I just bought a coin that very few of you would have bought

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Nice buy! The hole is in a good spot also. Do you know why people did this for sure or just form stories? Also, any coins with square nail holes in your collection?

 

Well, I know Captain Ahab nailed a Spanish sovereign to a mast and exhorted his sailors that the one who gets the white whale will get the coin. Must've been a lot of collectors on the Pequod, because they seemed pretty excited.

 

I believe in the movie he says "Spanish ounce." I tried to verify this on YouTube. You'd think such a famous scene would be all over Youtube. Oh, no. But we do have several dozen Internet philophers who will be happy to explain the symbology of it. Yeah thanks youtube for making something simple into an ordeal.

 

Impressive. By my books you have a $350 dollar hole. james

 

Nice.

My favorite holed coin was purchased cheaply is this one..

 

I think it's pretty cool that ICG will holder coins such as this. They will even do some counterfeits. I hope you leave it in the holder, Rob.

 

I just read some of the novel's passages on the Interwebbie. Melville called it a doubloon when talking about it. Ahab called it a gold ounce after nailing it to the mast:
"Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw, he shall have this gold ounce my boys."

 

When I had a holed coin I needed authenticated, I found to my surprise that ANACS at that time would not grade holed coins, but PCGS would. I think ANACS may have resumed accepting them for grading now.

I very much prefer ICG's approach of "slab any coin, but clearly indicate what it is and what problems (if any) it has".

 

TPG's will slab a ghost turd as long as you send a check with it.

 

I hear you OP, many collectors have been taught how a hole simply makes a coin completely uncollectible. Kind of silly. I prefer coins without holes, but own many nice coins with holes since I simply could not find one without one at the time. Ancients may be different in that many coins are not available at any price many times, and when you come across one with a hole that is your only chance to own it.

The only gold Eide Mar that is legal to own has a hole in it. I do not know many ancient collectors who would pass that up. That coin is actually a very nice, high grade barber half, at the correct price nothing wrong with that.

 

I see so many coins with holes when I'm looking through bins at my LCS and it always makes me so mad how many good coins are ruined. I guess I should think of you when I see them.

 

Nice coin and great display @lordmarcovan. If anyone said to me 5 years ago I would have bought a holed coin I would have called them crazy! Since that time I have bought a number of holed Spanish Colonial coins and had a discussion about them at the 1715 Fleet Convention. There are different opinions as always and these include smaller denominations were paid to natives and lower paid workers who either had no clothes or no pockets in their clothes so hanging coins on string was a convenient way to keep them safe. Another reason was to show off wealth and yet another was to bunch certain values for innumerate.
There are some holed coins in this group.