Sick to my Stomach

jaceravone · 10-11-2009, 04:56 PM

A friend of mine asked me to go through her coin collection and see what she had. She wanted to know if there was anything of value. Besides having an interest in horses and buying every horse coin she found on ebay, she has a very nice small collection of coins. She has nearly every single proof ASE and a bunch of bullion ASEs. She at one time had a complete set of bullion ASEs, but her husband took them in the divorce. She also has some nice modern commemorative coins from the 1990's plus some nice 1oz AGEs. She has some Morgans and some other random US coins that she picked up here and there.

All her foreign coins have horses on them, so as you can imagine, whenever there was a Year of the Horse coin, she bought it. Fortunately for her, she bought a bunch of 1/10oz and 1/2 oz and 1oz gold coins from Australia and China. If nothing else, she has the gold in them. And to think, she got some of them for really good deals. She kept the receipts to some of them and I noted anywhere between $450-600 for 1 oz gold Australian and Chinese coins!

But what made me sick to my stomach was that she bought 5....and I repeat 5....copies of the St. Gaudens $20 gold piece.

I don't know how much she spent on them, but they are the ones that are layered with "pure" 24kt gold. She thought that they were solid gold coins. I told her that you get what you paid for and in this case you got less. I told her not to buy any more coins without at least consulting with me first. Oh well, you live and learn. Fortunately, they all say copy......or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it!

Overall, she has a nice little collection and for someone with absolutely no experience she did good.

mark_h · 10-11-2009, 07:58 PM

Only 5 coins were bad? Sounds like if nothing else she has a lot of bullion that would more than make up for those 5 - I guess depending on what she paid. I think it was good advice to ask you first about coins off ebay and I hope that does not cause problems in the future - especially if you have to tell her "no it is a bad deal", eventually she just might ignore you. Still I think she has a good start on collecting moderns. So how many Kentucky and Nevada quarters did she have?

mralexanderb · 10-11-2009, 08:50 PM

Well it seems that she bought some gold and silver bullion coins when gold was about $450-$600 per oz. I would say she's done pretty well since gold is over $1000/oz. Too bad she lost the ASE collection in the divorce, but often times you lose it all one way or another.

At least she has some nice coins and a good friend to rely on for coin advice. Now that is a nice collection, for starters.

Bruce

jaceravone · 10-11-2009, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark_h

So how many Kentucky and Nevada quarters did she have?

You don't want to know! She had bags of these from Littleton. Seems like she bought this stuff in multiples of 5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mralexanderb

Well it seems that she bought some gold and silver bullion coins when gold was about $450-$600 per oz. I would say she's done pretty well since gold is over $1000/oz. Too bad she lost the ASE collection in the divorce, but often times you lose it all one way or another.
Bruce

She bought these coins between 2006-2008. So whatever gold was at that time.

I will take credit for getting her into coins. She was my business partner at one time and she would see me jump on ebay all the time and bid on coins. Since she like horses, she thought she would buy some coins with horses on them. I knew she had been buying coins, but I didn't realize how much until she dumped the two boxes on me. She bought the coins as part investment and part interest in coins. Since her divorce and separation from our company, she has not been collecting coins and probably won't any more. I am compiling an inventory of her stuff along with pricing so if she decides to sell without me around, she will know what to ask.