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Message:: [QUOTE="WingedLiberty, post: 1154041, member: 26030"]After reading that the spread between old U.S. Gold coins and bullion gold has really tightened up over the past year, I thought I would take advantage of this relative "sale" (so to speak) on old U.S. Gold Coins and pick up two U.S. Twenty Dollar Gold Pieces for my type collection. Today, I made a trip to my local coin dealer in an attempt to find some new treasures.  I was looking for gold coins that had a lot of visual appeal and original mint luster.  For the St. Gaudens hunt, I picked through about 30 raw and about 30 graded uncirculated coins.  I was surprised how many of the raw supposedly "uncirculated" coins looked like they had been cleaned (with what looked to me to be hairlines).  And amongst all the raw and graded coins, original mint luster was hard to find.  Most of the coins looked sort of flat and lifeless (perhaps from over-dipping?).  Fortunately, the dealer had two NGC graded MS65s, which I thought were beautiful and very lusterous.  When I asked the price, he told me $2,295, which I thought was great (was expecting higher), so I picked the best one of the two MS65s.  Here is a photo, which I just took with my iPhone (the composite image was done in Adobe Photoshop). [ATTACH]119477.vB[/ATTACH] For the Liberty Gold hunt, I also picked through a pile of raw and third party graded uncirculated coins and once again noticed that a lot of the raw coins (and even some of the lower graded TPG coins) looked like they had been improperly cleaned (with those tell-tale hairlines again).   That must be a common problem.   However, one of the raw Liberty coins in the batch really jumped out at me and appeared to have really nice luster (and no obvious signs of improper cleaning).  Because that coin was in the dealer's raw uncirculated bin, it was priced at $1,628 (wow!) only about $150 over the melt value.   The only other Liberty gold coin that I liked was an NGC graded MS64 dated 1904, however the price of that was over $2,800 -- and I honestly liked the raw 1897 more, as it had a lot more luster and very clean fields.  Here is a photo ...  [ATTACH]119478.vB[/ATTACH] So I ended up buying an NGC graded MS65 1925 St. Gaudens for $2,295 and a raw Uncirculated 1897 Liberty for $1,628.  I believe I got a really good deal on the Liberty coin as I thought it looked as nice as (maybe better than) all of the NGC MS63s and even some MS64s.   If I could get NGC to slap a MS64 grade on this coin, I could make a substantial paper gain (not sure if that is realistic or not). The dealer was telling me that very high grade (MS64 and MS65) $20 Liberty Gold coins are quite a bit more rare (and thus a lot more expensive) than similarly graded St. Gaudens Gold because the Liberty Gold actually circulated (with fewer saved) while the St. Gaudens (especially those dated in the 1920's) were often saved and didn't circulate.  That fact never really occurred to me, although it makes perfect sense.  Looking at the NGC-slabbed price guide for $20 gold coins of these dates, it's clear how this dynamic does affect prices.   In MS62 condition, the prices between these 2 coins are nearly identical.  But when you get to MS65 condition, an 1897 Liberty is valued $15,000 more than a 1925 St. Gaudens (holy cow!).  By the way, based on the prices I was getting at the dealer, clearly you have to knock these NGC referenced "values" down by 10% or more to get what these coins actually trade at. [ATTACH]119509.vB[/ATTACH]In any case, I was so happy with my pickups today, I thought I would share my little adventure.[/QUOTE]

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