The Market for Old Gold Looks Good to me: The Blue Hill Collection

jonruns

In case you don't pursue old gold coins, Doug Winter Numismatics is selling 64 of an almost complete set of New Orleans gold coins which is called The Blue Hill Collection (BH). BH is #5 on the all-time PCGS Registry set for the 85 coin New Orleans Basic Gold set.

Within the first 48 hours of the sale, DW has sold 20 of the 31 coins in the first half of his offering, and probably has even pre-sold a few already from the second half which goes on sale at the end of next week.

IMHO the rumor of the coin market's demise are a bit exaggerated. At least in the old gold coin market, nice coins sell quickly.

Obviously part of the appeal is that BH had a great eye for nice coins and individually none of them are too expensive...there is not a single coin in the first group over $10K.

I love pondering the "background" of a sale of a collection like this: why is the collector selling, why did he/she choose New Orleans gold to concentration on to begin with, what period of time was the collection formed during, did the collector have a budget per coin, etc.

DW has said he is selling 64 coins in the collection in denominations of G$1 to eagles. But BH had 98.8% of the 85 coins required in the Registry Set; so where did the double eagles go? Maybe @Currin knows. And it looks like BH is keeping five coins for the memories.

Hemispherical

Love that gold!

https://raregoldcoins.com/blue-hill-collection-part-i

scubafuel

I think the market is fine, just flat. But a post like this doesn’t make much sense without mentioning prices. I can sell my entire collection in 30 seconds if I price it “right”. So how do the prices asked and accepted in this sale compare with comps from a few years ago? I’d imagine flat to a bit down as thats what the market seems to demand for anything less than super pq items.

jonruns

@scubafuel said:
I think the market is fine, just flat. But a post like this doesn’t make much sense without mentioning prices. I can sell my entire collection in 30 seconds if I price it “right”. So how do the prices asked and accepted in this sale compare with comps from a few years ago? I’d imagine flat to a bit down as thats what the market seems to demand for anything less than super pq items.

Fair comment that I didn't mention pricing...I wasn't sure how to compare DW's fixed pricing to auction pricing (to my knowledge his ask price is the price)...

My first choice was the 1855-O P/C AU53 $5 which received multiple offers to purchase within minutes of DW's email...it was priced at $6500 and I was too late to the party...the problem with some of the scarce old gold dates is lack of auction comps....given the interest in this coin it seems that if sold at auction it might have gone for even more...

"no CAC approved AU53 examples of this date have ever been sold at auction. Only one PCGS AU53 has been auctioned in over two decades and it brought $5,170 as Stack’s 3/17: 2387"

jmlanzaf

No one has ever suggested that the top of the market had a problem. It's the other 90%.

And for the 40th under, the STAMP market is dead. But the top of the stamp market is still fine with new records set. But that hasn't saved the rest of the market.

scubafuel

That’s fair and thanks. Considering the sale was mostly under $10k per piece, I would not consider that to be the top of the market.

Justacommeman

The market for cool coins is just fine

m

Timbuk3

!!!

jmlanzaf

@scubafuel said:
That’s fair and thanks. Considering the sale was mostly under $10k per piece, I would not consider that to be the top of the market.

Really? Maybe we need a poll to find out how many people have never bought a single coin over when $2k or $3k. Probably a surprising number have never gone over $1k