The Rare Bronze Octagonal 1904 St. Louis Olympics Medal
Stack’s News
The first modern Olympic Games, spearheaded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, were held in Athens in 1896. In the 114 years that followed, a wealth of medals and coins has been created, sought after by an fanatically determined group of specialized collectors. The Athens contest and the 1900 Paris Games followed with increasing success and medals exist from them. Then the decision was made to hold the Games of the III Olympiad (the four-year interval culminating in the next Games) in distant St. Louis, Missouri, in conjunction with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (LPE). This was the kiss of death to the dignity of the Games, which were promptly relegated to an expo back closet called the Physical Culture Department under the Director of Exhibits. Only 554 athletes took part from 11 countries.
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NGC Hosts Exhibits at the ANA World’s Fair of Money
NGC
Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) will host two numismatic exhibits at its booth (#704) during the convention. The first is also from the Simpson Collection and includes two incredibly rare coins. One is the finest known proof 1804 $10 grading NGC PF65 Ultra Cameo, among the most desirable and most valuable of all US gold coins. Struck in 1834 for presentation to diplomats, just three exist today. The second is the very seldom seen proof 1804 $10 struck in silver graded NGC PF64. This pattern coin, designated as J-34 in the standard Judd reference, is one of no more than five known. This exhibit marks the first time these two companion coins have been exhibited together.
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The Biggest Show of the Year
PCGS Blog
The annual convention of the American Numismatic Association is always the biggest coin show of the year. Dealers bring out their best coins, most of the major buyers attend (many plan their summer vacations around the ANA show), and there are always huge auctions held in conjunction with the show. This year the ANA summer show is being held in Boston, August 10 to 14, though there is a “pre-show” August 7 and 8. There will be three auctions…Stack’s, Bowers and Merena, and Heritage held before and during the show. The show auction is the Heritage auction and it is huge. Both the B&M and Stack’s auctions have some great coins. I estimate that over $50 million worth of coins will be sold at the three auctions and another $50 million worth of coins will trade hands on the floor of the coin show. It is going to be a monstrous event.
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The Art and Science of Coin Buying and Selling
Scott A. Travers
Coin buyers and sellers are constantly making deals. Some end up doing very well for themselves, while others learn later that the joke was on them. Unlike the contestants on Let’s Make a Deal, however, those who negotiate deals involving coins don’t have to operate strictly by guesswork. They can arm themselves with facts, figures, insights and common sense and emerge from just about any deal with at least fair value – and perhaps a good deal more. Deal-making is second nature for professional numismatists. “Deal,” after all, represents two-thirds of the word “dealer.” You don’t have to be a dealer, though, to grasp and even master the art (and science) of deal-making. At the outset, it’s important to understand some conditions that are peculiar, if not unique, to the rare-coin marketplace.
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New Book on Buffalo Nickel Abraded Die Varieties
NumiStories
Great opportunity awaits the dedicated Buffalo variety collector, and this book is the ultimate guide in that endeavor. One look at the advancing values of the two best known abraded die varieties, the 1937-D 3 leg and the 1936-D 3 1/2 leg Buffalo nickels, and one can see the genuine need for this reference. Taking into account the increasing popularity and Red Book acceptance of these varieties, now is the time to begin your search! What are abraded die varieties? In Part One of this book Ron Pope defines traditional and non-traditional abraded die varieties, explains how these varieties were produced, and devotes a full page to the description of each known date and mintmark for which that variety occurs.
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What’s the Proper Way to Examine a Coin?
Numismatic News
One thing has not changed since the first class I taught in Colorado Springs, Colo., with Charles Hoskins back in 1973. I saw students using all kinds of methods to view coins. A few would lay the coin flat on the table and bend over it with their magnifier blocking most of the light needed to see the coin. Others would hold the coin and magnifier practically at arms length while trying to see the image in the lens almost a foot away from their eye. Unfortunately, many students continued to do this after being shown the “correct” way to view a coin. I believe the best method is to hold the magnifier to your eye and bring the coin up to the lens until it is in focus. Place your head close to the light source so that the light is between your magnifier/eye combination and the coin.?
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Commission of Fine Arts Reviews 2012 Presidential Dollar Designs, Recommmends Three
Coin Update News
The Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) reviewed proposed designs for the 2012 Presidential Dollars during a meeting held July 15, 2010. The United States Mint provided the CFA with four to six obverse candidate designs for each coin. The CFA made recommendations for three out of the four coins to be released. The Presidential Dollar Program, which began in 2007, honors the former Presidents of the United States in the order served. Four different coins are released each year with the obverse design featuring a portrait of the President being honored. The reverse of each coin has featured a rendition of the Statue of Liberty designed by Don Everhart. The coins to be issued for 2012 will feature Chester A. Arhur, Grover Cleveland (first term), Benjamin Harrison, and Grover Cleveland (second term).
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Before You Buy or Sell Coins
PCGS Blog
I just bought a new flat screen TV for my daughter. Before I bought it I spent a couple hours on the Internet researching different models and comparing prices from different Retailers. Good thing I did because I didn’t know that 120 Hz screens have the best performance for video games! It’s the same thing with coins. I only spent $900 on the TV but I know I spent more time learning about my options then some coin buyers do before spending far greater amounts on a coin. So what should you do before you buy a coin? (By the way the exact same information applies when you are selling.) I have always thought there are three basic pieces of information that are essential to know before buying: population; APR (auction prices realized) and pricing. Let’s dig into each a little more.
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John Paul Jones on a Comitia Americana Medal
Stack’s News
The only naval hero honored in the Comitia Americana series (struck by the Paris Mint for the Continental Congress) is Scottish-born John Paul Jones (1747-1792). Jones, commemorated on a 57.3mm piece, is remembered for his exploits on the French-built Bonhomme Richard (Poor Richard, a tribute to Benjamin Franklin) which electrified the world during the American Revolution. The obverse shows a uniformed bust of Jones as Commander of the Fleet. The reverse depicts the sea fight of Bonhomme Richard and HMS Serapis off the Scottish coast on September 1779. The British ship was captured by Jones and made part of the infant American navy. This Paris Mint medal was the work of Augustin Dupré, though his name does not appear on this example, struck from 19th-century copy dies made at the Philadelphia Mint that deliberately omitted his name.
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The 1938-D Mercury Dime
Numismatic News
Perhaps it is time we take a second or even a first look at some of the lower mintage Mercury dime dates like the 1938-D. Right now the 1938-D seems fairly stable in terms of price, but you have to think that $34 for an MS-65 and $62 for an MS-65 with full split bands is awfully inexpensive considering its mintage and the potential for demand for a coin that is now more than 70 years old. The 1938-D Mercury dime had a mintage of 5,537,000. It seems unlikely that a coin with such a mintage would be overlooked and especially unlikely that it would be overlooked for seven decades. However, in the case of the Mercury dime you have a coin set that traditionally has basically been about one date: the 264,000 mintage 1916-D. If any dates were seen as being in the same class as the 1916-D, they were not regular dates but rather the 1942/41 and 1942/41-D. overdates.
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Numismatist Eric Newman Discovers Audubon’s First Engraved Illustration
The E-Sylum
For more than half a century, scholars and biographers of famed bird artist and ornithologist John James Audubon had been stumped. In an 1824 diary entry, the young French immigrant, who lived for several years at Mill Grove in Montgomery County, mentioned that he had given a drawing of a running grouse to a Philadelphia engraver for use on a New Jersey banknote. It would have been a key moment – the first published illustration for the struggling artist, then 29 years old. But if so, where was it? Nobody could find it. And as time went by, many began to dismiss the story as a typical Audubon exaggeration. But Robert Peck, curator of art and artifacts at the Academy of Natural Sciences, decided to give it one last try. What he and Eric Newman, a numismatic historian from St. Louis, found has rocked the world of Audubon scholars, who are calling their discovery “a eureka moment.”
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Coin Information Adds Value
Coin Values
Information is a key component in determining an object’s value and sometimes a nugget of a coin’s history can substantially increase a coin’s price. For example, one could argue that research, suggesting that a 1794 Flowing Hair dollar graded Specimen 66 by Professional Coin Grading Service was the first silver dollar ever struck by the U.S. Mint, strongly boosted the coin’s importance to justify the reported $7,850,000 that it traded for in a private treaty sale. In other words, the research elevated the coin from being a noteworthy early U.S. coin of great interest to specialists to a landmark rarity with broader appeal.
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The Willow Tree Coins
NumiStories
John Hull’s second series of silver coins produced at his Boston, Massachusetts mint were the first dated coins in what would become the United States. This “Willow Tree” design is believed to have been produced from 1653 to 1660. It was determined that Hull’s simple “NE” coins were easy to counterfeit and prone to clipping because of the absence of a border to the design. Clipping was the process of cutting slivers of silver off the edges of coins and passing the now underweight coins at full value. On October 19, 1652 legislation was passed paving the way for the new design. The “Willow Tree” name was first noted in W.E. Woodward’s sale of the Joseph Mickley collection in 1867. These coins were very crudely struck, perhaps on a rocker press rather than by hand, the “tree” appearing as a mass of lines and squiggles that really doesn’t resemble any specific tree. The coins were struck in denominations of threepence, sixpence, and shilling with the obverse consisting of the tree in the center surrounded by inner and outer rings of dots.
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“Blue Pack” Ike Dollars Present Storage Challenge
NCS
The 1971 debut of the Eisenhower Dollar was highly anticipated by collectors. The circulating edition wasn’t released until November of that year, but on July 1 collectors could begin sending in their orders for the silver-clad editions made at San Francisco. These included the proofs, packaged in a rigid plastic holder within a brown cardboard box, and sold for a whopping $10. Also offered were uncirculated examples at $3 apiece. As delivered, these were packaged in the same transparent, flexible “pliofilm” (polyester) material used for the Mint’s annual uncirculated sets. The pliofilm sleeve was inserted into a fitted blue envelope properly imprinted for the coin.
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What’s a Fair Price for the Silver 5-Ounce ATB ‘Quarters’?
Dave Harper
With silver at roughly $18 a troy ounce presently, what do you think a fair price would be for the Mint to charge for the upcoming silver versions of the America the Beautiful quarters? Each coin will contain five troy ounces, or $90 worth of bullion. It will be an unusual issue. The U.S. government has never issued five-ounce coins before. The coin will have twice the diameter of a Morgan dollar and will be unusually thin, so thin in fact that a special new press had to be purchased in Germany to strike it. That is new equipment, the cost of which, will have to be amortized during the coining program.
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PCGS CoinFacts Turns One
PCGS Blog
PCGS CoinFacts turned one year old on July 27! PCGS CoinFacts was already a big baby when it was born, having gestated for over ten years.  However, in the last year, thanks to lots of attention from our IT department and our Board of Experts, PCGS CoinFacts has put on a lot of meat and muscle. Enhancements include: Thousands of new images, ranging from high-grade modern coins to classic, ultra-rarities and everything in between. Condition Census – a listing of the top five examples all U.S. coins (top ten for rarities, if there are that many!) Hundreds of new narratives from experts in every area – anecdotes, facts, and figures from people in-the-know. Million Dollar Coin Club – a roster of coins that have sold for over a million dollars (and those that will soon).
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CCAC Pans Coin Designs
Numismaster
Not just any old coin design will do. That’s the message the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee sent loud and clear July 27 as it recommended designs for only one of eight coins presented by the U.S. Mint. “We’re putting more value on our recommendations,” said CCAC Chairman Gary Marks. So after adopting a new voting procedure that calls for a majority rather than plurality of votes before a coin design can be considered “recommended,” the CCAC only gave thumbs up to an obverse and reverse design for the 2011 First Spouse coin honoring Lucretia Garfield. But the CCAC isn’t blaming the Mint artists for the disappointing designs. “The artists are pretty much told what to render,” Marks said. “There isn’t a lot of creativity going on in what the artists are allowed to do.” And that’s where design excellence comes in, Marks said.
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Money of the German Colonies
CoinsWeekly
Already in 1890, a first emission of copper coins was issued in Berlin by order of the German East Africa Company. They were called Pesa and show on the obverse a laurel wreath and the Arabic legend “Company of Germany“. On its reverse the imperial eagle was depicted. An Indian Rupee, the most important coastal currency, equated 64 Pesa. Pesa were issued in high numbers (in 1892 alone, the emission’s last year, 27.541.389 were manufactured). The silver coins, emitted since 1891, were issued in considerably lower numbers. They show on the obverse the German Emperor and on the reverse the coat of arms of the German East Africa Company, a striding lion in front of a palm tree. The fractions were one quarter, one half, one, and a double Rupee thereby matching the local currency situation.
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