Here's mine, I bought this on feebay many years ago as a token! A year or two later I thought something felt different about it so I had it tested, turned out it's gold, true story!
I've heard many times that my mother is a saint, but I don't think she'd appreciate me posting pictures of her online.
Here’s another saint from my collection honoring my late father who passed 6 years ago he was born on February 23rd 1923
Any grade on this, JM ? With gold at $35/oz....how much of a premium did you have to pay back then ? $70 ?
How did you manage to purchase that when gold was technically illegal to get untill 74 No we don't really have to know. Good for you, I would have liked to have the opportunity but I was working on turning a year old
I paid a big premium, $75, which was high retail. The reason was my parents and I were very afraid of counterfeits, which were coming from places like Lebanon. Twenty dollar gold pieces were advertised regularly in the coin magazines at the time in “BU” for $49.95. I saw a few of the coins people got for that price at the time. They were really beat up, and not attractive at all. NGC graded this one MS-64. I think normal retail back then was $60 to $65 for a nice Unc. Back in the ‘60s, the coin investment experts said that gold coins were “a safe investment but not a good investment.” The price difference for a common date $10 or $20 gold piece in “BU” and “Choice BU” was only a couple dollars. In later years, that couple dollars would translate into hundreds or even thousands of dollars more in price if you got what you paid for. For example a “BU” $10 Liberty was priced at Stacks @$45. The “Choice BU” was $47.50. When I had it graded, one of those “Choice BU” pieces came back graded MS-65!
I may have posted this elsewhere, not sure. But it mentioned pricing during a 1968 gold crisis caused by the Pound devaluatgion:
It cost me $75. That was a high retail price. Some sold for $65. The going price for mail order pieces in the coin magazines was $49.95, but the few of those I saw were really marked up. AND they may not have real. I didn’t know how to tell the difference in those days.m
PM, I saw a REALLY beautiful MS-66 1927 Saint....thought about buying it, selling my MS-65 1927....and upgrading. But I would have been out cash at FUN 2026. If I had the 1927 MS-65 with me, I might have done it. Nice coin !!
Purchasing a NUMISMATIC coin was legal and was the "loophole" that collectors were using to buy gold coins. Had they been pure bullion coins, that would have been a problem.
Another article with prices that I read was from May 1973. Gold had just hit about $128 in Europe after starting the year @ $65; says that Double Eagles were about $180 wholesale and $250 retail. Manfra, Tordella, & Brookes (MTB) noted activity was up 10-fold from 1969 in terms of the public.
