SLQ Raw on EBay

That coin is ambitiously priced - half the asking price would be more realistic - after all, 1917 P is the most common half dollar minted that year.

 

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Those look suspiciously like TrueViews. I'm guessing the coin is (or was) in a details holder.

 

That was my first impression as well but I can't figure out what the problem is with the coin so I didn't call it a details coin.

 

I'm not sure, either. Staple scratch across Liberty's torso, maybe? At any rate, there's enough to raise suspicion about the lot to make it a fool's purchase at strong 67FH money, but then that could describe a huge number of sales on eBay, not just this one.

 

I'd like to narrow down the scope of this "all coins must have provenance" concept, which seems alarmingly broad.

I check my change regularly. I've received silver coins in my change from time to time -- sometimes from a cash register, sometimes from a self-checkout unit. How would one even start to establish provenance for pocket change?

All my coins were pocket change at some point, with some obvious exceptions for modern commemoratives, bullion pieces, and the like. My AU50 1934-S dollar was obviously circulated. It's still a three-figure coin. What should provenance look like for that coin?

We hear tales here all the time of people finding valuable coins in bank rolls, or in cash registers. Yes, sometimes people steal collections and cash them in or spend them. Sometimes people inherit collections and cash them in or spend them. I've jokingly called it "the numismatic Circle of Life".

If you try to address theft by requiring every coin to be registered and tracked, you shut down the cash economy. That's obviously ridiculous, and I'm pretty sure it's not what you're suggesting. So where do you draw the line?

 

These pictures are all of strong strikes.

 

These examples say nothiing about the need to find providence. They say volumes about the need to do even further providence for the reasons you say... in the 1920's some of them might have been stolen. Because of the sloppiness of the business, it is even LIKELY that they were stolen at some point. Providence chains often have breaks. It makes them no less eseential.

Right now, everything is cloak and and dagger. It is immoral, and it undermines conifdence in market. You ask the dealer who the seller is... they refuse to tell you. A spot light needs to shine on all of this until the cockroaches scatter. This is the INTERNATIONAL standard for ll antiquities. BTW that Dime you are showing. I am very interested in its origins.

To make this clear, no dealer should take on consignment or trade in coins where there isn't reasonable evidence that the coins weren't stolen and with reasonable proof. This providence then needs to be recorded, as far back as one can reasonable go. One can obviously not conjure up evidence that doesn't exist, but that doesn't preclude one from attempting to do just that.

With slabbed coins, there is really no excuse. The slabber, seller and buyer should all have a track record of the coin.

One needs to be confronted that the MAJORITY of coins have been stolen at some point, and that the market is completely insecure because of this. Almost every dealer I know has been robbed, and a vast number of collectors. This KILLS the value of coins and suppresses the market. The only reason more people are not indited for selling stolen property is because cops are lazy and hiring lawyers is more expensive than the coins themselves.

 

he has other ones (raw coins) like this. The hardest details to pick up is over dipping.

 

https://www.cointalk.com/attachment...9/?temp_hash=1c20bd1b17a56ab31c703b2894cfa060

 

As you can SEE the weekness of that foot, for example, goes right down to the grain of the metal.

 

There is always a limitation based on value. The the coin is $10 bucks, what is the point. But maybe it will go up in value, so you keep your records and so does the buyers and the sellers. If you pull a coin out of change, that is the start of the providence! XZY found the coin in his change which he recieved possibly from a store XZY. You see providen written like that all the time in errors. Now when you have it slabbed, it is ALREADY recorded and registered. There is no point in having registration numbers on the slabs if the slabbers like NCG refuse to use that data to assure providence and prevent theft.

 

<crack>

"Guys, you won't believe my luck! I just found this shiny 1916-D dime in a self-checkout! What are the odds?"

Or, at the other end of value and honesty:

"I'd sure love to sell this book of Franklin halves now that spot has gone up again. But I just can't face the task of copying the attribution info from every coin in the book into my listing. The stack of provenance docs is already thicker and heavier than the album. I think I'll just melt them -- don't need attribution documents for a silver ingot."

I understand your pain, at least a little bit, and share your outrage at thieves and those who enable them. But locking coins in general into the same constraints as museum artifacts doesn't seem like a fruitful approach.

 

I see no staple scratch

 

Privacy laws are a thing.

Then very few coins would ever be bought and sold. That would effectively grind the market to a halt.

*Citation Needed

It is becoming far more secure with increasing numbers of slabbed coins and pictures of said coins.

They, like banks, jewelry stores, gas stations, etc., are targets.

Most collectors have not been robbed, especially those that take reasonable steps to protect their collections.

Umm, not at all. The exact opposite is happening. What you suggested above would actually kill the values of coins and suppress the market. Be careful what you wish for.

No. It’s because coins can be exceptionally hard to trace and positively ID if not certified and/or imaged prior to the theft.

So you are saying that you have never seen a die wear before? The unstruck planchets do not have that texture.

Also, there isn’t supposed to be a foot there. And the other areas I have already disproven as poorly lit rather than poorly struck.[/QUOTE]

 

An extrodenary story like that usually involves witnesses.

Regardless, this is actually how it is done, and not just for museums. This is how markets are. Take your computer and turn it upside down and call the manufacturer. Read the serial number off it. They will tell you where that computer was sold and when and from what vender. And if it fell off a truck, they KNOW it was stolen goods. Go to Ben Yehudah Street in Jerusalem and pick up a clay lamp. It has been registered with the Department of Antiquities and they will tell you the very dig it came out of. Go to Princs Graght in the Jordan in Amsterdam and purchase a Chagal print. They will give you a certificate of authentication that includes the entore Pedigree. COINS are the exception... and not the rule.

When you go to a coin show, these guys enter with nearly impenetrable safe live boxes on wheels. And every show ends up with a serious heist and robbery. The retrieval rate is minimal.

 

No, it doesn't shut down the cash economy. It does put a dent in the tax evasion, though.

 

https://www.coincollector.org/stolen-coins-listed-online/

 

So, will I need to bring a notary to the checkout line with me, or will the store provide one? And how will the "witnesses" be trained to recognize sleight-of-hand?

There's a line somewhere between the stellar coins that were stolen from your father's collections and the things we actually find in circulation. I'll spend most of my hobby time and money on the cheap side of that line. But I don't know a way to define the line without having it crush me, as well as thieves.

I'll say this: I would like to see the TPGs digitally fingerprint coins they slab. High-res scans are getting trivially cheap to make and store, and I think they would let the TPGs break the crack-and-resubmit cycle, whether it's done by owners or thieves. But I really, really bristle at the idea of mandatory registration and tracking of coins.

 

Ah, the old "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" argument. I'm sorry, but I don't find it entirely reassuring.

 

I am surprised that no one has mentioned that all coins are copies. Each impression of the dies is intended to create one more identical copy of the coin. Philosophically, they are individual instances of that object, but theoretically they have no individual identity.

This differs markedly from art and antiquities. Each painting is unique - and you can distinguish it from forgeries. Each numbered print is hand-numbered by the artist just so it can be distinguished, uniquely, from the other copies.

That is not how coins are made. They are not individually registered.

You may argue that with digital tomography you could convert a very high resolution photograph into a unique digital signature. But even that line blurs when you are grading MS70 proofs - each should be perfect and indistinguishable.

That pretty much leaves us with marking each coin with a unique identifier. Oh, isn’t that just slabbing them? And then we could just set up a registry if they get stolen. Oh, isn’t that already available?

So I don’t see that there is a problem here we need to solve. We just need to use the systems we have.