Coin News for February 3, 2010

By Tim Shuck on Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Filed Under: Coin News Daily

Australian Tax Office Commemorative
Royal Australian Mint
The Royal Australian Mint will produce a circulating commemorative 20 cent coin to mark the Centenary of the Australian Taxation Office in 2010, the Assistant Treasurer, Senator Nick Sherry, announced today. The Tax Office has launched its Centenary celebrations by outlining the course of special events across the year ahead, culminating in the ATO’s 100th birthday on 11 November and celebrations on 12 November.
[ Read Full Article]

Counterfeit vs. Authentic 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cents
PCGS Library
The 1909-S VDB Lincoln has always been the key date coin in the entire Lincoln cent series, and it remains one of the most popular coins in numismatics. Since the 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent has always been highly desired among collectors, it is notorious for attracting counterfeiters. There are many fake 1909-S VDB Lincoln cents out there in the market and at PCGS, we have seen many different types of fakes.
[ Read Full Article]

How Do You Depict a Park on a Coin?
Numismaster
The very features American parks have in common – mountains, streams, meadows – make them difficult to distinguish on coins. That’s what the Commission of Fine Arts is wrestling with as it recommends designs for the 2011 coins in the “America the Beautiful quarter series.
[ Read Full Article]

Gold … Real Money
PCGS
Investor/hedge fund manager extraordinaire George Soros recently called gold an “asset bubble.” While I certainly feel Soros is a very smart guy, I’m really certain he got this one wrong. I think he’s implying that gold is overpriced, but in my opinion he’s making the same mistake everyone makes when talking about gold. He’s measuring gold in terms of the value of gold in U.S. dollars as if the U.S. dollar was …what an appropriate term…the “gold standard” of value. To me this is backwards thinking. The issue for me isn’t the price of gold in U.S. dollars, but the value of the U.S. dollar in terms of gold.
[ Read Full Article]

The Jefferson-In-Space Museum
Jefferson-In-Space
What you are about to experience is arguably one of the world’s most complete collection of space flown U.S. $2 bills in existence. Since Gordon Cooper carried only one such bill aboard his historic MA-9 flight, this collection is the only one of its kind in the world, and can not be duplicated. Many of the bills are of extremely small populations — in some cases as few as 5 or 10, or as many as only 50. For numismatists and paper currency collectors, these are very small numbers indeed.
[ Read Full Article]

High Quality Counterfeit Banknotes Found in Japan
Mainichi Daily News
Some 60 counterfeit bills have been found in four prefectures in Tohoku this week, it has been learned. The high-quality fake 10,000 yen bills turned up in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures between Monday and Friday. They were slightly redder than normal bills and had no watermarks. However, an expert says the quality could indicate the involvement of professional counterfeiters.
[ 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.