The 1839/8 $10 Type of 1838
Numiven
Posts: 382 ✭✭✭
- Any issues you see in this piece?
- This coin in AU condition does not come up in auctions that often, not sure if this is a rare coin - Whats your opinion?
- This is in a P50 holder, can it be a 53 any day later maybe at N?
- I see the prices are trending down for this coin in this grade, should one wait to buy?
1
Comments
Considering how much of the surface area is disturbed I personally think that AU-50 is the highest this coin should ever grade.
Of course, in a world of meaningless grading standards, anything is possible!
This is one of the historic minor type coins that I don't have in my collection. I've looked that them, but things have never worked for me to add one.
These coins are noted for abraded surfaces. This piece is actually pretty smooth for its kind, but I think that the obverse has probably been cleaned. It might look better in person, because photos often don't or can't tell the whole story. From I can see, I think that the grade is maxed out an AU-50. I can't see it going any higher because most of the mint luster is gone. Mint luster, in addition to the amount of detail left on a coin, is a major determinant for the AU and Mint State grades.
The coin is a banged-up EF. In my opinion (with which most here will probably disagree) it's value is that of a scruffy EF and you should not pay for a phony label claiming otherwise. This variety is a good example of careful, and successful die repair/redating, and is interesting from that standpoint.
I like this coin in its current holder and IMHO it qualifies as a rare coin...I'm not sure what you are seeing in terms of prices going down...the old gold coins I am looking at are going up in price LOL...a fair retail price for this coin is around $5K...
50 seems about right. Could go higher but crack and cross is a dangerous game with this one.
Thanks!
Any opinion on CACing this at 50?
CACing at 45?
I would leave it as is. It is pretty banged up and there is a slight possibility it could come back in a holder graded lower or even details, not likely but possible. Still a nice hunk of early gold and not at all common.
here is a 55 but it is a very close call based on market and not many around
https://www.rarecoinwholesalers.com/1839-8-liberty-head-10-type-of-1838-sku-134136
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
No, it's labeled "AU 55." That coin is an EF-45 just slightly better then the OPs. However the asking price is about $8,000 over what it's worth....probably because the seller knows there are many who cannot grade coins for themselves and will believe anything, no matter how ludicrous, that is on a printed label.
If that coin looks like it does in your pictures I tend to agree with @RogerB. If you really want one I'd wait for another to come along.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
This coin and the other example graded at AU55 illustrate the problems and challenges in terms of finding early no motto gold. Originality means something. AU50 seems fair. Don't buy it thinking it will upgrade. .. You have it like it for what it is and what it is in relationship to the others that make up the surviving population for the date as well as at this grade. And the AU55 example seems to be a fair grade. So the real questions are... How often will better examples be offered? And what I mean by better is original and quality for the grade examples. The 55 was enhanced or as another person here likes to describe as processed. Sometimes the best looking coins are not in the highest graded slab.
Best wishes with your decision if it is a coin that you are truly interested in buying.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
It is extremely tough to find a nice coin of this type.
Here are some conpleted auctions:
https://www.greatcollections.com/search.php?fromyear=1839&toyear=1839&grade_range_1=1&grade_range_2=70&ungraded=0&ungraded=1&fromprice=&toprice=&mode=product&sort=01&series=0&q=&denomination[]=20&listing_type=4&frombid=0&tobid=500
@coinkat has pretty summed up this issue. I would not buy the OP or the coin in the link for my set. I don't want this type bad enough to buy a coin that would not please me. And yes, I have bought gold coins that did not please me that much to fill a hole that I wanted to fill for historic reasons for a price.
If I ever buy an example of this type, it will be a coin that shows more originality than either of these pieces.
Looks reasonable by today’s standards, and decent value at probably less than 10X melt.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Over a year ago Dave Wnuck had the best one that I have seen. PCGS AU 55. I still regret not stepping up to the big plate and buying that one.
This one will likely not CAC. CAC is hard on these, as can be seen from the populations. If you search for pics of this type that did CAC, you'll see a pretty big difference.
I'd still like to own one of these one day, if I can find one that looks original. I've only seen one, owned by RYK long ago.
Sadly, there are no standards - today's or otherwise.
Roger....we get it. Consider the horse beaten.
Love your research articles!
This is just an abominably difficult type to find wholesome. If prices are sliding, it is because so many in holders are unoriginal. And likely will never bounce back. There are so few wholesome coins in existence that upward pressure, even for coins CAC might not like, will make these increasingly expensive.
The OP's coin has maybe 54 detail, but the obverse is totally dead and in general I agree with @BillJones and @golden's take on it.
Sadly, there are too many horses to "beat" them all with the same stick....
Regardless, I like it !!!
I remember that coin too. Looked back in my e-mail and I think it was actually an AU-58...
I understand and agree with the point, but I believe my use of the word is appropriate in the context. As I believe that Funk and Wagnall are no longer with us, I am looking to CJ to settle the matter for us.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
So Funk and Wagnall were also coin graders?
Unfortunately I am unable to write "I didn't know that" the way Dick Martin was able to say it.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Looking at the picture (OP), I would say, keep it in the holder as is... otherwise it may downgrade to a 45. If you have not purchased it, I would say 'pass'...Cheers, RickO
Yeah, I thought that it might have been a 58 but I went with 55. It looks even better in hand!
Is there a standard? The awe-inspiring elasticity of what we numismatic sluts and market whores peddle as quality would validate @RogerB's thesis.
Notwithstanding the technical accuracy that numeric grading suggests, the precision, as we have all seen, is only predictable to a high degree within a variance of a point in either direction. That is, in many instances, representative of dramatic multiples within many grade ranges.
Any expert recognizes the possibility that others may disagree with a specific opinion. There is no right or wrong way to grade.
But markets do not move (nor individual coins) on any one opinion, but on a consensual reality. If Jeremiah crying in the Wilderness might call down Divine Wrath upon unbelievers, here we are just talking making or losing a few dollars and mostly having something we find worthy and enjoyable. But if you don't play, you'll know less. If you don't stay in tune, you lose some edge. There's a refinement that comes from mastery. It considers nuance in many areas of coin analysis. That master grader tests his skill and accuracy(?) against others on a regular basis. The consensus is there to be accepted or challenged.
Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades,
Standards or not. @MrEureka practices his art at a sufficiently high level for me to trust his grading. @RogerB has learned nothing about grading for decades other than that he disagrees. I agree with him that there are no standards as he perceives them. Yet hundreds and thousands of numismatists communicate with the "inaccurate" pseudo-standards and leave the ineffable mysteries beyond the Higgs Boson (and other higher truths) to others.
If this is beyond your ken, I apologize. I simply wanted @insider2 to compliment my return to insufferable prolixity.
Short form: @RogerB, you don't know bupkis about grading as anyone else understands it in the 21st Century. Every time you open your mouth about it you undermine your well-deserved expert authority in research.
What was the question again?
The acne or zits on her face?
Dear Colonel,
If I might raise my rum and Coke to make a point of order, I do know a bupkis or two about 20th Century Grading Standards, and I feel eminently qualified to state for the record that they are extinct.
I make no claim to understanding 21st Century Grading Standards, whatever they might be this week.
TD
Esteemed Captain,
You've sat in on a few of my Summer Seminar Grading Classes and you've always evoked the students' and instructors' rapt attention. You knew how to grade, and contributed to a codification of it before a lot of us wised-up on deeper analysis of a coin's virtues and faults. You still know how to grade. You grade to a different standard than mine, but mine is more thoroughly reinforced by factors of nuance (previously uncodified) that your taxonomy did not consider. My guess is that we'd have quite a bit of fun riffing our impressions and observations about the 18-S 5c in front of us. Or any of a number of fun and/or problematic pieces.
The grading now is by consensus, the invisible hand of the "market". The TPG graders' consensus has a certain amount of acceptance (sight-unseen support)? That's a basal state value for the grade. The public now votes on a concatenation of opinions and each coin gets its own individual pass/fail. That's not the technical grading that you helped bring to the market of ideas. Incredible increases in values have demanded consideration of factors a more purely technical grader may not compute the same way. My grading speaks the language of 1975 and that of 2018. I can communicate my (purported) knowledge with others speaking the same language and still listen to EAC graders (sometimes) tell me they're surprised (as am I) that I'm that close. I have 74 year old eyes and don't trade a tenth of what I might have 10 years ago, so I'm not getting my opinions reinforced the way I used to, with skin in the game. I self-declare as a "partially-blind former world-class grader".
We grow old and crotchety, my brother numismatist, but new standards, reinforced by the highest levels of market confidence, are there, have evolved, and you can love 'em or leave 'em, but if you are to communicate with today's graders, their language now rules. I learned my gold from Dave Akers starting in '79. I see things John Albanese doesn't like that Dave has validated. Doug Winter learned (more than I) from Dave, and there are surely many instances where all of us would agree. Dave only votes through his many disciples now
, John Dannreuther "codified" the evolving TPG grading taxonomy discussing coins in thorough detail with his many battle-hardened peers. I helped set up NGC, but more than occasionally disagree with CAC, more so with PCGS and don't see enough NGC coins to have as positive an opinion because I think a lot of what's been around for quite a while ranges from "disappointing" to "sucks". "I fear for the Republic" too, and more 
.
I too find it galling that things have passed me by (somewhat?) It's another lesson in getting over myself.
The American coin market tried grading by mob, er, market consensus before, during the Hunt Brothers bubble, and it ended rather badly for everybody when the market crashed and lost 80% of its value. If you had a coin with an invoice and a pre-crash market grade on it, you had a coin and a piece of toilet paper.
Mobs can turn on you. If you don't believe me, ask Benito Mussolini.
TD
I would hate to have to explain to a non-collector how this thread went from a 1839/8 $10 Type of 1838 to Benito Mussolini.
You said it before I could type it:
"The obverse is dead."
My thoughts exactly.