I just watched this episode of the old TV show, "The Streets of San Francisco." This particular episode was great - about a plot to counterfeit St. Gaudens Double Eagles, and switch them with an old collector's genuine ones. The scenes of the actual counterfeiting were outrageous - the bad guy (John Saxon) had a dinky-looking hand-crank coin press that looked like it couldn't punch a hole in a piece of construction paper. The collection (owned by Joseph Cotten) was worth "around a half-million dollars," and consisted of 40 Double Eagles. The show is set in 1972, and the value of his prize piece, a 1907, was given as "$21,500, eleven years ago," which implies that it was worh that in 1961. No idea if that's true, but my Red Book gives it a value of $25,000 in MS-63 today. Of course, the coins in the show are usually handled poorly. At the end, as a gift, the collector sends the detectives two uncirculated 1882 Morgan dollars ("About 4 bucks apiece!"), and they might as well smear chicken grease all over them the way they fondle them. All in all, an entertaining show, with a bonus Jamie Farr sighting, and I always get a kick out of seeing numismatics where I don't expect to. Joe
Maybe they were talking about the 1907 Ultra High Releif which would have been worth quite a bit back then.
