PCGS recently announced that they plan to begin encapsulating coins that would have formerly been “body bagged” in the past for reasons such as damage, cleaning, and artificial toning. How does this affect the day-to-day operations of my firm and inventory and what are my personal feelings about such coins?

The new PCGS “genuine” holders will have zero impact on DWN. My orientation has always been towards choice, problem-free coins and it is highly unlikely that I will be selling coins in “genuine” holders or even recommending them to my clients. If any of my submissions to PCGS wind-up in such holders (and hopefully this will not occur very often!) such coins will either be consigned to auctions, wholesaled to other dealers or, in the case where I think PCGS was wrong, resubmitted.

How do I feel about PCGS deciding to offer this service to their customers? I am assuming they made this decision because of considerable feedback from collectors (and dealers) who felt that a genuine-only holder was important, especially given the success of such a product at NGC. My feelings about the holders are mixed. I feel that they slightly dilute the PCGS brand in terms of non-problem coins but I think they offer collectors a degree of safety regarding the authenticity of rare issues.

Will the PCGS genuine holders have an impact on the market? I believe that they will. Some of this impact will be good and some, I think, will be not so good. (more…)

Douglas Winter Numismatics is proud to announce that we have been chosen to sell yet another high quality collection of United States coins. This assemblage, formed by an astute specialist in Texas, is known as the Liberty Cap Collection of early United States coins. It features exactly twenty different coins (plus one early American medal) ranging in value from a few hundred dollars to over $50,000. The collection is being imaged and cataloged by DWN and is expected to be posted on the www.raregoldcoins.com website around November 18, 2008.

The collection is known as the Liberty Cap Collection because of the fact that a number of the coins have designs that feature a prominent Liberty Cap. Examples of coins in this collection with a prominent Liberty Cap design include a rare 1783 Libertas Americana medal in Copper (Betts-615) graded MS62 by NGC, an 1836 Pattern Gold Dollar (Judd-67) graded PR66 Ultra Cameo and an extensive date run of branch mint Classic Head quarter eagles and half eagles.

There are many highlights in this collection but I’d like to focus on three that I think are especially worthy of attention. Please note that full descriptions and images of each will be available on my website within a few days.

1838-C Half Eagle, Graded MS60 by NGC. The 1838-C is the most historically significant half eagle from the Charlotte mint. It is the only Classic Head design for this denomination and it is the very first half eagle produced in Charlotte. It is not really a rarity from the standpoint of total known but it is very rare in the higher AU grades and excessively rare in Uncirculated. Only two or three are known in Uncirculated. The finest is the superb PCGS/NGC MS63 example formerly in the Bass collection and now owned by the Pogue family. The second finest known was the NGC MS62 coin formerly owned by Paul Dingler but this coin was improperly cleaned and is no longer in a Mint State holder. This leaves two 1838-C half eagles in Uncirculated holders: an NGC MS61 that I have never seen in person and the NGC MS60 in the Liberty Cap collection.

In addition to this impressive rarity, the collection also contains a choice, original NGC MS62 example of the rare but slightly less well-known one-year type: the 1839-C half eagle. (more…)

By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

A good client of mine recently asked me the question “are early gold coins overpriced?” As with most intelligent questions, I don’t think that this one has a pat answer. My feeling is that some early gold coins are poor value at current levels while others are good to very good values. Read on for my take on the current early gold market and my suggestions of where the best values are.

Appearance and eye appeal are, obviously, critical factors in determining the desirability of any coin. In the area of early gold, I think these factors are especially important. The reasons are fairly obvious: these are hand-made coins that vary in quality literally from year to year, many survivors have been cleaned, abused or damaged and the third-party services tend to be inconsistent (to say the least) when it comes to grading early gold.

A fairly general statement that I think can be made about the early gold market is that only a small handful of the coins that exist have good eye appeal and a pleasing overall appearance. I personally feel that virtually every early gold coin that is choice and original remains a good value while most every good early gold coin that is low end for the grade and unoriginal is poor value. But this observation is fairly simplistic and needs to be expanded.

As with most markets, early gold issues can generally be divided into three categories: common or “generic” dates, better dates and rarities. And in the case of early gold we might even be able to create a fourth category: the “super-rarity.” How are each of these categories doing?

Even if you know very little about early gold, you might guess that the area most prone to showing weakness in a downward market turn would be the common dates. An example of what I would term a “generic” early gold coin would be an 1806 Round 6 Half Eagle. There are as many as 1,000 examples known of this issue and it is fairly readily available in grades up to and including MS63 to MS64. (more…)