly like to stick with MS65 or higher but this coin doesn't come up for sale very often in any grade. Only about 40,000 were minted originally and only about 50 have been graded by NGC, and this one was graded by NGC so it works for the registry set. The icing on the cake was that the seller had it listed for $370 -- not a terrible price for a coin that's 130 years old, rare and that has a melt value around $250 at current prices.

 

Not to be wasteful though I contacted the seller through their website and arranged to buy the coin off eBay and get it for $350.

I was really thrilled to get this coin. It has the second lowest mintage of any coin in the series. The lowest is the 1888 with a mintage of about 35,585 -- but none of the coins from the 1880s are easy to come by and the most common of them have mintages in the range of 50,000. It's an odd set to collect in that respect. The 1875 had a mintage of over 4,000,000. The 1876, 1877, and 1879 have mintages of about 1.5 million, 1 million, and 0.5 million. The 1889 is rare relative to those but still pretty common relative to the rest of the 1880s -- it has a mintage of about 200,000.

 

If you look at the registry sets for that category they're all made up of sets with coins from the 1870s and the 1889. You don't see any sets with the 1880, 1885, 1886, 1887, or 1888. The rarer years just don't show up for the most part. So getting this 1887 feels like a big win.

 

I'd really love to get an 1877 to at least have all of the common dates but I'd rather have this 1887 MS64 than an 1877 MS66 (1108149 minted vs 40,754).

 

I'm also loving the fact that it's another coin in the set (3 so far) that are in old fatty holders with 9 digit serial numbers. That seems to be becoming a trend.

 

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[coinsbygary]

I remember when you bought the first coin in this set for fun years ago. I think it was a graduation present to yourself. I'm glad to see that you still refer to this set as fun!

Gary

[RWB]

Nice, but I;d still take the Tesla over a pick-up any day.

[Revenant]

Nice, but I;d still take the Tesla over a pick-up any day.

 

Clearly you've never lived in Texas.

[Revenant]

I remember when you bought the first coin in this set for fun years ago. I think it was a graduation present to yourself. I'm glad to see that you still refer to this set as fun!

Gary

 

Hmmm... Why wouldn't it still be fun?

 

It honestly can't even remember myself anymore why I got started with it but it's a fun albeit strange set. Only 11 coins and split almost down the middle between coins that are pretty common and coins that you can't find to save your life half the time it seems.

 

I thought it was cool/fun to find a set of 100+ year old gold coins that could be had for reasonably close to melt in good grades involving a line of monarchs almost as obsessed with the name William as my family (with William Clifford, William Clifford Jr, William Charles, William Alexander, William Trent and, now, William Benjamin).

 

One of these days I'll get around to massively updating the comments and descriptions, but for now at least I've gotten new pictures up so the set doesn't just have off-color shots of 1 coin.

 

[Zebo]

I saw a 1840 10 G for sale, at first glance I thought it was an 1880 and I might have something for you. Oh well.

[Revenant]

I saw a 1840 10 G for sale, at first glance I thought it was an 1880 and I might have something for you. Oh well.

 

Yeah. I feel yeah. I get faked out by Wilhelmia coins for a second sometimes too. I've seen Wilhelm I coins on eBay dating back to 1824, if you're willing to pay for them - they command much higher premiums than the Wilhelm IIIs.

[RWB]

How about King William II (Rufus) of England?

[Revenant]

How about King William II (Rufus) of England?

 

Hmmm... maybe we'll go there next.