By Greg Reynolds for CoinLink

In the history of coin collecting in the U.S., most of the greatest all-time collections were characterized by many coins with attractive, natural toning, especially including many coins that had never been cleaned, dipped or otherwise deliberately modified. I have personally and carefully inspected a substantial percentage of the coins in the Eliasberg, Norweb, and Pittman collections. Further, I have seen a significant number of the naturally toned coins that were previously in the Garrett family and James A. Stack collections. Most of the very scarce or moderately rare coins from these collections that brought surprisingly high prices at auction, and generated the most enthusiasm among collectors, are those that have (or then had) natural toning and/or mostly original surfaces. Over a period of more than 125 years, sophisticated collectors in the U.S. have tended to strongly prefer naturally toned coins.

Currently, three of the most sophisticated collectors who are widely recognized are Dr. Steven Duckor, Stewart Blay and Jay Brahin. Considerable information regarding their collecting accomplishments is found in the PCGS registry. While Jay is more of a specialist in early 20th century gold coins, Blay and Dr. Duckor have built phenomenal collections in several areas. Not all of their coins are listed in the PCGS registry. Most sophisticated, advanced collectors have similar sentiments and a preference for natural toning. Many of them, however, wish to remain anonymous and thus will not be mentioned. Duckor, Blay and Brahin are all very much willing to share their knowledge with the coin collecting community.

Mark Hagen is another collector who is willing to share with the collecting community. He has been collecting coins for over forty years. I have seen him at many auctions. Further, he reports that he attended the Norweb, Eliasberg and Pittman auctions and ALL of the FUN and ANA Platinum night sales. Indeed, Mark has “been to over one hundred major auctions over the past twenty-five years” and he has “seen most of the classic rarities and gem type coins that have sold at public auction over that period.”

Hagen observes that “there are a lot of artificially toned coins on the market.” Further, Mark laments that “in addition to those that have been recolored, thousands of rare coins have been dipped; the number of original coins is getting smaller every year.” On this issue, Jay Brahin agrees with Hagen.

“To the eye of a true collector, originality is more important than shiny,” declares Brahin. “Natural toning is a testament to the age and natural process that the coin has gone through. What makes antiques appealing is their antiqueness, a normal aging process of the items. The natural aging of a relic attests to its authenticity. If you saw an 18th century original document that was a bright manila white, you would realize that something is wrong with it. You would expect an old document to show natural signs of aging. If you see an 18th century silver coin that is bright white, it is suspect; or if it has bright purple toning, it means something is wrong.”
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By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

This has been one of the “driest” times in the coin market that I can recall in terms of availability. While I have bought and sold some pretty remarkable coins so far in 2009, it has been a source of wonderment to me how few choice, interesting pieces have been available this year. And I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Why is this?

I’m not certain that there is a “right” answer to this question. Being a serious ruminator, I have thought a bit about this and have some suggestions as to why we are currently experiencing the Great Coin Famine of 2009.

1. Large numbers of coins have been conserved, dipped, processed and generally monkeyed around with in the past few years. In fact, I think the number of coins that have gone from choice and original to bright-n-shiny (or, at the very worst, from decent to ugly) is far greater than anyone realizes. You know how you read the depressing articles in the newspaper where they tell you the number of Sumatran tigers in the wild has suddenly dropped to fewer than 100 because of aggressive deforestation? I think we have seen a similar situation happen with many series of U.S. coins. Really nice coins that were once accepted as being relatively available aren’t as available anymore because most of the “nice coins” aren’t so nice anymore.

2. Good coins are in strong hands and now that the economy seems to be better than it was in September 2008, people aren’t panic sellers anymore. Let me expand this thought. After people’s stock portfolios dropped dramatically in late 2008, you saw some collectors (primarily newer ones) quickly and dramatically sell large portions of their collections. But many of the collectors who had been in the coin market for a longer period of time did not panic and did not sell. (They may not have been actively buying, either, preferring to be in a “hold” position…) A year later, many of these individuals have seen their stocks rise and they are no longer feeling as worried about their investment as before. In my experience, the strong collectors of pre-2008 are more active than they were six months to a year ago and this has taken more nice coins off the market.

3. The market for nice coins is broader than most people imagine. Because of the Internet, there are more people selling more coins to more collectors. That’s not even mentioning the incredible growth of Heritage and Ebay in the last five years; two firms that have the ability to sell a tremendous amount of coins.
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