To buy or not to buy: 1990 no S cent

Read up on the story of the CIA invert. The facts as stated is that a group of nine CIA employees noticed that stamps in their office were inverted and they went in together to buy those stamps and make a profit off of them. The belief of investigators is that these men covered up a project to gain money for black ops.
I've known about these stamps for decades. A google search will call up photos and many articles about them. No story I've read said that these guys were punished in any way and some were later promoted. That lends credence to the conspiracy theories.

 

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All that I can believe is that some folks put an excessive value on the bragging rights of being the first to own something. I thought $500 cell phones would kill that craze but the latest, greatest iteration is $1000.

 

Or... you can read the "less crazy" version of the story here:

https://www.justcollecting.com/miscellania/cia-inverted-error-stamp-to-star-with-15-500-estimate

Of course, to some people, once the CIA is mentioned, NO story is quite crazy enough, right?

 

That's not time related, though. That's just fair value for the technology in there, which has a VERY high fabrication and/or integration reject rate - making those that do pass muster that much more valuable. That $1000 phone will be $1000 for a quite long time.

The predecessor phone to the now famous $1000 phone was ALREADY a better phone than the BEST phone of the other operating system, and then this quantum leap comes on top of that. $1000 is a BARGAIN. Reason? The "$1000 phone company" doesn't buy off the shelf components and slap together a phone and put crappy software on it. They DESIGN the firmware AND the operating system hardware and software and carefully integrate them, even CUSTOMIZE THEM to an extent no other phone builder ever has or can. That's what makes a $1000 phone, not "me first".

A Porsche costs more than a Chevy too.

 

I'm confused. One of these just sold at HA in July of this year for $2500 in PR67DCAM. Why would you take the risk and pay the same amount for a raw coin with corrosion? Am I missing something?

 

I know what I think it the problem, but it will drive a lot of people who do a lot of buying and selling straight up a wall. Here it is - I don't put as much stock in auction results for pricing as most people do. I think they're more crapshoot than good guidance on value. It's all about audience and what other material surrounds them. You have to have the right audience for a piece before you can be sure an auction result reflects true value. I greatly suspect that the HA coin you mention suffered not enough attention for some reason. Also, for a date as recent as a 1990 proof coin, PR67DCAM is not a high grade, it's pretty pedestrian. You might have to look awhile to find a lower graded one that straight graded at all. For 1990, 67DCAM is pretty close to a "problem coin" of some sort, and the price reflects that. 69DCAM should be the expected grade.

Edit: You got me so curious I went and searched out that coin. It's a hog. The fields area all horribly "orange peeled" and there are butt ugly marks all over it. $2500 was fortunate for that ugloid pig, and 67DCAM was "a gift".

I say don't ever judge by a grade alone, and lately that seems to me to be the case more and more at PCGS especially. I frankly neither understand nor agree with PCGS' lofty reputation.

 

ok fine, the most recent sale in PR68DCAM was $3290. After preservation and cert costs, OP would save a few hundred bucks for a huge risk on a corroded coin. Even if the coin is able to be properly preserved, it may only grade PR67, who knows?

As for your point on not using auction results as guidance on value, I respectfully disagree. Value = what people are willing to pay for a coin. Obviously when doing your auction research you have to account for dogs, undergraded coins, eye appeal, etc., but auctions are the definitive metric for what people are willing to pay for a coin. In this particular case, your point may be valid -- the coin that sold most recently very well may be a dog. I am not an expert in Lincolns (or in any coppers) and am not qualified to opine one way or another on the accuracy of the grade, particularly on a coin housed in a scratched up holder.

 

That is very silly, about the CIA.

Gimme a break.

[See, folks, I'm trying to be nice. and it hurts!]

 

It's okay, @MercuryBen, I acknowledge that on this one, I'm the guy hanging out on the edge of the bellcurve where the ceiling gets low, but I've seen (and taken advantage of) way too many anomalous auction results to trust them very much. Now a multi-auction "trend" over time? That I'll grant you, that's solid stuff, but single examples are frequently WAAAAY off the mark. Auctions only reflect true value when a sufficiently large number of serious potential bidders are in place, otherwise, no.

And I consider myself one the hobby's best finders of auctions with not enough bidders who know what they're looking at. It is the art form at which I consider myself the "Nureyev".

 

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!?! It can literally hurt way down in the gut to not viciously rhetorically attack rampant silliness, really it can. Sometimes you just HAVE TO make fun of people or you need to bite down hard on a branch, or something.

 

Well, it seems like the auction ended unsold.

 

Doubtful. Aside from a possible cherry pick I doubt one could easily find a Heritage auction that went for pennies on the dollar given their possible reserves and ability to bid not to mention huge buying base. It's more likely those are the auction values but dealers are able to get more for an in-person take it or leave it sale if that price was low, or they just simply aren't a hot item at the moment.

 

Moderns........who the devil (on this forum) deals with moderns?

 

I have quite successfully “picked” both HA and Stacks Bowers auctions in the last few years alone. My specialty is unpictured lots with multiple coins that I personally view in the lot viewing rooms, but not only those.

 

agreed, it hurts ot be nice to silliness.

modern?
It hurts to just say the word

 

I'm sorry, but I literally do not understand your last sentence. How could you have received "top dollar" for an item you sold whose price subsequently went sky high; wouldn't that instead mean you sold it too soon to have gotten the best possible price for it?

 

One might suppose that the bottom line moral of this story is to avoid coin shows in Havana as you might end up being moved to shell out outrageously high dollar amounts for common skeeball tokens while you are under the nefarious influence of those as yet unexplained high pitched sound waves.

 

Assuming they truly ain't makin' 'em anymore, a Nice Coin But NCB, might be worth having. So, if the 200 - 500 total population is valid, the question then might be whether or not the legacy, the story of the error, has historical legs. Mint Errors, to me, are always more exciting when there's a juicy story behind it, and the 1990 no S seems to me just an example of Government inefficiency, which while fun to ridicule, is hardly newsworthy. Compared to one of my favorites, say, the 1817 15 star Large Cent, which legend seems to merely suggest that the engraver or die maker just lost count and or was trying to cover up being drunk on the job, which would be fairly humorous, is a much more attractive item to own.

 

CIA doesn't operate inside the US, silly people. It's the cover up that's always the story.