Legend Numismatics is proud to announce the outright purchase of the Brian Sonnier Collection of colored dollars and CC GSA coins.

Brian is a long time collector (known to many as GSAGUY). You may have seen him set up at shows back in the early to mid 90’s to just display his coins.

He started his work on this incredible collection over 20 years ago. It did not matter whether it was a colored Morgan or a 91CC GSA, he had to have the best and wildest looking. The results are mind-boggling.

This collection blows away ALL other colored dollar sets that we have ever seen (yes, this collection in some ways is wilder than Sunnywood). There is every type of ORIGINAL coloration pattern. The colors mimic the wildest brightest rainbows-and yes, there are tons of reds and greens.

This was not a collection assembled overnight. Major collections were cherry picked, every auction was checked out, and he had several dealers always “on the hunt” so he could get the best of the best colored coins.

Unlike recent major colored collections to have hit the market, these coins are NOT near color misses or watered down grade wise. They also are not over graded as 95% of the collection was raw! And we did pay well in excess of $10,000.00 for more than one 80S-82S $1!!!!!!!!!

A small portion of his CC GSA collection was purchased in partnership with long time CC dealer Doug Sharpe (Aspen Rare Coins) of Sarasota Florida.

Doug as well has known Brian for many years. Since GSA’s were not our strong point, we knew Doug was the right dealer to assist us. As for the remainder of the CC’s, Brian loves them too much wanted to happily keep that part of his collection (believe us, we tried hard to buy them).

We thank Brian for keeping his promise to us over the years. Sitting at his dinning room table, the negotiations took minutes. It was tough for him to sell, but he knows the coins are going to be placed in the best homes. We have not stopped drooling and looking at the coins! Every single coin is a memorable MONSTER!

Additional Images and availability can be found on the Legend Numismatics Website

By Laura Sperber of Legend Numismatics [Excerpt]

THE OVERALL MARKET

We see things firming up. We were amazed at how many NEW collectors have bought from us since September 1. No, its not just the McClaren coins. They want nice coins. We have not heard anything about speculation. Most are starting sets. Some just like a certain design. They are not buying token cheap coins-several bought low five figure pieces. The main thing, these people are buying coins. We have even seen some old friends come back who we haven’t seen in months or the past year. While demand is firming, there is no wholesale dumping of collections that we have heard of. In fact, we wish there was-the biggest problem right now is finding neat coins. Where are all the GEM Bust Halves, MS65 Seated Dollars, or PR Gold pieces?

The market should firm up even more between now and the end of the year. There will continue to be certain areas of weakness (unfortunately MS+PR Barber coins still seem sluggish), while other areas-like long suffering commems may finally have hit price points so low they have to move up. There are definitely more people today building nice Commem sets that we have heard of than at any other time in the past few years.

And gold, well generics are doing the correction we told you about. You will see MS65 Saints fall another 10%-even if gold goes up (the movement of gold is by traders, not pure demand). MS66 Saints have held and are still in demand. Last week, we posted two better MS65 $10 Indians PCGS MS65 CAC-we wish we had 7 of them! That’s how many of them we could have sold. So long as the coins are not in an area that ran up to high, gold is a safe place to be and will continue to firm. Just watch the rags to see which common gold coins are now falling.

Remember, buying rare coins is not a short term flip. You buy them for the long term. The long term is really forever- maybe one day in 15 years you happen to notice they have gone up dramatically (unless your dealer has called you in between). There is no set time limit. The trick is to BUY THE BEST QUALITY YOU CAN AFFORD AND HOLD. EYE APPEAL IS EVERYTHING. Even if you buy 5 MONSTER MS65 Morgans and hold them, you should do well. Buying ugly coins cheap will not get you anywhere near the % returns great coins will achieve. The coin market had walked a very dangerous path until two years ago. Grading was almost out of control and the coin doctors did serious damage. Today, the coin docs are a bitter bunch who still try hard, but do not get as much through as they used too. The grading services realize they need to be alert not only for their own sake, but for the future of the entire coin hobby. Because of this, we see more consumer confidence and more buying down the road. As long as the speculators are wiped out and true collectors rule, the coin market will enjoy steady slow rises.
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THE PRE ANA SHOW

There was a private (invited dealers only) Pre ANA Show held in Beverly Hills. It consisted of about 30 major dealers or their representatives. The show was VERY strong. From set up until the guards asked people to leave Sunday, activity seemed to be non stop. Since it was a smaller venue with less people than a typical ‘pre’ show, everyone in the room had a spirit of doing business with each other (something we used to see when the services held the “trade and grades”). There definitely was a strong and positive “buzz” in the room that had everyone psyched for the upcoming ANA show.

Thus, it was easy to realize premium prices at the pre show. One well known major buyer attended solely to purchase. We know for a fact, this buyer spent $2,000,000.00 there and then left for vacation skipping the ANA Show completely. ALL of the coins he purchased were sold back home. Another major buyer who was at the show also was extremely aggressive and probably spent close to the same amount. The important thing to note-is that the majority of these coins are gone from the market-they were not to be seen floating around ANA or in different holders later.

THE PRE AUCTIONS

Stacks and Heritage each held sales during the pre show. It did not matter who was holding an auction so long as they had fresh, original, and really rare coins for sale. With a severe lack of supply, any coin that fit these categories brought exceptionally strong money.

Stacks had no major collection. So they had mixed results. Still on selected coins (even retreads) that were rare and decent, many people found themselves being out bid! Our major purchase at the sale was the copper J-84 for $356,500.00. The majority of coins we bid on, we surprisingly lost!

Heritage had a few pockets of fresh coins along with the Louis Bassano Commem Collection. We did sell Lou a few coins and were thrilled his coins sold for crazy money.

As always, we were totally frustrated at the Heritage Sale. They continuously realize remarkable prices. One coin we wanted badly was the $2.5 1864 NGC AU53. Any student of $2.5’s knows these are rarer than 54S’s (we weren’t close on our bid on the 54S either). We left a what we thought was a stupid high book bid of $29,900.00 (Platinum Night also happened to be the night we decided to fly to Giants Stadium and see a great AC/DC concert). Sure enough, someone outbid us at $32,200.00 and got the coin. There was no price guide even close to reality for the date-still not many coins bring $30,000.00 in AU! Besides being jealous of the new owner of that coin, we were blown away on 75% of the bids we had left that night. At least we got to see one heck of a concert (the AC/DC guys are in their upper 50’s, early 60’s and may not tour again).
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