In my last blog, I predicted that the Central States show in Rosemont would be active. How did the show turn out and what are my current impressions of the market? Read on for all the answers…and more.

After a lack of shows for over a month I knew that there would be a strong demand for nice coins and I was right. Every dealer I spoke to at the beginning of the show told me that they literally had to be three places at once to get a shot at the fresh coins that were available. For someone like myself who does coin shows without assistants, partners, lackeys or go-fers it can be very frustrating to try and buy coins, view auction lots, answer emails, make phone calls and more - often all at once. I can’t ever remember a time when I’ve had to work harder to buy!

I arrived in Chicago on Tuesday and began buying literally as soon as my plane touched the ground. Wednesday was PNG Day which meant that only a limited number of the table holders could set up. I got to wear some spiffy clothes and I got to focus exclusively on wholesale business which, for better or worse, is what shows are really about right now (I’ll explain a little bit more about this statement in a second).

There were a few very interesting deals that broke at the show. I was able to buy some nice early gold coins from an outstanding collection of pre-1834 gold that a West Coast dealer was selling. This was the sort of deal that usually sells at auction (all the coins were in old holders and many were significantly undergraded) and I believe that virtually the entire deal sold to the first three or four people who viewed it. I also heard about a neat collection of Bust Quarters by die variety that sold (I was able to buy a few leftovers from the dealers who handled it) and I was impressed that the collector who owned it didn’t place it in auction. (more…)

The 69th annual Central States Numismatic Society convention will be held in Rosemont, Illinois this week. What’s the buzz surrounding this show and are coin dealers excited about attending it?

I regard the Central States show as one of the better coin conventions of the year. It’s not quite at the Summer ANA or FUN levels in terms of attendance or importance but I’d rank it up in the second tier along with the Baltimore shows, Long Beach and one or two others. Most dealers I know like this show and approach it with a good degree of enthusiasm.

I think this will be a good CSNS show for a variety of reasons. The first is the location. Chicago is traditionally a good coin show town and the convenience factor of Rosemont (which is about five minutes from O’Hare airport by cab) makes this a much better venue than some of the more recent Central States shows. Secondly, most coin dealers have not been to a major show since Baltimore in early March. Being home for over a month means that there will be a good deal of pent-up demand for coins. The third reason is that the coin market remains strong and this includes a better precious metals market than at any Central States show since the early 1980’s.

I go to coin shows primarily to buy and, as usual, I’m hoping that I can uncover a few interesting coins on the bourse floor at Central States. I’ve spoken with many of my suppliers and while no one is holding a collection of Carson City eagles in first generation PCGS holders for me, I think a few neat items may come out of the woodwork. (more…)

Compared to some other countries, the United States uses bills rather than coins for relatively small denominations. The smallest Euro bill is for 5 Euros (approximately $8) and the smallest British bill is for 5 pounds (approximately $10). However, even through there have been several attempts to introduce a $1 coin — and starting last year, the U.S. mint has issued new one dollar coins — a very large (76% to 13%) majority of the public prefers a dollar bill to a coin.

Another idea that has been proposed from time to time has been the abolition of the penny. By more than a two-to-one majority (56% to 24%) most people oppose this idea also.

These are some of the results from the latest Harris Poll of 2,513 adults surveyed online between March 11 and 18, 2008 by Harris Interactive®.

While there is a strong reluctance to abolish the penny or to use $1 coins, a large majority (68% to 16%) is in favor of using more colors in bills of different denominations to make it easier to tell them apart. This is, of course, normal practice in many other countries, but until recently all U.S. currency bills in all denominations were green.

Other interesting findings in this Harris Poll include:

* While majorities of people of all ages want to keep the penny, support for abolishing it is much stronger among the more affluent and weaker among people with lower incomes. Only 16 percent of people with household incomes of less than $35,000 favor abolishing the penny, compared to 32 percent of people with household incomes of $75,000 or more;

* Also, men are much more in favor of abolishing the penny than women are (34% versus 14%). This probably has something to do with carrying change in a pocket compared to in a purse. Yet, almost one in five men (18%) say they would prefer a $1 coin compared to just 8 percent of women;

* Only 25 percent of adults have seen one of the new $1 coins even though they have been in circulation since 2007. Four coins were issued that year and four more are being issued each year until each US president is depicted on a coin

* These coins seem to be less used in the East than in other regions as just 19 percent of Easterners have seen one. (more…)

By David Owen in The New Yorker

Several years ago, Walter Luhrman, a metallurgist in southern Ohio, discovered a copper deposit of tantalizing richness. North America’s largest copper mine—a vast open-pit complex in Arizona—usually has to process a ton of ore in order to produce ten pounds of pure copper; Luhrman’s mine, by contrast, yielded the same ten pounds from just thirty or forty pounds of ore. Luhrman operated profitably until mid-December, 2006, when the federal government shut him down.

The copper deposit that Luhrman worked wasn’t in the ground; it was in the storage vaults of Federal Reserve banks, and, indirectly, in the piggy banks, coffee cans, automobile ashtrays, and living-room upholstery of ordinary Americans. A penny minted before 1982 is ninety-five per cent copper—which, at recent prices, is approximately two and a half cents’ worth. Luhrman, who had previously owned a company that refined gold and silver, devised a method of rapidly separating pre-1982 pennies from more recent ones, which are ninety-seven and a half per cent zinc, a less valuable commodity. His new company, Jackson Metals, bought truckloads of pennies from the Federal Reserve, turned the copper ones into ingots, and returned the zinc ones to circulation in cities where pennies were scarce. “Doing that prevented the U.S. Mint from having to make more pennies,” Luhrman told me recently. “Isn’t that neat?” The Mint didn’t think so; it issued a rule prohibiting the melting or exportation of one-cent and five-cent coins. (Nickels, despite their silvery appearance, are seventy-five per cent copper.) Read Full New Yorker Article

I’ve been helping a collector sell his holdings over the past few months and he recently made an observation that really hit home. How, he wondered, could nice quality genuinely scarce United States gold coins stay so flat in price over the past decade when the price of gold itself has tripled?

Many people are quick to blame the grading services for this problem. On more than one occasion I’ve pointed out that certain issues, like slightly better date Saints, have actually lost value in this great metals market because grading standards have been lax. But I don’t think that’s the real problem.

If I had to point my finger at THE single glaring problem in the coin market, it’s price reporting. It’s ironic that even with the advent of the Internet and the access to umpteen thousand prices realized at auction, the basic premise of price reporting is based on sight unseen coin trading; a premise that reeks of pre-Internet days.

Editors Note: See Doug’s new article on “How To Price Very Rare Coins”
Courtesy of Doug Winter and RareGoldCoins.com

I’ve explained how the Coin Dealer Newsletter works (or doesn’t work) before and don’t want to rehash old information. But I think something that is important to remember about why this system is so antiquated and so in need of a fix is that every time one low end coin trades (via CCE or at auction) there is the very real possibility that all examples of a specific series have their price levels dragged down with it. The whole system is just plain silly.

In the area of rare date gold we have the issue of sporadic price updating. As an example, prices of many scarce and popular New Orleans gold coins have stayed exactly the same as they were five (or even ten) years ago despite continual increases at public auction. I can give you dozens and dozens of examples but here is one that sticks out to me. The 1883-O eagle has a Trends value of $9,000 in EF45. If I’m not mistaken, this is exactly what it’s been for the past seven or eight years. Yet if you look at auction prices for this coin, you can see that an undamaged 1883-O in EF45 hasn’t been available in EF45 since the Knicks were a dominant NBA team (that would be back in the 1990’s for the non-basketball fans reading this blog…). (more…)