Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i COINage

Do you bid in auctions for coins or bank notes? Multi-million dollar “trophy” coins and notes make big headlines, but there also are thousands of lower-priced items offered in auctions every week for the “average” collector to consider. Bidding in auctions is fun, but you need to plan ahead. My first winning bid, for a Colonial era 1787 Connecticut copper coin, was an enjoyable experience. It was the late 1970s and after carefully reading the printed auction catalog and viewing the photos, I submitted my bid by mail. (Yes, it was long before the internet changed the world of collecting and just about everything else.) A few weeks later I was notified I not only won the bid but I got the coin for a little less than my offer…

On November 14, 2018, silver slipped below $14 per ounce to close at $13.97 in London. During intra-day trading, silver reached a low of $13.82. Now, with silver prices over a dollar above those November lows, we could be at the beginning of another major bull market in silver over the next three to five years. The last century has seen three dramatic surges and retreats in the price of silver. This could be the start of the fourth cycle. (1) First, silver rose from $0.50 to $1.34 during and just after World War I, followed by a collapse to $0.25 in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. (2) Then came a long 200-fold price increase from $0.25 to $50 in the next 48 years, from 1932 to…

ART MEDAL COMPETITION Remembering Women’s Suffrage The American Medallic Sculpture Association (AMSA) is holding a special art medal competition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States in 2020. The competition is open to paid-up members of AMSA. The winner will receive a $300 prize. All entries will be featured early in 2020 in the AMSA publication and on the AMSA website. Included with each entry will be the specifications, edition sizes, prices, and ordering information, so that medals may be ordered directly from the medalists beginning early in 2020. AMSA asks entrants to indicate this information, along with their mailing address, email and PayPal information. Submissions for medals to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, produced in 2019, should be…

Virtually every collector dreams of owning rare trophy coins worth millions of dollars like the 1804 Draped Bust dollar or 1913 Liberty nickel. And for those relative few who can actually afford to spend big money on small coins, the question arises as to whether or not those pieces make solid financial investments. While the answer may seem like an obvious “yes,” the reality is actually much more complicated and, sometimes, can even lead to disappointing results. What does this mixed bag of investment fortune look like? How well have the investment stars shined on several of the trophy coins – multi-million-dollar rarities – to have crossed the block in the recent past? Several high-priced rarities have made their rounds at the big auction houses in the last few years.…

Completion of a collection of $2-1/2 Indian Head gold coins poses no challenge to the well-resourced collector. Even to the collector on a more limited budget, a set is completely doable, with the 1911-D the only true challenge of the set one might have to save up for at the end. A $5 Indian collection poses a couple of additional challenges. Notably, the 1909-O, 1911-D, and 1929 are all tremendously coveted dates. The 1909-O, even in the lowest grades, can trade for thousands of dollars, and the 1929 is virtually impossible to obtain beneath a $20,000 figure sum unless you somehow stumbled upon a very well-circulated example somewhere on the market. $2.5 and $5 Indians seem like a smart buy at today’s levels, and the pieces tell a story from…