Legend Numismatics is proud to announce the outright purchase of the Brian Sonnier Collection of colored dollars and CC GSA coins.

Brian is a long time collector (known to many as GSAGUY). You may have seen him set up at shows back in the early to mid 90’s to just display his coins.

He started his work on this incredible collection over 20 years ago. It did not matter whether it was a colored Morgan or a 91CC GSA, he had to have the best and wildest looking. The results are mind-boggling.

This collection blows away ALL other colored dollar sets that we have ever seen (yes, this collection in some ways is wilder than Sunnywood). There is every type of ORIGINAL coloration pattern. The colors mimic the wildest brightest rainbows-and yes, there are tons of reds and greens.

This was not a collection assembled overnight. Major collections were cherry picked, every auction was checked out, and he had several dealers always “on the hunt” so he could get the best of the best colored coins.

Unlike recent major colored collections to have hit the market, these coins are NOT near color misses or watered down grade wise. They also are not over graded as 95% of the collection was raw! And we did pay well in excess of $10,000.00 for more than one 80S-82S $1!!!!!!!!!

A small portion of his CC GSA collection was purchased in partnership with long time CC dealer Doug Sharpe (Aspen Rare Coins) of Sarasota Florida.

Doug as well has known Brian for many years. Since GSA’s were not our strong point, we knew Doug was the right dealer to assist us. As for the remainder of the CC’s, Brian loves them too much wanted to happily keep that part of his collection (believe us, we tried hard to buy them).

We thank Brian for keeping his promise to us over the years. Sitting at his dinning room table, the negotiations took minutes. It was tough for him to sell, but he knows the coins are going to be placed in the best homes. We have not stopped drooling and looking at the coins! Every single coin is a memorable MONSTER!

Additional Images and availability can be found on the Legend Numismatics Website

By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

THE SHOW

We can never stop telling all our friends who read this what a terrific job Mary Counts, David Chrenshaw and team do. Every show there is something new and improved. If you can’t make an ANA or FUN, the Baltimore Shows are a must attend!

We’d also like to thank everyone who stopped by to see the display of a few treats from the amazing Brian Sonnier Collection of colored dollars.

ACTIVITY

This is tricky. Legend did extremely well, but we set no records (although we did sell a big coin for a record price, see below). One thing we never felt was a true “flow”. We spoke to other dealers who had great shows, and some dealers who did miserable. So we will term the overall show as “hit or miss”.

Activity prior to the show in the hotels was extremely strong. Gold was up and the crack out genius’ and others were hot to buy the cheaper gold. However, unlike previous runs, they were not purchasing bigger gold coins (they would however call their customers and easily pre-sell many bigger coins). They just wanted generics. Our sales were a little sluggish prior to the show opening. It stunned us as we had just come from record sales back in our office.

When the show actually started (dealer set up), there was little to no buzz. Its not that dealers weren’t sure of the levels, it was more like everyone was too cautious for one reason or another. But, dealers did want to do business. Probably the biggest problem (something which is usually not recognized until later) was little there was to buy on the floor and the auctions. The services weren’t making much either. So anything really nice and fresh, sold immediately for a big premium while everything else sat around.

The public attendance was strong, but they did not seem to be buying heavy. Most just wanted to look around and collect information.

Through out the entire show, we were busy selling many McClaren coins. On the floor, our stealth sales team (lead by a dealer we will call the Energizer Bunny because he keeps going and going….) did very well. Of course the cheaper the prices, the more sales the crew did. We were VERY surprised to see the amount of mid range Type ($4,000-$10,000.00) they sold. Even though at the hotels Gold was in demand, our stealth team sold more silver Type, with Walkers being next on the list.

Each day we walked the entire bourse floor to see if anything new surfaced. On Friday, we only spent $8,000.00! There was NOTHING for us! This Baltimore show was Legends WORST buying show EVER!!! We’re not going to change our standards to fill our cases or put inferior dreck on our web site. (more…)

By laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

The following is a portion of Legend Numismatics Market Report………

“Its drives us nuts when we read the misinformation from a bunch of “know it alls” on chat rooms who think they have collective power in the marketplace. Here is why they are aren’t even a pimple:

Heritage Rare Coin Auctions (the worlds largest) and Blanchard and Co (the worlds largest telemarketer of coins) combined we believe have OVER 250,000 UNIQUE active collectors on their lists. Both of them do heavy marketing to the outside world. Both of them are helping to continually expand the rare coin market. There are several other huge telemarketers who do substantial business-but we just wanted to point out how big these two in particular are.

There is also a little thing that Al Gore created: the Internet. That has to be good for over 1 million plus people buying rare coins in some fashion. There are hundreds of coin companies they can go to. There are several places they can now find to help them learn about coins. Even though it is a dangerous pit, Ebay is probably still one of the largest entry points to the coin market.

When Legend comes home from a major show, we know that between 10,000 and 25,000 UNIQUE visitors check out our web site the first week. We have been steadily gaining new customers-and lately we have seen a small wave of people brand new to coins who want to spend big (like the collector who bought the Eliasberg $20 1927D PCGS MS66 from us in December). These people have money and they want to put it in something solid. For many reasons, coins fit the bill. Our customer base numbers in the THOUSANDS. We are not out to be the biggest retailer. The way we operate, supply would inhibit us anyway.

We chatted with a real billionaire at FUN about the market. He had been seriously thinking about putting $50,000,000.00 million in. In the end, he knew he could not buy the coins he wanted. A number I like that would have driven prices up dramatically overnight-just by word of mouth that someone is trying to spend a huge amount. We have been telling everyone how we know of a few seriously big monied players who are slinking around today looking to buy “big game” rarities. The collector who we purchased the other $20 1927D PCGS MS66 (FUN Auction) for $1,495,000.00 did so because he thinks its cheap. After he bought it he asked us: “got anything else?”. If we could find the coins we could sell $10,000,000.00+ instantly and easily. (more…)