Coin News for February 20, 2010

By Tim Shuck on Saturday, February 20, 2010
Filed Under: Coin News Daily

IMF Gold Sale Will Likely Backfire on US Government
Coin Update
After the COMEX closed on Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a statement that it would sell the remaining 191.3 tons (6.15 million ounces) out of its original 13 million ounce gold sale to “the market.” Last year, the initial gold sales were made “off-market” to the central banks of India, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka. In response to this announcement, the price of gold initially fell sharply, as much as $24 from the COMEX close. During COMEX trading yesterday, as investors had time to digest the impact of this development, prices recovered lost ground. There are several implications about the nature and timing of this announcement that actually bode well for rising gold prices in the short as well as long term.
[ Read Full Article]

Close the Denver Mint?
Dave Harper’s Buzz
With coin demand at what seems to be a new permanent low plateau of around three billion pieces a year, the U.S. Mint faces the choice of what to do with all of its production capacity and employees. Is it time to do the unthinkable and close the Denver Mint? Philadelphia alone can produce more than enough coins to keep an adequate supply going under present conditions. That, of course, is the key phrase: present conditions.
[ Read Full Article]

Moravia Celebrates Fillmore Coin Release
The Citizen
With close to 1,000 witnesses watching, a young Millard Fillmore impersonator and his equally sprite make-believe wife Abigail poured from a wooden bucket a stream of coins bearing the face of the 13th president and Moravia native. Fillmore, at a ceremony in the Moravia Junior Senior School cafeteria, which was not large enough to accommodate the crowd of community members who had come to celebrate a president whose national legacy is not legendary, but whose roots are their roots. “This is a grand, grand event,” Moravia Mayor Gary Mulvaney said, as he waited in a line that started at the cafeteria doors and wound through the school.
[ Read Full Article]

Numbers Point to Melting of 1873-CC Dollars
Numismaster
The precise number of 1873-CC dollars to reach circulation is not known. Certainly the total was not large as is seen in the G-4 price of $6,000 today, and that price rises to $48,500 in AU-50. It lists for $225,000 in MS-63 and $625,000 in MS-65. The high prices suggest that something went wrong with the mintage as the 1873-CC is more expensive than the 1,376 mintage 1871-CC in every grade.
[ Read Full Article]

Keep Your Coins Out of the Piggy Bank, BSP Pleads
ABS CBN News
Feeding a piggy bank with loose change may have been considered a Filipino’s practical way to save, but the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said this old-age practice may not be doing the overall economy any good. In a press conference on Friday, BSP deputy governor Diwa Guinigundo said keeping coins in piggy banks, or unconsciously not using them for daily spending needs, creates an artificial shortage of coins. An artificial shortage—also called warehousing in industry lingo—forces the central bank to plug the gap, which means additional costs.
[ Read Full Article]

Do Coin Collectors Care About the Archaeology of Cyprus?
PR Newswire
After failing to achieve its aims in the FOIA case, the ACCG has now apparently decided to challenge the MOU with Cyprus in a provocative legal case. The ACCG’s officers and its legal team have failed to recognise that this sends out a clear signal to the rest of the world: some coin-collectors would rather put the acquisition of coins before the preservation and protection of the finite archaeological record.
[ Read Full Article]

About the Author

Tim Shuck is a life-long Midwestern resident, and started collecting coins after finding an Indian Head cent on the ground at his childhood farm home. Additional encouragement came from looking through a collection of well-worn late 19th and early 20th century coins kept by his grandfather in an old leather coin purse. Current collecting interests include U.S. types from the Civil War era through the early 1930's, and Colonial and Early American coins.