Purchasing Coins with Pedigree

What do Coin Talk members think about the SS Central America shipwreck coins?
Has anyone bought one?

 

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I once passed on a graded Buffalo with a Bill Fivaz pedigree. Common date, but double the price for the pedigree.

The only pedigree I would pay a premium for is an Elisaberg coin, if I could find one that I could afford, that is.

 

Pedigrees are sometimes like people. Snobby and more high maintenance than their worth. In coins this means that some provenences are more worthwhile to go after than others. Or you can start making your own 'provenance' and make it more worthwhile to others by going only after really worthwhile coins. Learn and find them.

But if you want to make it your niche, you might look at how others are doing the same thing and see how you can differentiate yourself from the pack. Here's an article you should read. https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/ancient-coin-provenance-discovery-tool/

 

...or dead!

 

Time is on your side!

 

I have not bought one, but I think it would be cool to own one. I mean, just being able to hold in your hands actual money that went down with a ship and then was there for many years.

 

Think of all the stories of people who worked their lives away at mediocre sounding jobs (ones that may not really pay a lot, but do pay more than minimum wage) who die and then it is found that they are leaving millions of their dollars they saved to charity. Also, many times when an immigrant family comes to the US, they live together and all work at whatever they can get. They become or are just extremely frugal (meaning they save nearly everything they get) and combine it to fund some business if they can, then work that until they can get separate homes or more education or better paying jobs.

Not a lot of fun because you do without a lot, but it is one way to accumulate. It can be done. Basically, work hard, look at your lifestyle and see what you should do without and go from there. BTW, I give great advice but am very poor at following this. In otherwords, I did not do this.

 

I agree with those who say they would not pay extra for a pedigree.

But, I do not mind having a coin with a pedigree if the pedigree comes at no extra cost.

This was the case for this 1795 Half Cent which I bought at the Sale of the Norweb Collection in 1988.
The Norwebs put together one of the Legendary numismatic collections of American numismatics. Their collection contained hundreds of the greatest rarities in American numismatics. It was sold in 3 separate sales in 1988 by B&M.

The sale contained so many high value high grade coins that even I managed to successfully bid on 3 coins which the big guys overlook. The price was very reasonable (I was really surprised).

This 1795 Half Cent was acquired into the Norweb collection in 1909 from the Chapman brothers. They were one of the major US dealers around the turn of the century.

 

I wouldn't give an extra 2 cents for most pedigrees...ie, those coins traced to collectors such as Eliasberg or Green who simply because they had more money than anyone else could buy anything they wanted without doing any research themselves.

On the other hand, I am proud to own coins from the collections of people like Al Overton, Russ Logan, Edgar Sounders, or John McCloskey who actually wrote the books on their series.

 

Not all coins with awesome histories need to cost a lot or look very nice. Here’s an example of a raw coin that has barely its melt value and would doubtfully sell unless NGC gave it some fancy label.



Even so, I have told my grandfather in law that whatever he does with his coin collection when he passes, to please only give me that one coin.

http://www.winsociety.org/newsletter/vol-7/philippine-peso.html

 

I have one, one of the few silver pieces that came up from the first recovery expedition, now I want on of the dimes.

I will pay more for a pedigree, if I feel it is from an important collection. It is worth it to me for the connection to the history of the previous collectors and their collections. I have a few pieces that can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century and they have been in several major and famous collections, and now they are in mine. I have a piece from the Dan Holmes collection. Dan assembled the most complete set ever of early US large cents. ALL of the varieties except one which is unique and premanently impounded in the ANS collection. The last piece he acquired that allowed him to reach that milestone was an 1803 S-158. When his set was sold I bid that coin to five times catalog.....and lost. About two years later it came back on the market and I got it, for six times catalog. To me that is a piece of EAC history. I have several Conder tokens from major collections going back well over a hundred and forty years. But three pieces I am very proud of. On of the major manufacturers of these tokens was Matthew Boulton and James Watt. They each had a collection of the tokens they produced. Those tokens stayed in the Boulton and Watt collections until the families sold them in the late 1990's. I have two pieces from Bouton's collection and one from Watt's. In 230 years they have been in two collections, the manufacturer's and mine.

As for how to get pedigree coins cheaper, you can go for some of the lessor pedigrees, or some of the more common coins from the major pedigrees. And in general don't buy them directly from the sale of the major collection. A great many from a major pedigreed collection sell much cheaper later after the hype of the sale is over. There are many Eric Newman coins that can be purchased now for less, sometimes significantly less, that what they sold for in his sales. Same thing goes for Eliasberg. I have one Eliasberg coin. he is best know for his US collection, but he also had a collection of foreign gold coins. I have one of those. And it also comes with a rare NGC photocertificate. His foreign gold was not slabbed. Instead NGC produced photocertifcates of them. These were the only photocertificates they had ever done. There were only about 770 coins in the collection, and the certificate did NOT carry the NGC guarantee. BUT after the sale if you returned the coin and the certificate to NGC they would slab the coin and then it would be covered by the guarantee. the photography on the certificates was not very good and most of them found their way back to NGC for slabbing. I doubt if more than 100 still exist.

If all you care about is the value of the coin then no you aren't going to care about a pedigree. But if the stories and history behind certain pieces is of interest, pedigree does have a value. At least I think so.

 

Do coins from Stack's W57th Street Hoard count as having a pedigree?

 

Not a very relevant one as far as I am concerned. At least not one I would pay much if any premium for. It was a hoard not a collection, no real connection to a collector, and W57th Street is Stacks address. There is some story, but is it true or was Stacks just cleaning out their own basement of stuff accumulated over the last 70 years?

 

Hoards vs collections does make a difference indeed.

 

http://news.coinupdate.com/stacks-w...of-more-than-one-million-american-coins-3186/

 

Yeah, nice press release with no real background info.

 

I guess it is not much of a pedigree, but I won one Connecticut copper in Stack's and Bowers sale of the Twin Leaf collection March 1 of this year. It is PCGS slabbed and marked Twin Leaf on the insert. Ordinarily I would crack it out but I think I will leave it in the slab with the Twin Leaf designation.

 

Short for acknowledged, i.e. “got it”. I thought you would be the first one to look it up in the urban dictionary

 

Ooooow. I want that book

 

Your over rated. Antonio brown going to buffalo would get the18000 likes in a day. Big hug. Congrats