By Andrew Pridgen for the Nevada Appeal

Even during the most difficult economic times, someone’s making money.

This adage couldn’t be more true, both literally and figuratively, than it is this week in Carson City. As area numismatists are already well aware, this is National Coin Week.

Whether you’re looking through loose change for a newly minted Nevada state quarter or you’re Rusty Goe, owner of Reno-based Southgate Coins - who last week purchased an 1871 gold piece from the Carson City mint for $414,000, this week is literally one for the books for coin collectors.

“I think it’s a (hobby) that’s really starting to pick up a lot of new enthusiasts,” Goe said. “We have just a wide variety of customers. We have children on a budget, and we stock items to get kids started. And we have long-time collectors who have coins worth tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

No matter the collector’s experience level, Goe said, one lesson is learned quickly for Northern Nevada hobbyists. (more…)

By Kerry Rodgers, World Coin News

Collectors of pattern coins and trials need to take a long hard look at Roxbury’s catalog for the firm’s May 22 Queensland auction. It includes an Australian classic, an example of the 1937 uniface, reverse and pattern for Australia’s penny showing a bounding kangaroo (SCWC Pn24).

This was the first time this Australian icon had appeared - by itself - on any Commonwealth coin. It would remain as the reverse design for the penny and halfpenny until 1964. At the Royal Mint a series of different patterns were struck of Kruger Gray’s incisive but simple design. All are excessively rare with very few in private hands. The Standard Catalog entry for this item does not differentiate between the four possible patterns.

The uniface version comes with the word MODEL across the coin’s obverse as shown here. However, it exists with both a hole drilled in the planchet or unholed. The 2007 edition of Renniks Australian Coin and Banknote Values give the mintage of the uniface “model’ as 8 and with a value as A$110,000. However, this catalog does not distinguish holed from unholed.

Read Full Numismaster Article Here 

Gainesville Coins Inc. is making a conscious effort to conserve our planet. To celebrate Earth Day and spread awareness for this important event, Gainesville Coins will donate a portion of each sale starting April 18 thru April 27 to the Arbor Day Foundation. Here are a few examples of how Gainesville Coins will be cutting their Carbon Footprint.

• Online Invoice System to cut paper-product usage by 50%.
• Furthermore, power usage will be cut substantially simply by shutting down all computers (including printers) every night.
• Gainesville Coins will continue the policy of recycling all retired equipment (including electronics, plastics, glass, newspapers and card board).
• Gainesville Coins has removed All Incandescent bulbs and replaced them with Compact Fluorescent

Earth Day is about our future. Gainesville Coins chose the Arbor Day Foundation after evaluating two factors: Organizational Efficiency and Organizational Capacity. The Earth Day Network Charity efficiently utilizes all charitable donations, and in turn should grow their programs and services over time.

Now, more than ever, we need continual Environmental Education… It’s the Grain of Truth that grew into Earth Day. Not everyone will recall President Kennedy’s five-day, eleven-state Conservation Tour back in 1963, yet he planted the seed. Six years later (1969) Earth Day bloomed into a 24 hour celebration. (more…)

By Gabriel Elizondo in Maracangalha, Brazil

It was like a script from a Hollywood film. A small plane carrying millions of dollars in cash crashes right in the middle of a poor village in a remote corner of the world.

But this was no movie – this is what actually happened in the north-eastern Brazilian village of Maracangalha, and the event has since sparked a missing money mystery that provided an unhappy ending for the villagers.

The mystery began last year when a small plane, operated by a private security company on behalf of a Brazilian bank, transported about 5.56 million Reals in cash, the equivalent of about $3,300,000, across Brazil’s Bahia state. The plane encountered mechanical difficulties and crashed near the village, killing the three people on board and releasing a cloud of banknotes.

Three million dollars is a lot of money for anyone, but even more so when you consider many of the people of Maracangalha do not have running water and earn less than $100 a month as labourers on nearby farms.

When a local radio station reported the incident, people descended on the village in droves almost immediately, collecting as much of the money as they could find. (more…)