How nuclear would you go to complete a set?

This doesn't answer the question but, I have spent more than a coin is worth many times. I honestly don't regret any of the purchases, my only regrets are the coins I didn't buy because the price was too high.

 

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I can appreciate that. I think the same way when bidding on items sometimes. A nice dose of paranoia never hurt anyone, right? Anyway, I have to go to my ECT session.

All kidding aside, keep us posted. I am interested in learning the series. Again, good luck!

 

Would I ever "go nuclear"? I have done so in the past. (2009)

It barely makes Good and has graffiti dating from the year 1845. It cost me solid XF money (Plus my max bid was almost twice what I got it for). But it is the last (achievable by me) die marriage for my 1827 set. It's estimated that only about 35 or so examples exist in any grade--most of which are damaged. I've been looking for an affordable O-144 for the last 19 years.



Many of you know that I am "kinda" nutty about 1827 bust halves--okay, so "kinda" doesn't cut it. This one will probably be the last different marriage I ever buy since the last 3 remaining die marriages for the year are all high R-6 (O-137), R-7 (O-148) or R-8 (O-149) coins.

 

It has been a fascinating journey reading & responding to the coments from all of you, here and ATS... Much like building this set!

I posted the same query and poll at CoinTalk (CT) and CoinCommunityForum (CCF) for a total of 53 votes. If you only know one of these two sites, you're missing out on the other!

Interestingly, just under half at both CT and CCF voted to go the extra 20%, but at CT it was because of the grading fees - nobody voted for conditional rarity. At CCF it was 12 votes due to rarity and only 5 because of grading fees. Between the two sites, nine people voted for satan. CCF had a strong vote (11%) for bargains. I guess that makes CT more high-brow...

The two items I'm looking for are very definitely the key and semi-key to this part of the series [my set], one is the lowest mintage and the other has a unique characteristic. Surprisingly, the mintage of the semi-key is closer to middle of the series in terms of mintage. BUT good ones are rare, they tend to be poorly struck and worse (and why it is a semi-key despite the mintage): "this is an issue beset by problems with quality - poor strikes and bad planchets are the norm, as is later numismatic abuse."

Surely, I had no clue what I was embarking upon when I decided to collect these in XF!

It's not like I was doing a short set of - oh - 1890s Indian Heads in MS63RD. For those, I'd walk over to Rick Snow or Charmy (The Penny Lady) or JJTP, etc. and spend an hour, have dozens to choose from and be done... You just don't find this peculiar series for sale in large #s, nor in high circulated grades. Culls? Sure. G/VG - 1000s. XF... not many.

During the hunt, I've shopped the small shows (20 tables @ the VFW) and the big shows... always on the lookout for the key and semi-key, in addition to the other pieces I needed. I was at ANA 2013. At ANA 2014 I talked to about 100 dealers. There was one of the key - in any grade - on the floor and the dealer wanted 950 for it. I was at PNNA in 2013 & 2014 - nothing. ANA 2015 WfoM in Portland is where I picked up the last except for these two, but of them? None.

I've had a lot of fun and luck over 2+ years assembling the set. At least one piece came from Stack's West 57th St collection - 20 tons of circulated coins are a blessing for the circulated coin collector.

Yes, I have one from the Newman collection (it was one of 24 items sold for under $100 in part II of the sale).

And slowly the set came together. "Completing" the set, I finally found a nice example - of the largest mintage in the series, naturally - at WfoM last month. Although the examples I have of the key and semi-key are below my target grade.

So technically I'm now looking to upgrade, from a 25 and 35 to XF.

I haunt the "Auction" houses (many of whom also sell fixed price inventory) - Stacks, Heritage, David Lawrence, Great Collections. And I've talked to pretty much all of the good people & good websites: Dr. Eugene Bruder (typecoins.com); JJ Teaparty; Gary Adkins; Steven Musil; Vic Bozarth. Glenn Holsonbake; Angel Dee's. A couple of West Coast stalwarts: Coin Exchange of Treasure Valley, Tipsico and West Coast Coins (Revick).

An aside: The first time I ran into Revick was at PNNA in '13 - I was doing the rounds, "Do you have any X" and the answer was invariably "No" or "I have one [pointing to a VG8 piece in a 2x2)". Revick says "Oh sure and hauls out 5 pages of 2x2s. Mostly MS or lower grade than I was looking for, but a rich banquet never-the-less. Lesson: You won't find what you don't ask for!​

Why I didn't list a raw option in the poll? Because you never see anything raw anymore for sale at the decent auction houses. Even on eBay, most of what you see raw for these is whizzed "BU" or culls.

There are 755,481 US coins for sale on eBay at 9:30am on Sunday, 5Apr... There are 22 for sale of the key (3 certified) and 31 of the semi-key (9 certified, 5 details graded). By comparison, there are 136 1912S Liberty V Nickels for sale [a coin with a mintage only a little bit higher than my key coin has].

I should have explicitly mentioned I was looking for certified circulated coins. It may be silly, but it's what I'm collecting them as. The price point of these two is above the often said "$200" magic point, but not much above it. Why certify the others? Think of a collection of Morgan's - you have several 1000+ coins that you would expect to be slabbed, but if you don't at least use coin world slabs for the $30 coins, the set looks awkward.

So for candidates for my set: if I buy raw, I will send it in. I'm not worried about that, I feel I'm pretty good at grading this series in these grades, although I can get fooled by old cleanings and NGC loves to call PIDT's bent. Otherwise everything I've sent in came back +/- one grade from my expectations (except an XF45 that NGC called MS62 and one - the key - that they called AU Details-Bent).

It also prompted me to go back and revisit my original assumption as to rarity with surprising results. A couple of years ago in a work situation, I snapped "Let's get some facts and handicap ourselves with them!".... you would think I would learn...

What did I find? Certified populations in this circulated grade don't actually follow mintages all that closely. The 5 lowest mintages are 2, 9, 1, 4, 12 lowest (respectively) in certified population in this grade out of 13 items in the set... that's right, the 5th of 13 lowest in mintage is the 2nd HIGHEST in certified coins. And no, it's not 1916 anything... One of the more common dates in the series actually has the same # of certified examples in my grades as the key, despite 10x the mintage.

So...

• I learned that mintages and certification populations don't follow, at least for relatively inexpensive series.
• I learned you can analyze something to death and still not know what to do.
• I learned I should not write the "Strike It Rich Buying and Selling Coins" internet textbook.
• I learned that the joke is true:

If I had told you in 1950 that I would have a box in my pocket with access to all the world's knowledge, you wouldn't have believed me.
And if you asked me what I would do with it, I would have to answer argue with strangers and watch cat videos.

[No I can't find the citation, maybe I jumbled two together or just made it up -- "The problem with quotations on the internet is you can't be sure they are true" ---Abraham Lincoln​

The 1st of the auctions ended tonight and as of 5pm I was still not decided what to do. However, no fancy PALs or two-man rule or authenticators - it only takes a few seconds to push the button...

 

The first of the coins - the semi-key in PCGS XF-40 - went up for auction on April 7th at Heritage's Tuesday/Sunday Internet auction.

These are interesting sales. Mostly mid-priced items - there were a couple that sold for $2 or $3 (plus $15 minimum bidders premium) - one lot at $17, two at $18, five lots at 2K+, 1 @ 3290 and 1 @ 4700.

When you watch the live auction, HA replays the prebids and then pauses seeing if there is phone/internet interest. Some lots sell with no further bids, many attract several bids. Above $100, they allow a cut-bid (half increment) once per bidder per auction.

What I've observed is that if there is more than minimal interest, the lot usually sells above the final pre-bid and so I decided not to put in a nuclear prebid and watch the sale.

The live platform gives you a lot of information, including the bid, next bid, a cut button (if available) count downs, when the lot is closing and sold. There's no audio or video, so sometimes it feels like a early 90s web page where somebody just found out about font colors and the <BLINK> tag.

HA gives you a lot of data on the listing page including good photos, population and several price guides... quoting:

Price Guide*
Grade Coin World (Coin Values) | Numismedia Retail | Numismedia Wholesale | Heritage Value Index | NGC Price Guide | NGC+ | PCGS Price Guide | PCGS+ | CCE SS/SU
35 --- $153 $128 $95-$125 --- --- $125 --- $100/$35
40 $200 $192 $160 $130-$165 $180 $202 $200 --- $145/$40
45 --- $217 $181 $145-$190 --- --- $240 $245 $155/$60

*All information listed is intended to be as accurate as possible, but errors are possible. No item may be returned or refused based on this information which is provided as a service to our customers. You should contact each pricing source directly to determine the accuracy of this information.

So I guess you could say FMV for me as a retail buyer was 190-200$ 130$ would be a steal.

You can gauge interest by the # of bidders and views:
Item Activity: 5 Internet/mail bidders
96 page views

From the giant sided photos it looks like a good solid strike (rare for this coin) with a small scuff on the slab. i.e. pretty desirable.

The leading prebid was 180 (IIRC 150, 160, 170 and 180 were the bids shown during the auction).

At 180, the increment is $10.
Somebody cut bid to 185 and was quickly overbid to 190

As I was waiting for the clock to count down to 5s, somebody bid 200. Increments are now $20.

I quickly cut bid and then time ran out...

I never saw the end-of-sale page, it blinked right over to the next lot...

I flipped to the listing page which told me nothing. Oh think I - refresh. So I refreshed and there are the magic words: "You won this lot for $210.00 ($246.75 w/Buyer's Premium), with a secret maximum bid of $210."

If you've stuck with me this long, then you now have more than enough information to figure out what coin's I'm talking about...


The second coin, the key in NGC XF went up for sale @ David Lawrence last night (12April). David Lawrence's auctions are a little more sedate than Heritage. There is a count down clock, a box with the current bid, and a box to place a bid.

The opening bid was $230, and I bid 255.01 on 1April. I then sat and watched the daily emails, where I was the leading bidder each night. Friday night somebody bid 240, so my 250 was still leading. And there it sat. With about 5m to go I panicked and put in a higher bid. And watched the clock. At the end of the auction, a page displayed with what looked like a winning bid $1 over my limit.

To say I was less than pleased was an understatement.

It must have been a glitch, or still showing the bid at least number, because when I checked the auction, the final bid was $250 - and that's what DLRC put in the email.
So there's the quest...

1851 - 1862/1 3 Cent Silver in XF.

Now there are only about 6-7 DDOs RPDs etc. that NGC/PCGS recognize. And about 20 more in "The Authoritative Reference on Three Cent Silver Coins" by Kevin Flynn and Winston Zack. And the 1863-1872s which were minted in only trivial numbers of business strikes and largely melted in 1873. Which is why officially my set cuts off at 1862.

 

That's the series I was leaning towards when you mentioned bent coins. Congrats on your set!

I think it's quite an interesting series especially since it circulated along side the nickel version for a time.

 

If you are looking for circulated silver 3-cents, it might make more sense to browse the raw sections and send them in for yourself. Coins in the $100-$300 range are not certified nearly as often as you think - these might be far more available raw than they are certified.

 

Thanks for the well articulated update. I was entertained reading it.

 

I've lived to regret virtually every over priced coin I ever bought - excluding low priced coins (e.g. paid $200 for a coin thet should be $100)

 

You wish... [or I wish]... about 40% of my set are coins I had certified. But even at larger shows they just aren't for sale. Between low demand, minimal markup and low demand, nobody brings them to shows. And that's based on 4 ANA shows, 2 TNA and 2 PNNA shows (for the large side) and probably 50 smaller shows in North Texas and the Northwest.

At ANA WfoM in Chicago last year there was 1 1855 [I must have asked 200 dealers]... XF but he wanted 875 for it. When I went back the next day he had left and sold it to the dealer at the next table who now wanted 900...

At smaller shows, there are plenty of Philly type 1s, but most are VG or F targeted at type coin buyers. There are usually a few type 3s. But raw or certified, the 51Os and type 2s are very uncommon to see.

Today's Colin County Coin Club show was a fairly rich show probably 25 or 30 total examples of all dates. Across 50 tables - 1 raw 1855 (maybe VF30) and an PCGS VF35 1855/55 DDO which was pricey, but nice...

As for raw, I have a couple 51Os that will likely grade VF35 or XF40, but are weak strikes. That's typical for NO - I've seen MS62s where there was no metal flow to create the reverse orbs and the bar is just a line.