Coin Collecting News

Washington- An Ohio metal company is banking on a change in federal law to make a pretty penny off the lowly 1-cent piece.

Jackson Metals believes it can make a profit and save the U.S. Mint more than $18 million annually through a plan to sift through roughly 5 billion pennies a year and cull high-copper-content coins made before 1982 whose components are worth 1.7 cents.

The firm in Jackson County, south of Columbus, would like to melt those older pennies and sell the metal to companies that make brass products like doorknobs and plumbing fixtures. Read Full Story

Bull markets are supposed to make investors feel good. But the hot market in gold this year has an aura of dread about it.

The yellow metal is nearing a lofty $850 an ounce, a height not seen for almost 28 years.

That has triggered primal fears on Wall Street. If investors are turning back to this ancient form of money, one implication is that they’re losing faith in the modern financial system.

Indeed, the higher gold goes, Bill Roberts of Westchester says he can’t help but see a deepening message of doom.

The dollar is sinking, banks are reeling from soaring mortgage defaults and the stock market is tumbling anew. With that backdrop, Roberts says he’s happy that he has most of his investment portfolio in shares of gold-mining firms. Read Full Story

Three weeks after the board of the American Numismatic Association dismissed its executive director, Christopher Cipoletti, the federally chartered group for 32,000 collectors of coins and paper money still is stinging from the aftermath of concentrated executive power.

Before being terminated, Cipoletti, an employment attorney, had two jobs at the Colorado Springs-based nonprofit organization. He was executive director since 2003 and had served as general counsel since 1998, advising the board and the organization on legal matters. He also retained outside clients. Until Dec. 31, 2006, he was general counsel for the Pikes Peak Library District, spokeswoman Danielle Oller said.

More than two years ago, he persuaded the board to join him in filing a lawsuit in 4th Judicial District Court against three former employees and a computer consultant and his company. Among the complaints are civil theft of business property, breach of loyalty to the association, conspiracy and “intentional infliction of emotional distress by outrageous conduct.” The association hired a Denver law firm, Davis Graham & Stubbs, to represent the co-plaintiffs Read Full Story

NGC has just certified a gold medal flown aboard the Apollo 16 moon mission. This Robbins Medal is pedigreed to Apollo 16 lunar module pilot, Charles M. Duke, Jr., the tenth man to have walked on the moon. While a number of medals have been flown on space missions, this is one of only two Apollo 16 gold medals, documented thus far, to have gone in the lunar module to the moon’s surface. It has been graded MS 65 by NGC.

The Robbins Company privately struck medals as mementos for the astronauts to take aboard their missions into space and they were not originally intended for a wider audience. Robbins began this medal series, often simply referred to as “Robbins Space Medals” in 1968 to commemorate Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission. Since then, they have been issued for all manned space missions without interruption. The medals have been struck for all Apollo, Skylab, Soyuz, Space Shuttle, International Space Station stints and long duration space stays. Most were struck in high relief, and depict the mission emblem and crew member names on the obverse and launch, landed and return dates on the reverse. Read Full Story