Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS at www.PCGS.com) will display a spectacular collection of early U.S. half dollars, offer special discounts for coins submitted for authentication and grading, and give collectors and dealers an opportunity to have their coins digitally imaged with the PCGS TrueViewTM photo service during the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo (www.LongBeachExpo.com), February 4 – 6, 2010.

Visitors will also see a $10 million “Ship of Gold” exhibit of sunken treasure recovered from the fabled SS Central America that sank in a hurricane in 1857 while carrying tons of California Gold Rush coins and ingots. The acclaimed “Ship of Gold” display is housed in a 40-foot long representation of the ship’s hull,” and is coming out of “dry dock” for this special exhibit at the February Long Beach Expo.

The show will be held in the Long Beach, California Convention Center, 100 S. Pine Ave.

PCGS will display more than 100 high-grade coins from the award-winning Dale Friend collection of circulation strike early half dollars, 1794 – 1839, and his set of major varieties of early U.S. halves. Both sets have earned the honor of being the number one-time finest in their category in the PCGS Set RegistrySM.

“Collectors and dealers who saw these sets displayed by PCGS at the recent FUN show in Orlando were simply awe-struck by the gorgeous, original toning and luster of these coins,” said Donald E. Willis Jr., President of PCGS. PCGS and the Long Beach Expo (Expos Unlimited) are divisions of Collectors Universe, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLCT).

“Twenty of the coins are either the finest known or tied for the finest ever graded by PCGS. This is an opportunity for West Coast collectors to see them in person through the courtesy of Dale Friend,” said BJ Searls, PCGS Set Register Manager. (more…)

A decade after its first appearance, the precedent-setting “Ship of Gold” display showcasing California Gold Rush-era sunken treasure recovered from the 1857 shipwreck of the SS Central America again will dock in Long Beach, California.

The $10 million exhibit will be publicly displayed during the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo in the Long Beach Convention Center, 100 S. Pine Ave., February 4 – 6, 2010.

The three-day show also will feature an exhibit of the all-time finest set of early U.S. half dollars in the PCGS Set RegistrySM.

“The ‘Ship of Gold’ exhibit is coming out of dry dock and returning to its first port of call, the Long Beach Expo,” said Ronald J. Gillio, Expo General Chairman. “The eye-opening display on the convention center floor is housed in a specially-constructed 40-foot long representation of the famous ship’s hull. This will be the first public appearance of the ‘Ship of Gold’ exhibit anywhere in the country in six years.”

The exhibit is courtesy of Monaco Rare Coins of Newport Beach and involved months of work to coordinate the display with collectors who privately own and now have generously loaned many of the items for the exhibit, according to Adam Crum, Monaco Vice President.

“The ‘cargo’ on display will be examples of historic assayers’ ingots as well as San Francisco Mint and California territorial gold coins with a combined value today of over $10 million. One of the highlights is a huge, 662.28 ounce Kellogg & Humbert ingot. Weighing just over 55 troy pounds, it is the fourth largest gold bar recovered from nearly 8,000 feet blow the surface of the Atlantic Ocean where the Central America sank in a hurricane in September 1857 while carrying California gold from Panama to New York City,” said Crum.

There also will be one of the 13 recovered octagonal $50 gold pieces produced by the United States Assay Office of San Francisco, and the remains of a wooden cargo box that still contains approximately 110 Double Eagles as they were found on the ocean floor. Many appear to be 1857-S $20 gold pieces, apparently freshly struck at the San Francisco Mint when they were placed in the container for shipping. (more…)

By John Dale Beety This article originally appeared in the Heritage Blog.

Recently, I was shopping in a bookstore when I came across a most unusual display. Then again, considering this was a national chain, perhaps it’s not so unusual. Close to the shelves of manga (Japanese comics, generally sold in the U.S. as translations bound in trade-paperback format) were a variety of other products possibly of interest to the manga purchaser. I came face to face with temptation, in the form of light breadsticks dipped in chocolate.

I was not stronger than the Pocky. I bought a box to take home with me. It didn’t last the night.

Like many others in my generation, I have a taste for imported Japanese popular culture. Video games and manga are two of my particular vices. I’ve previously referenced my fondness for the video game series Final Fantasy in the blog, but I also pick up the odd manga title, such as Detective Conan, a mystery series featuring a teenaged investigator trapped in a first-grader’s body. (It’s marketed in the United States as Case Closed to avoid entanglements with a certain loincloth-wearing barbarian, but Detective Conan sounds cooler.)

Between my interest in things Japanese and my obsession with coins, perhaps it was inevitable that at some point, I would become intrigued by Japanese coinage. Unfortunately, my level of sophistication is not high; I know just enough to realize how little I actually know! That doesn’t stop me from appreciating Japanese coins in my own peculiar way, though.

I was paging through the upcoming Monthly Internet World Coin Auction and came across the auction’s small but intriguing Japanese section. There are several coins from the Ministry of Finance gold auctions; the best American comparison would be the GSA sales of silver dollars, in that a long-term government holding of its coins was offered to the public, though numerous details (method of sale, etc.) were necessarily different.

One of the visual hallmarks of the Ministry of Finance gold coins was a large-format plastic holder, with a deep red insert framing the coin and a tag with serial number and other information also enclosed. Certain dates and denominations were much more heavily represented than others; the Meiji 4 (1871 in the Western calendar) one yen gold was one of the more common dates, and there are three of them in the auction. Among 10 yen gold pieces, Meiji 42 (1909) was also a year with a large stock sold; there’s one in the auction.

A number of Ministry of Finance pieces can also be found in the Japan section of Heritage’s September 2009 Long Beach World Coin Auction. Why not take a look and see if there’s a Japanese import that interests you?