Featured You want some serious eye candy?

The write-up from the 1794 $10 million sale is here https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/l...-die-state-i-silver-plug-specimen-66-pcgs-cac. I agree with @charley - everybody loves a romantic story like "the very first dollar ever coined." The most we can probably say for sure is that it's the best coin out of all the ones that survived. I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

That was Bruce Morelan's coin. Great Collections bought it from him, I believe.

 

Yes. I think for something like $12 million.

 

Speaking of playing with coins, when I was a kid, way before TPG's existed, my buddy Mike was gifted some money and bought a BU Saint Gaudens double eagle at the LCS. Being a kid of 14 or so, he often took out of the flip to play with it, such that it now grades AU. (yes he still has it)

 

OK... I just tossed my collection in the trash.... Good Lord!!!

 

If I remember it, Laura Sperber was bidding for him, the under bidder was at something like 7.5million and TDN went straight to 10. Hard to figure out if someone "overpaid" for a coin like that. Looks like he did ok.

 

At just under 20% return on $10M holding for close to 10 years, there were better ways to make money, but nothing near as cool. Laura was bidding and jumped it to 8.525M so that the total with vig would be more than $10M, making it the first $10M coin. The buyer's fee was 17.5% then.

 

Oh, but the 1794 - wow!

 

Someone didn't like it enough to keep it for a while??

 

Hard to believe that the US used to make such beautiful coins - instead of the today's bewildering array of pieces celebrating whatever, including the miserable clownish renderings on the paper currency and Halloween masks as illustrated by the ghastly looking obverse on the quarter I have in my hand. Enough to make one shudder. At least Lincoln still looks like Lincoln - although his memorial seems to have vanished and been replaced by motifs that seem to date back to the Civil War.

 

That 1861 makes my mouth water. Does it have chocolate inside like the candy coins they used to sell when we were kids?

 

Interesting how different the PCGS photo is of the 1794 dollar.
https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1794-1-flowing-hair-silver-plug/86851

 

They had the advantage of shooting the coin raw, of course. You get to see the flash of the coin, but no relief, no surfaces. In hand, you really need to hold it just right to see that.

 

Amazing, thanks for sharing.

 

this kind of comment betrays that you’ve not handled these in person before. This example is worlds beyond any other extant examples of the date. In person it is stunning beyond belief.

and of course it isn’t graded with the exact same standards as modern coins, since that scale isn’t relevant.

the marks you mention are most definitely mint made. And yes, I’ve handled the coin in person before.

 

Can you explain "play with"? Was it on display at the show? I'd be nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs if I were charged with it's safe keeping.

 

I was allowed to bring my photo gear over to their booth early one morning before the show opened and take the photos under their watchful eye before the coins were put in their fancy locked display cases. They were most accommodating. Holding an 8-figure coin isn't something you get to do every day.

 

WOW!!! Just WOW!!!