Your Best Cherry Picking Find Ever?

Just keep your eyes pealed and a loupe in your hand and, trust me, you'll stumble across something in no time.

-Brian

 

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This was my best cherry pick. Bought it for $10 in 2008 from a dealer who had no clue of international coins. This dealer strictly dealt with Canadian coins, he probably didn't even bother to have a Krause Catalogue - to him, world silver meant bullion. This was a coin of pure nickel (and not silver), therefore the dealer thought it was worthless. I sent it to PCGS and then consigned it at the August 2010 World Heritage Auction.

http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=3010&lotNo=21897

Sold for US$2760, including the hammer fee. From that same dealer, at a subsequent coin show, I also bought these two coins, which cost me $20 each (plus PCGS certification afterwards). I consigned them to the same Heritage auction.

http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=3010&lotNo=20227
http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=3010&lotNo=20228

Sold for US$1840 and US$2530, respectively. The moral of the story, just because a world coin is not gold or silver, does not mean it is junk material!!

 

Holy cow, thats redic

 

So cherry picking has to do with picking more valuable coins than marked in dealer's bins or roll search finds or is it both? I picked my avatar out of a PM dealer's junk silver. He let me pick what I wanted for some reason. It was a few cents lower than melt, $5. I have other coins I bought out of coin books and out of the junk bin very close to melt or under, like these except the standing quarters:

 

Roll of dimes, VF merc, cost 10 cents:

 

bought this a few moths ago. it was marked as a regular 1808. and i got it for a really reasonable price.

 

WOW! Okay, you're my new hero!

 

I hear about these people finding star notes all the time. I bet the money adds up.

 

ikandiggit, if you look carefully in the Krause, there are coins almost identical to those, which are common. That is the difference.

That Spanish coin series, for example the actual date is in the little tiny stars on the reverse (not the large 1949 date on the obverse). That particular coin was dated E51, which was a special strike issued to commemorate the Second National Numismatic Exposition December 2, 1951. The "E" replaces the "19" for the date. Only 1000 were minted for conference delegates, most were kept as pocket pieces. The coin dealer had it priced as a 1949 5 Pesetas coin.

The Belgium series, you have to look at the rim for variances, not only for Position A and Position B (which way the edge lettering is 'up') but for stars (and not crowns). These coins are common as dirt for KM 117 ('Belgie' on the left). The rare ones, KM 116, have "Belgique" on the left. Also, some of the big pure nickel Belgium coins ('3 kings') are generally worth good money, as are some Italian and early French coins. Just like the Canadian 1925 nickel...

Know your prey when you go to a coin show, and the hunt will usually be successful... I carry a "key-date" spreadsheet on my iPhone and have the digital Krause on my laptop, when I go to shows...

 

Takes lots of luck and lots of hard work - but they are still out there.

My best was an 1882 snow-6 IHC. Bought for $105 and sold for $1500 by Rick Snow. It is about my only major score - some minor ones, but nothing worth mentioning.

 

I think it is like "picking" antiques.

It seems it is more like "picking" antiques like they do on those History Channel reality TV shows. Identifying objects and getting them for much less than market value in people's barns and collections. The dime I found in the roll is just blind luck when looking for any dime without a copper strip, sometimes it ends up being a steel Canadian. I did identify the quarter in my avatar as worth more than the others he was showing and picked it after he said the quarters were $5 a piece. The other coins I got in the book was just luck, he hadn't changed his prices in a while and I was looking for some decent silver coins close to spot and others was just a matter of what I thought looked good. I wouldn't qualify those as cherry picked but maybe picking a coin from a line up of Barber's priced at melt but even then that was just luck and a matter of a coin being skipped over when taking coins out of the bin and putting them in the coin books. It also has to do with the PM dealer just giving good deals and not having to do with cherry picking because I also have picked coins that were overpriced but he does take returns. I was thinking though, if his prices were set a while ago that means they have been sitting a while with no buyers since this was a PM shop.

 

Hi GD, is your coin an Delmonte 825bis. the 3rd and scarcest of the 3 Gorinchem Rose Noble varieties ? (with obverse legend EDWARD DI GRA REX ANGL Z FRAN DNS IB).
I remember you mentioned that is an R4 with only 4 or so known

 

Thanks for the eye-opener! I have bags of foreign coins that I'll have to go through.

Man, I love this hobby!

 

Probably this clash.

 

Totally agree! Plucking a piece of Beswick china for a dollar out of a table full of homemade ceramics takes knowledge and a good eye. No different than spotting a nice rare variety or error coin out of a dealer's album.

 

Not many folks care much for clashed die stuff so few see how crazy it gets. Wish I had learned a lot more about world coins. I know a lot of really cool coins got past me.

 

Read Here: http://www.ikegroup.info/?page_id=203

The "immediate" primary pickup on this coin, as with most Eisenhower Design Varieties, is the Reverse (RDV-007) which is shared by 1 other coin.
Of the 2 coins known to have this reverse, each has a different Obverse Design. Mine, Prototype 1 (as in first discovered) has ODV-010 while the other, Prototype 2, belongs to Charles Chatham (sluggo4787), has ODV-011.

Both coins are solitary pop coins and it is believed that both coins were a part of the "design" process for the Eisenhower Dollar as trial strikes. Both coins exhibit proof qualities yet are not proof coins per se. Both coins were minted on specially prepared 40% silver planchets very much similar to the Kennedy (SMS) coins. All trial strikes were "scheduled" or "supposed" to be destroyed according to a letter, dated 1/25/2012, from the Department of the Treasury as shown in Appendix A of the Authoritative Reference on Eisenhower Dollar (Wexler, Flynn, Crawford), but it appears now that this may not have been the case. To quote:

"I(n) accordance to regulations, all of the prototype trial strikes must and will be destroyed by the Director's Committee."

The key words here are "must" and "will" indicating that as of the date of the letter, the coins had not yet been destroyed. The "Director's Committee" is the Mint Director's Trial Strike Committee which was composed of the Director's Representative (unknown), the Superintendent of the Philadelphia Mint or his representative (unknown), the Chief Engraver (Frank Gasparro), and the Superintendent of the Coining Division (unknown). The "unknowns" are simply folks whose names I do not know.

Since both of these coins are obviously special in both strike and design, and both carry the tell tale signs of die polish within the fields that is characteristic of specially prepared dies (very much similar to the 1964 SMS Coins), both can be assumed to be Prototype Trial Strikes. Without hard documentation or photographs, all that can be done is assume.

There were some photographs shared with CoinAge and Numismatic Scrapbook in 1971 which were scanned from the ANA Library by a fellow collector.

View attachment 193540 View attachment 193542 View attachment 193539 View attachment 193544

There are definite similarities from what was shown in 1971 to what was found in 2008 however, since no direct correlation between the photo's and the term prototype or trial strike exists in the article, it can still only be an educated assumption.