I had to post this as I think it is absolutely ridiculous!!!

http://www.newyorkmint.com/itemd.asp?itemNo=225941&ad=NY918P2

Really?

They emailed this in a buy it now form...

"Scarce 9/11 Silver Eagles Recovered from Ground Zero - available today!"

"On the bright, sunny morning of September 11, 2001, more than $200 million in gold and silver was locked in the underground vaults of the COMEX Banking System — far below the gleaming Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Like the many New Yorkers starting their workday, that fortune in silver bars and U.S. gold and silver coins was seemingly safe and secure. But as the tragic day unfolded, New Yorkers — and the entire world — were reminded that our safety is a fragile thing. As the dust settled over the site of the collapsed towers, 11.8 tons of gold and 935.7 tons of silver lay buried under a mountain of shattered concrete and twisted steel.

The treasure survived the devastation — but very little was ever made available to the general public. Now, on the tenth anniversary of that tragic day, you can own a piece of 21st century history: an actual 2001 $1 Silver Eagle recovered from the World Trade Center vaults."

Like no lives were lost???
At least say something regarding the tragic loss of life.
AND ONLY $495!!!!
Yeah

Sorry done venting.

 

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Geez. How could they even prove they were from the towers? Ridiculous. I have a better idea: Sell an ASE for $495. Take the actually value of the ASE, and give $430 to the families of lost lives, and emergency workers suffering long term respiratory problems.

 

That is a ridiculous price for silver. It is also wrong to profit off this event without giving some money away, but I do not know
if they donate any of it away.

 

I'm sure there would be a huge disclaimer in bold thet they donate proceeds if that were the case.
It's a shame..

 

Not everyone is patriotic like you and I, I guess.
Maybe we'll soon have a "TRAGEDY TYPE SET"

 

I looking at their other items & prices, I am surprised they have any business at all

 

Lol I am joining the local fire company and people in my family served so I somewhat am. Tragedy Type Set. LOL!
Irene Dollar, Katrina Nickel, Haiti Penny!

 

Don't forget the Sri Lanka Tsunami Commem!

 

Quite a few coins (ASEs, AGEs, ect.) were salvaged from the tower vaults and slabbed as being from the recovery. Originally, they were sold and proceeds from the sale went to the 9/11 recovery effort (I can't remember what specifically). Today, you can find these coins and they do command a premium...but I think $500 is a little steep.

Here is an example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2001-Silver...875?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item415cce43c3

 

Camaro,

Weren't you looking for one of these????

 

Yeah, I want to pick one up. I have a list of the dates that they released. I want to pick up at least a MS69 2001. Some were graded and others simply slabbed as "Gem BU."

Here is the list that I have (dates and grades)...it's only for ASEs:

1987: Gem BU, MS69
1989: Gem BU
1991: Gem BU, MS69
1993: Gem BU, MS68 and MS69
2000: Gem BU
2001: Gem BU, MS68 and MS69

 

I recently sold-off one of the WTC coins on eBay and the results were frankly kind of disappointing. Was a 2001 Quarter Ounce Gold Eagle in a PCGS holder, -technically a Collectors Universe holder- and I thought with the anniversary coming up now was the time to unload it. I had originally purchased it from a coin dealer who had nothing but contempt for the piece and its packaging, which for me meant I got the coin for $25 over melt. This was about 3 years ago, so I was certain to make some money on the coin if only because bullion has risen so much.

You can imagine my excitement to see similar pieces without the 2001 date on eBay with Buy-It-Now prices over a thousand. Most of them seemed to be 1999. And so I threw it on eBay starting at a dollar since I didn't want to imply what I thought it was worth, and it sold for $545.00 in a 10-day auction. After eBay and PayPal took their graft, I was left with barely $475 for a coin that I thought would fetch at least, at the VERY LEAST, something like $750. Looking back on it, I probably should have listed it as a Buy-It-Now myself, but I wanted to unload the thing and didn't want to wait around months waiting for it to sell. If you click on completed auctions after searching on WTC you will see that the coins really don't sell that well, certainly not at the prices that most people who own them think they're worth. And then after a month or two, one of them will sell for an outlandish amount, --say a proof 1984 Krugerrand for $3800-- and it gets everyone to thinking theirs will sell for idiot money too if they just wait long enough. Link to my auction:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/190551535317

 

A sad and tragic tale indeed. I feel terrible for your unfortunate and heart rending loss of profit on the upcoming anniversary.

 

Well thank you, it's nice to know some people understand the grief I must have had to deal with the instant the auction closed without any bid snipers.

 

I'm not sure your post was supposed to be sarcastic but mine sure as heck was. I didn't put in a because I didn't think it was necessary.

 

You mean the empathy, the heartfelt condolences...,, All of it, (gasp), all of it nothing but a lie? Tell me it isn't true!

But seriously, the guy who bought it had purchased another WTC coin the week before on eBay. You've got to look at it...,, Do you suppose it really got bent from the heat of the crash? --Somehow I don't think so, since the coins were actually in building 7 which while not talked about much, isn't even one of the twin towers. Building 7 just happened to be in the WTC complex and while destroyed in the attack, it was still standing afterward. Can you imagine paying $1300 for such a coin? http://www.ebay.com/itm/180689501858

I would never have considered buying mine in the first place except the price was right. Was kind of a can't lose transaction at $25 over spot.

 

I think I may be the only one here that actually collects these! I have put together a full set of the 2001 Silver and 4 Gold Eagles. I think its an interesting collection. I also exhibited the set this July at the NH Coin and Currency Expo, for which I placed first in the Young Numismatist category. I thought I would share the text and photo portions of the exhibit, along with pictures of my five coins. BTW, I apologize for the varying and distracting text sizes. It was hard to copy and paste the test from my word files for the exhibit.

Main Background:

When the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, over $200 Million worth of gold, silver and other precious metals were buried in the rubble. Stored in a COMEX vault under the World Trade Center Building 4 were over 825,000 thousand tons of gold bullion in coin and bar form, over 102 million ounces of silver, the largest hoard of silver in the world, and an untold amount of platinum. Held by COMEX, this stockpile was comprised of their own clients gold, silver, and platinum investments and also 24,000 ounces of their own gold that they used to trade futures on the markets. These COMEX vaults represented just a portion of the precious objects that were stored at the World Trade Center. Other clients with vaults included the US Treasury, who, interestingly, stored the lone legal example of the 1933 Double Eagle in their vaults before moving it to Fort Knox just two months before 9/11.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the finding and removal of bullion was the last thing on anybody's mind, but on October 30, 2001, excavation crews came across a cache of gold, silver and platinum, buried in a collapsed wing of the building. Armed with rifles and automatic weapons, federal agents swept in and secured the area, letting only a select few excavators into the wing to further excavate the bullion. By 7:00 PM, the first of two Brinks trucks had left the scene and was on it's way to deliver the bullion to Collector's Universe, the father company of PCGS and other collectible certification services. Over the course of several months, a selection of these gold, silver and platinum coins were graded Gem Uncirculated and encapsulated in special slabs by Collector's Universe, and then released to be sold to collectors for a premium, raising money for the victim's of the disaster and their families.

The five coins featured in this exhibit are all dated 2001, the rarest date to find in the World Trade Center Recovery series. Included is the 2001 silver eagle and all four denominations of 2001 gold eagles: $5, $10, $25, and $50. They are all graded Gem Uncirculated.

Slab Information:

The coins were slabbed by Collector's Universe (CU), the parent company of PCGS. Because CU is not a grading company, the coins slabbed by them were given a grade of Gem Uncirculated, rather than a more specific numerical grade. When CU encapsulated the coins, they used the plastic PCGS slabs, with the PCGS logo on the bottom right hand corner embedded in the plastic. In order to distinguish between a typical PCGS slab and these special CU 9/11 slabs, a CU hologram was added to the back of the slab instead of the PCGS hologram, as seen below.

View attachment 135824

Label on left is wtc slab, right is normal PCGS slab.

Label Information:


The label was designed by Collector's Universe specially for the World Trade Center Ground Zero Recovery bullion coins. The label has a patriotic American Flag background and also is labeled, pedigreeing the coins to the World Trade Center.


In the bottom left-hand corner of some of the labels is a number labeling the coin as 1 of some number. When the coins were distributed, Collector's Universe put some of the coins into sets. For example, Collector's Universe released 531 numbered sets of the 2001 $5, $10, $25 and $50 Gold Coins together. The numbers in the bottom left-hand corners of the label denote the coins as being part of these sets. They do not denote how many total coins of each denomination were recovered and released. In the collection displayed here, the coins were acquired separately from sellers that broke up these sets, and therefore the numbers are different on the coins.


Below is a listing of some of the sets that Collector's Universe released and the number of individual sets of that type.


[TABLE="width: 407"]

[TD="width: 124"]Number of Sets
[/TD]
[TD="width: 265"]Set Composition
[/TD]

[TD="width: 124"]1 of 150
[/TD]
[TD="width: 265"]Gem Uncirculated 2001 $25 and $50 Gold Coins
[/TD]

[TD="width: 124"]1 of 269
[/TD]
[TD="width: 265"]Gem Uncirculated 2001 $1 Silver and $5, $10, $25, and $50 Gold Coins
[/TD]

[TD="width: 124"]1 of 531
[/TD]
[TD="width: 265"]Gem Uncirculated 2001 $5, $10, $25 and $50 Gold Coins
[/TD]

[TD="width: 124"]1 of 1440
[/TD]
[TD="width: 265"]Gem Uncirculated 2001 $1 Silver and $5 Gold Coins
[/TD]
[/TABLE]

View attachment 135826

Completed Exhibit:
View attachment 135830

Coins:

View attachment 135832 View attachment 135833 View attachment 135834 View attachment 135831

Brinks Removal:

 

Then why were some of them given grades? My research has been mainly with ASEs from WTC but from what I have gathered...there were 6 different dates of ASEs slabbed as WTC recovery coins and 4 of those dates had examples that were graded either MS68 or 69. Here is the information that I have (I posted this earlier in this discussion):

 

I focused on the Collector's Universe graded examples. Shortly after the collector's universe did a batch, PCGS also received some which they assigned number grades to, along with serial numbers/ barcodes. These numbers do not show them as WTC recovery on the cert. verification on the website, nor does PCGS publish populations of the WTC coins.

 

And as a side note. I personally know of three proof 2001 1 oz gold eagles, 2 67s and 1 69 from PCGS. I have never seen one for sale but if I did, I would buy it in a heartbeat