Early and Bust half dollars stand out among the array of rarities available in Heritage Galleries & Auctioneers? Feb. 9-11 Long Beach Coin Expo auction. ?The Long Beach auction,? said Heritage President Greg Rohan, ?is especially strong in Early and Bust half dollars, including a very desirable 1797 Draped Bust Small Eagle ,O-101a, half dollar, certified Fine 15 Professional Coin Grading Service.?That coin, one of only 3,918 minted, is expected to be a featured item in this, Heritage?s 56th Official Auction of the Long Beach Coin Expo.

Police have arrested a man for stealing a 4-pound gold bar from NBA agent Dwight Manley after the missing treasure turned up at a coin dealership last week. The bar, made in the mid-1850s in Sacramento, is valued at about $500,000 and was allegedly stolen by a subcontractor working on Manley's Irvine home. It was among three tons of gold and minted coins recovered from the SS Central America, which sank off the North Carolina coast during a hurricane in 1857. Investigators found the bar last week at a Rancho Santa Margarita coin dealership.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said the price of gold could surge to $800 (U.S.) an ounce in the next two years, as central banks curb their selling of the metal. The forecast came as gold shot to a 25-year high Tuesday, with investors piling into the precious metal as a refuge from escalating concerns over Iran's nuclear program. The JPMorgan analysts said gold will rise to $600 an ounce by the end of 2006.

Despite strong misgivings about his treatment of Virginia Indians, a federal review panel has supported placing explorer John Smith alongside an Indian chief on commemorative coins to mark the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. In a discussion that was marked by pointed comments about Smith's dealings with Native people, members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee selected four designs to recommend to Treasury Secretary John Snow for the two commemorative coins that will be issued in early 2007

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Late at night, in a basement laboratory at Stanford University, Brian Knutson made a startling discovery: Our brains lust after money, just like they crave sex. It was May 2004, and Knutson, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the California university, was sending student volunteers through a high-power imaging machine called an fMRI. Deep inside each subject's head, electrical currents danced through a bundle of neurons about the size and shape of a peanut. Blood was rushing to the brain's pleasure center as students executed mock stock and bond trades.

Could the Euro be any more boring? Four years on, a unified currency has made life convenient, but pictures of imaginary bridges and aqueducts instead of something tangible are unremittingly soporific. The bad old days of changing money all the time may have been annoying, but at least they weren't ugly. In celebration of what used to be, here's an essay on the design of the old Dutch currency, long thought to be Europe's most colorful before the introduction of the Euro.

Vadodara, February 2: Following rumours doing rounds about the discovery of 20 kilos of gold coins at the dilapidated Saat Mata temple in Diya Pattan village of Lunavada taluka in Panchmahals district, the district police have initiated a probe into the claim. On Wednesday, two residents of the village, Ratna Machi and Pona Machi, filed an affidavit in a Godhra court claiming that they had seen the gold coins.

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold's 37 percent rise in six months to 25-year highs, far from a price-bubble ready to pop, will continue upwards on renewed fund enthusiasm, analysts said. The bull market may attract even more new money in the coming years, with potential for bigger price spikes, they said. "Like a gorilla with a gun, gold can go anywhere it wants," said Peter Hillyard, head of metals sales, ANZ Investment Bank."With the quest for yield, the need for portfolio diversification and the huge appetite funds have for risk, all commodities are certain to rock for a lot longer. It's not a bubble about to burst."

The story behind the 1933 $20 double sounds too fantastic to be true. It involves deceit, international intrigue, obsession and greed. And Alison Frankel tells it all in Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World?s Most Valuable Coin. Also considered the world?s rarest coin, the 1933 $20 was stolen from the Mint before it was to be melted down, he says. It passed from the hands of con men to obsessive collectors to King Farouk of Egypt, before it was sold legally at auction for the highest price ever paid for a coin.

A serial No. 1 1880 Kingdom of Hawaii $10 Certificate of Deposit highlights a small number of Hawaii paper money items in Doyle New York?s March 23 auction. The note, Standard Catalog of World Paper Money No. P-1a, is one of only three issued, uncancelled examples known to exist, Doyle catalogers wrote, the other two being in the collection of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii and a private collection in Europe. The note has been graded Extremly Fine-40 by Paper Money Guaranty. Presale estimate is $40,000-$60,000.

he baptism of Christ - as depicted in the sculpture by Giuseppe Mazzuioli at St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta - has emerged as the favourite image among the Maltese to be put on Malta's euro coins after it polled the highest number of votes, a decision that is bound to fuel debate.Almost 17,000 votes were cast in a nationwide text message and phone poll, Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Tonio Fenech told a news conference, as Malta prepares to change its currency. The last currency change was 35 years ago.

Like more than half the people who voted in a Salt Lake Tribune online poll, Barbara Robinson favors the transcontinental railroad and golden spike design for Utah's 2007 commemorative quarter over the design of a beehive or a snowboarder. The ongoing poll that began Jan. 20 shows that 52 percent of its participants chose the transcontinental railroad and golden spike, 20 percent liked the state's emblem of the beehive and 15 percent voted for a female snowboarder commemorating winter sports and the 2002 Olympics.

Brussels. Europol has registered a new record amount of confiscated forged euro bills, the German magazine Fokus writes. 770,000 forged euro bills worth 49 million euros were seized in 2005 in the twelve states of the Eurozone in spite of almost a 10.5-percent drop registered in 2004. The most qualitative forged euro bills originate in Bulgaria. They can be seized only by means of a special equipment, the magazine writes.

Important Die Variety in Modern Commemorative Series - The Mint State 1984-W Olympic $10 Gold Commemorative exists in two distinct finishes, a flat matte-like surface and a prooflike satin surface with subtle cameo contrast. While researching these different characteristics, Dave Camire, President of NCS and error coin expert, noticed distinct doubling on the obverse of a prooflike example. The doubling is pronounced throughout the obverse and the greatest spread is visible on the designer?s initials.

Spanish police have broken up a ring of undersea looters who have spent the last two years allegedly plundering the archaeological treasures of Spanish galleons and other historic ships that sank off the coast of southern Spain. At the weekend, the local civil guard in C?diz announced the arrest of two Hungarian men and an American woman believed to have set up an on-deck laboratory on their ship, the Louisa, where they used hi-tech equipment - including an undersea robot worth ?600,000 (?410,000) - to illegally identify, salvage and treat artifacts from the wrecks.

ARTICLE by Ken Elks - It seems likely that the indigenous tribes of southeast England began to have contact with Celts from the Continent as early as the beginning of the first millennium B.C. This reached its peak in the 2nd Century B.C. when a large area from Dorset in the southwest to Lincolnshire in the northeast gradually came under the rule of a new wave of Brythonic Celts. By the middle of the first century BC the Celts had established several kingdoms, the Cantiaci in Kent, the Regnenses in Sussex, Atrebates in Surrey, Durotriges in Dorset, Dobunni around the Severn ...

Wanted: modernising chief executive to run an institution that manufactures money but is no longer making it.Last month, when the Royal Mint announced the sudden exit of Gerald Sheehan, its chief executiveand a former steel man-ager, to "pursue other interests", there was no offi-cial explanation for his departure.But the government let it be known that a commercially-minded "moderniser" was being sought as his replacement at the government's loss-making manufacturer of currency, collector coins and medals.

Last week I reported on the auction of half cents and early large cents from the Jules Reiver Collection, sold by Heritage Galleries and Auctioneers in Dallas. Reiver focused on varieties and die states, and he amassed more than 5,000 different examples of coins from various series - a feat that will most probably never be duplicated in this many series again.The set of auction catalogs represents a great reference work, something Reiver would have wanted (he died in 2004) and would assuredly be proud of after his more than 70 years of building this collection.

ARTICLE - Coin World - No single factor determines rarity. Many factors have to be considered before declaring a coin "rare." A few of the factors that can lead to a coin being considered rare are total mintage; normal or abnormal attrition as a result of circulation, accidental loss or destruction, and official and private meltings; and the level of public and collector interest in a coin at the time it is being released into circulation. Remember, however, that "rare" is relative. So, too, is value; a rare coin may not necessarily be valuable if no or little collector market exists for it.

IT'S a bit like counting out your collection of small change - but on a slightly grander scale. Nearly 70,000 coins of all denominations, some coming from as far afield as New Zealand, will be tested and verified today at the Trial of the Pyx - an ancient ritual dating back more than 800 years. Guarding the lucrative loot will be a troupe of workers from the Royal Mint in Llantrisant, who will accompany the Pyx - the Latin word for money box - from South Wales to London's Goldsmiths'