This is a surprisingly common journey for coins it seems. It pays to do some research before bidding. Enjoy the 1 year tracking of the coin below. =============================== April 10, 2015 Heritage Auctions, as a part of their 2015 CICF auctions, sells a 1708 Queen Anne Shilling for $1,057 in an old NGC holder graded MS64, and described as: Anne Shilling 1708 MS64 NGC, Royal mint, KM523.1, S-3610, ESC-1147. Flashy gold tone adorns the centers with a touch of blue at the edges and the highest points of the design. Nearly as-struck in terms of surface quality. From The Law Collection =============================== Summer 2015 Atlas Numismatics posts the coin for sell on their website and eBay in a new MS65 holder. The asking price is now $2250 with a "make an offer" option. This is NOT a hit on Atlas by any means, as they have some of the nicest world coin material around, and I have purchased a half dozen items from them. But, this is shown as just a stop on the journey of this coin in the inventory of one of the large world coin dealers. =============================== Winter 2016 (Auction, April 15, 2016) Heritage Auctions lists this coin again in early 2016 to be a part of the offerings in the CICF auctions, and the coin sells for $1,762 this time around and is described as follows: Anne Shilling 1708 MS65 NGC, Royal mint, KM521.1, S-3610, ESC-1147. Superbly lustrous gem, featuring an attractive rainbow tone near the peripheries, fully resplendent in hints of cobalt and burgundy. =============================== Maybe now this coin is in the hands of an appreciative collector, and will stop being passed around like a hot-potato. =============================== EPILOGUE: In the meantime, I have been in the market for a nice quality 1708 Shilling for about 3 years, and watched the coin above move around from auction, to dealer, back to auction. However, I was able to pick up an equally nice example (in my opinion) in an older-ish PCGS MS64 holder that has not been upgraded recently or passed from one dealer's case to another.
Nice journey that sheds light on the dealer crack & resub game. I've been wanting to dabble in it but my passions are elsewhere with learning the upper echelons of vam academia currently
Kinda funny, too, how when it went from MS64 to MS65, the color got upgraded from "gold and blue" to "cobalt and burgundy." Nice pick-up.
Just to clarify, I did not buy the $1700+ newly graded NGC MS65 version. My PCGS MS64 version was about 1/2 that, and IMO looks just as nice or nicer.
Patience is a virtue. You got the better deal, Brandon, and you should definitely list yours as "burgundy, cobalt and gold" if you ever decide to sell. Nice! Chris
Something I left out of the contorted travels of the coin above: Somewhere after it was sold in April 2015, and before it was listed by Atlas in the NGC MS65 holder, it was actually crossed (or cracked) and graded MS64 at PCGS. The photos in the Atlas listing are the CoinFacts/PCGS TrueView images, but for the coin being sold in an NGC holder. So, it made at least one trip to PCGS after the April 2015 auction, and another trip to NGC for the MS65 upgrade. PCGS MS64 (after April 2015, before Fall 2015)
Proof that spooks like us can lose their pants in the 'game'. Collect what you like and do it because you like it and not because you're gonna make a killing down the road. And I like the one you bought better anyway, Brandon........
Oh.......nice research there old fellow........you must have had ants in the pants watching the journey of that piece........
I like yours better, the toning looks more even and natural. If a low 4 figure world coin can go back and forth that many times in a year, how many times might a higher dollar US coin see the inside of a grading room?...
I think we'd all be surprised and disturbed by how much the "TPGs" who were originally created to "protect" the consumers from buying wildly overgraded coins from unscrupulous dealers -- are now the basis for huge amounts of the income for dealers. The TPGs registry sets, constant regrading, sometimes wild inconsistency, and continual upward slope to "gradeflation" are filling the pockets of dealers. In the "olden days" you could discuss with a dealer when you thought he had a coin graded or priced too high. Now, many dealers think that a coin is what the label says it is. In their minds, all MS65s are created equal, and if anything, you should pay a bit higher because in their opinion the TPG was too "harsh" on the coin, and it's really a "such and such" grade higher. What's on the label has become the "lower bound" for possible grading and discussion about pricing. In my opinion, the pendulum has swung far too extreme to the "dealer's favor" when the mentality seems to be that TPGs are infallible. The only cure I have found for this rampant and more common idiocy is patience. There are still some reasonable dealers out there - who are honest, truly collector centered, and all around good guys. The problem is, the kind of dealers who are now using TPGs to justify ignorance are far more common. /Rant over/
I dislike the increasing trend of TPG for the world coin series I collect. I am not worried about fakes (the coins I collect are generally too scarce to counterfeit more than a few of them without being noticed and aren't worth that much anyway) and what it has mostly accomplished is inflating the price level. The primary positive aspect is that higher prices have increased the available supply somewhat.
In my opinion the pendulum has actually swung away from dealers and more to the collectors. Yes it is true some people blindly buy labels, but those people also would blindly buy dealer grades as well. But unlike the pre-TPG days collectors have a variety of outlets and resources to both buy and sell material with the progression of the internet. If your local dealer isn't a good one we are no longer forced to either wait for a show or suck it up and deal with them. Now a days you could build a great collection without ever dealing with a dealer if you really wanted to do it that way. It is certainly true some dealers act like every coin they have is under-graded while others will price some more accordingly to the quality they are for the grade. That type of dealer though where every coin they have is under-graded was around before the TPGs though. At least now even if someone buys a 65 that is a dog, when they go to sell they have some protection on the sell side from the label. They may very well have to under-price it for the grade but it is an improvement from the buy as a MS 63 then sell back as an AU 55 type things. Completely agree, especially at half the price you coin is the no brainer choice every time between the two.
I love this! One of my Fugios was sold four times in 10 months before it found a home with me. Each time it got progressively less expensive. Good news for the final buyer!
The dealers can only create profit to the extent that they can continually churn the same coins. The TPS's, on the other hand, are putting their children's children through medical school on their share of the cash being thrown around via this ridiculous practice. No fools, they.
And that is why I do not play the crack out game. Plus I would say the PCGS coin you bought actually looks nicer and more original in the pictures than the coin that has been floating around. Just my opinion.
That's a very informative thread, and shows the subjectivity of grading, which is then marketed as objectivity.
