(Irvine, California) – Responding to the increasing demand for higher-value coins, Teletrade® has announced its Premier Plus program, an ongoing series of auctions by Internet and telephone every two months that offer certified coins with a retail value each of $1,000 or more. “Our Premier Plus sale in mid-February included a 1931 Double Eagle, graded PCGS MS-65, that sold for $88,480, a Teletrade record for a gold coin,” said Ian Russell, Teletrade President.

THE Bank of China, the country's biggest foreign currency lender, plans to allow investors to buy and sell gold using their US dollar accounts in a move to boost sales of the precious metal. The BOC's Shanghai branch says it will start trial trading in greenback gold this year and expand the pilot to its other branches in China. China now allows investors to buy and sell gold only through yuan accounts, though the sales are based on the dollar value of the metal on international markets.

Dallas, Texas: "In my experience, proof coinage from 1896 and 1898 is consistently of the highest quality and aesthetic appeal of any 19th-century U.S. coinage," said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage Auction Galleries. "One explanation for the high quality seen on many 1896 proof dollars," Rohan said, "is that two obverse dies were used to produce the 762 proofs struck. Assuming that the first few dozen coins struck from a fresh pair of dies would be cameos, the fact that two dies were used should double the number...

Colonials, Errors, and Rare-Date Gold Particularly Well Represented - Irvine, CA: On March 16-17, Bowers and Merena will be traveling to Maryland to conduct the Official Auction of the Baltimore Coin and Currency Convention. The sale is scheduled for three sessions, and it will be conducted at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore (410-528-1234). Online bids are currently being accepted at the Bowers and Merena website, www.bowersandmerena.com

In a dying art, engravers handcraft money - including this week's new $10 bill to foil counterfeiters. - WASHINGTON – Chris Madden's job would drive most artists crazy. He works inches away from his canvas - a blank piece of steel - staring through an antique brass magnifier with his left eye, hand carving the lines and dots that form a meticulously detailed picture. Working this way, it takes months to complete a portrait. To make matters worse, his last major work sold for only $10.

Dr Matthew Ponting, from the University’s School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, is investigating the chemical composition of the coins to further understanding of how and where they were made. Dr Ponting believes that analysis of the coins will also shed more light on the political and economic issues of the Roman Empire. Dr Ponting and his colleague Professor Kevin Butcher from the American University of Beirut, are using unique analysis techniques to examine the make-up of the coins and establish their silver content.

Among a number of British colonial rarities to be offered by Noble Numismatics in a March 22-24 Sydney, Australia, auction is a true relic of a fading empire: a Malaya & British North Borneo $1,000 dated March 21, 1953, Standard Catalog of World Paper Money No. P-6.Queen Elizabeth II is there at right front in full glorious imperial purple. Readers need not bother to check, for the Standard Catalog doesn’t price an issued example of this note in any grade. It just lists it as “Rare.” Specimen examples would seem, however, to be a little more common. The catalog prices these at $2,500 in uncirculated.

A rising tide lifts all boats, a young John F. Kennedy administration liked to say back in the early 1960s. Indeed it does. The question is whether the rising tide in numismatics will do the same. Paper money is hot. U.S. coins are hot. World coins are certainly improving, but because of the dispersed nature of the field, it always has to fight more head winds than the other two areas. In the United States we have just two shows dedicated to world coins, the New York International Numismatic Convention in January and the Chicago International Coin Fair at the end of March.

(Newport Beach, CA) – PCGS Currency, a division of Collectors Universe, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLCT) of Newport Beach, California, has made the first known public inventory by series type of historic bank notes recovered from a safe salvaged from the submerged Italian ocean liner, Andrea Doria. More than 3,600 recovered notes certified by PCGS Currency will be made available to collectors by Rare Coin Wholesalers of Dana Point, California to coincide with this year’s 50th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has returned to the Saudi government more than 130 pounds of ancient coins that agents seized from a man who had removed them illegally from a shipwreck in the Red Sea. "Artifacts such as these coins are not trinkets that can be pilfered and sold to the highest bidder," said Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Julie L. Myers, who heads ICE. "To their rightful owners, these artifacts are priceless items that are cherished and proudly displayed.

TREASURE hunters in Suffolk unearth more finds than nearly anywhere else in the country, it has been revealed. Over an eight-year period from 1997, 212 treasure cases were reported throughout the county, making it the second richest area for archaeological objects. The figures, contained in the Government's most recent Treasure Annual Report, show one of the biggest finds was a medieval gold ring, worth £3,750, found by a member of the public in Eye.

Off the market for two decades, an 1854 Kellogg gold $20 piece is returning to the auction block. Graded MS-64 by Professional Coin Grading Service, the coin will be one of the featured items in the American Numismatic Rarities March 14-15 sale of the New York Connoisseur’s Collection that precedes the Baltimore Coin and Currency Convention.The cataloger for the sale describes the piece as “A simply extraordinary specimen, displayed at recent conventions to the wonderment of seasoned numismatists.”

(Santa Clara, CA) – The finest known set of 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition commemorative coins will return to the Bay area for the first time in 91 years and be exhibited during the Santa Clara Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo. The show will be held in the Santa Clara, California Convention Center, Thursday through Saturday, March 30 – April 1, 2006. “This outstanding exhibit showcases five superb condition gold and silver coins, registered by Pan-Pac officials as the sixth of 24 original complete sets made at the time,

Dublin, Ohio—ANACS, America’s oldest grading service, recently launched its new ClearView™ coin holder. Thousands of the new holders have been mailed to ANACS customers who had recently submitted their coins for grading. Besides its larger size—approximately 3-1/4 by 2-1/2 inches—the label can easily be read from the top. The holder, with its sleek and innovative design, beautifully displays the coin to its greatest advantage and allows a better view of the edge.

What does eye appeal have to do with grading coins? If the top grading services, NGC and PCGS, label a coin with a grade, shouldn’t it be the same price no matter what? The answers to these questions are as complex as buying a new car. All cars have four wheels, an engine, some seats, brakes, and can be driven from one place to another. Yet, all cars are not created equal. There are hundreds of different makes and models that vie for the consumer dollar. The difference in price between two new 2006 cars can be as much as $50,000 to $100,000; sometimes even more. Coins are no different.

Early copper coins, specifically half cents and large cents, make up probably the most difficult area of U.S. coins to grade and value. In the 1940s, Dr. William H. Sheldon developed a quantitative scale for grading the large cents of 1793 to 1814, the basis for the 1 to 70 grading scale now used throughout the hobby. In addition to using this scale to grade, he tied this numeric scale to a system of valuation.n essence, the value of "1" represents a Basal State - just barely identifiable. In valuing these coins, the Basal State was the constant.

DISCOVERY - Bass Dannruther 1E variety (Taraszka 32) - Larry Abbott, Executive Vice President and CSO of Superior Galleries of Beverly Hills announced today that Silvano DiGenova, CEO and Chief Numismatist of the firm has discovered a previously unknown specimen, and the third finest known 1803 Large Stars Reverse with 13 Stars, Bass Dannruther 1E variety (Taraszka 32). The coin is an Extremely Rare (Low R7) survivor of a mintage estimated at originally only 250 to 500 coins from one single mating of dies. There are now only six specimens known, and two of those are damaged!

America’s first silver dollar struck in 1794 as well as two 1913 Liberty Head nickels will be exhibited in Atlanta at the National Money Show, April 7-9, in the Cobb Galleria Centre, 2 Galleria Parkway.The rare coins will be displayed along with the U.S. Treasury Department’s $1 billion exhibit of $100,000 bills, as well as competitive and noncompetitive exhibits and a club section in what is shaping up as one of the most successful ANA National Money Shows in memory.