Any of you OG’s wanna tell us about the 1980’s??
50cCOMMEMGUY
Posts: 211 ✭✭✭
So as we now have sooooooo much free time I’m hoping perhaps some of our veteran numismatists who were around in this game wouldn’t mind sharing some tales of the 1980’s. I’m 42 so I was just a kid back then. But I’ve read and heard a few tales of crazy prices driven by speculation and months on end waits for slabs at the dawn of their being.
I’d love to hear some great elaborations of the things that went on. I’m truly fascinated by this time period of numismatics. Please tell us some secrets, some craziness, a grand comparison to the now. PLEASE give us your wisdom and tell us of your successes AND failings. This thread could be awesome!
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
Comments
All of us old coin dealers were young then / wanting to know what the coin business was like in the early 60's
I'll repeat a story I've told before. I once helped a dealer sort a 55-gallon drum of Barber halves. As expected, most were AG, but I pulled a set of what would now be VG-10's and a set of VFs. We had one full set of high-AUs and bunches of rolls. He drove it 30-40 miles in the back of an old Ford Ranger (I think) pickup and was scared the whole way that the axle would break. We had to unload it in buckets because we couldn't move the drum, and then he was afraid all the weight would collapse his dining room table or dining room floor.
During the Hunt silver run-up one of the wealthier merchants in our town sold $100k face to Jules Karp in NYC. 5-hour drive in a produce truck, scared to death the whole way. Still kept his store open, but spent the rest of his life traveling. Built world class collections of coin glass and mechanical banks.
I was managing a coin shop in DC. A friend/customer of the owner came in after hours with a briefcase of $100's to buy silver. We counted it four times and finally got the correct amount! If you think counting that much cash is fun, you are crazy!
I sold a 100 Oz. bar to a Russian woman (1-2 days before the collapse, I forget). Every time we passed each other on Connecticut Ave. the look on her face made me fearful I would be killed right there!
Back in my 80's days, my collecting only consisted of saving coins in circulation. As they got stolen a long time ago, I still don't think I really had anything worth crying about today.
My Original Song Written to my late wife-"Plus other original music by me"
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8A11CC8CC6093D80
https://n1m.com/bobbysmith1
"OG's???"
I worked down the street by the main coin shop in town. I would go down at lunch and the store was packed. Seeing 100 Dollar bills on the counter with folks buying and selling bullion, mostly Silver as I remember. $100 dollars was a lot at the time as I was making around $8 and hour back in 82'. BTW I loved the 80's Good times.
Cheers
100% Positive BST transactions
We had just received our GSA Carson City Mint silver dollars.
Slang term meaning literally, “original gangster.” Meant as a tribute to those who have remained while their associates have since fallen for one reason or another. One who is still standing because of the fortitude to persist, and now has the wealth of knowledge that comes with many years of surviving. As such, one who garners respect at the highest levels.
Edited to add: Some great tales so far! Please keep em coming. What was it like getting something slabbed back then?
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
Literally "Original Gangsters", but in this context more like "Old Guys".
I was a youngin’, too, only a few years older than you but I collected and went to some shows in the 80s. Most of the dealers I met were shady. One was fond of saying you could make any coin BU by shining it up. One sold my mom (I didn’t know enough at the time) an extremely harshly cleaned and polished bust half for over a $100.
I remember the silver run up from the Hunt brothers. We were able to offload a lot of bulk silver with a local brick and mortar dealer who ended up in jail a year later for fraud...
Amazing I still collect, lol.
TurtleCat Gold Dollars
...you are definitely one, sir
@50cCOMMEMGUY asked: "What was it like getting something slabbed back then?"
Are you sure you want to go there?
Perhaps we should stick to AFTER 1986 to keep it real simple and not poke the dragon.
I thought it was "Old Geezers".
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
You see, now I REALLY do want to know 😀
There must be a lot to learn because I didn’t know there was anything so “controversial,” (would that be the proper term?). 🤔 Of course from a scholarly, historical perspective of course.
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
At work some of the younger guys call me O.G. I was in high school in the mid eighties and would not start collecting again for some time.
Certification has ALWAYS been controversial and still is. See prior threads - the ones that weren't nuked - about grade inflation, crack out kings and, of course, CAC.
I think @insider2 would agree: simple authentication was never controversial. Not that there weren't occasionally disputes over whether a finding was accurate or not. But expert authentication is an ancient phenomenon that has existed for centuries in the arts and antiquities arena. But when certification began to include grades and, therefore, pulled market value into the mix, it became very controversial.
There are still collectors that refuse to buy certified coins and, if they do, they immediately crack them out.
Slabs were new, I remember the term coin coffins. No internet, no eBay. Heritage mailed you bid sheets for auctions. Things were changing and dealers and collectors were struggling to adjust. Many new collectors because slabs gave them the comfort level to assemble a collection, whether that comfort level was justified or not. Fun times.
These were some really crazy times !!
Never to be seen again .
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/24/business/company-news-merrill-to-pay-back-investors-in-coin-and-art-partnerships.html
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
OG?
You can call me boomer.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
Of Course.
I was only 22. A guy had a shop downtown that was doing a ton of business. A gentlemen working there let me bring in Roosevelt dimes and trade for Barber dimes headed to the melt bag. Nobody cared. Great fun. Did a lot of metal detecting back then. Any silver dime I found became a Barber dime!
The dealer at that shop sent in a lot of 90% to a big outfit (don’t remember the name of the company). He received a six figure check that bounced. It was a wild time.
It was a boom and bust period for coins. The 80's started with the great silver boom still underway but that ended rather quickly. By 1982 the country and the coin market were in a rather severe economic recession. I recall going to the November 1982 Michigan State Numismatic Society convention and not being able to sell or trade much of anything. As a result I did no buying. Slabbing came along in a big way with PCGS in 1986 and NGC in 1987 (though they weren't the first). This seemed to set off an "invest in rare coins" craze that ran the prices way, way up until about 1989 when that market came crashing down.
Some local coin club shows had problems getting good, affordable show sites during the 1980s. This was due to the big boom in comic book and sports card shows which put great pressure on the good show sites and ran up the rental costs.
My own club held its last local show in the Fall of 1986. By that time the show, which had once been a big money maker for the club, was barely breaking even and had had to move to an inferior location.
I suspect public events/ shows of most kind will be held less often and there will be plenty of affordable sites in the future
to choose from.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
We were coming off the high of the 70's when coins were being discovered as "investments" with 20-50% increases per month
Then came the fruitless waiting and anguishing on whether silver would ever get crazy wild like 1979.
Slabs came out. A new era started.
Coins soared and then flopped miserably (on prices of course)
Here's a graph.
Slightly later, when I was a bit older - late 1980s silver was cheap and you could still find Barbers in "junk" silver. Another time I bought $300 face in Merc dimes at 3X. Oh and the BU rolls of 19th century Morgans - Morgans were never really a favourite of mine but when I saw nice BU solid date rolls I had to bite.
Couldn't find any nice Ikes in circulation but I purchased some cool guns back then that I still own.
I was 10 in 1980, had managed to save about 100 oz of silver over the years. The fri before the Monday opening crash, I sold 50 oz to Fayetteville gold and diamond exchange for $45 oz , they were paying several dollars back at the time. I rode my bike 3 miles to sell it. At the time I had no idea it would crash the following week, wished I would have sold it all.
I used the money to work on a set of indian cents in F-VF
I'm a little hazy on events between Ford and Clinton, sorry.
I was in my 20's.......... I don't remember the 80's
I remember. You could buy a really nice true BU type coin and double your money, often in a few weeks. I didn't keep any money in a savings account earning "peanuts."
The drop in silver prices was not entirely a one way down market during the 80s. There were some brief upticks. I recall one of them in which I was out driving in my car when a news report about a sharp spike in the price of silver was mentioned. At the time I had several sets of silver medals in my safe deposit box. I recall turn my car around, getting home, grabbing my safe deposit box key, rushing to the bank and then rushing to a local coin dealer who was the best silver market maker and selling everything in the safe deposit box. Smart move on my part. The price spike was very short lived and silver fell back to where it had been.
Also, during the 1970s and early 1980's many local coin clubs held their show at local shopping malls. These were great locations and sometimes the malls didn't even charge for the space. They considered the shows to be good draws for regular mall customers. As a result of the big silver and gold price run-up in 1879-80 many of the coin bourse dealers added gold jewelry to their show offerings. This caused trouble because the in mall jewelry stores didn't like competing merchandise being sold at the coin shows. Dealers were informed not to offer jewelry at the mall shows. The dealers didn't like being told to delete jewelry from their show offering and many ignored the restriction. This was a contributing factor to the malls ending their offering of space to local coins clubs.
Correction: 1979-80 not 1879-80.
For clarification, there are a few basic time periods to consider.
Authentication only: ANACS, 1972 to Feb 1979. Done via paper photo certificates.
(Two former ANACS employees founded competing INS in late 1976. Also used paper certificates.)
Authentication only OR Authentication plus Grading: March 1979 to 1990. ANACS. Paper certificates.
(INS began offering grading c. 1978. Paper certificates.)
(ANA continued offering Authentication-only paper certificates as ANA Authentication Bureau 1990-2002, after selling ANACS as a grading service to Amos Press.)
Grading plus implied Authentication. Hard slab. PCGS 1986-on, NGC 1987-on, ANACS 1989-on. Various others.
Coin shows didn’t have cases full of colorful Morgan dollars.
OG = Old goats?
Excellent review. ANACS was the first authentication service INSAB the second. INSAB was the first TPGS, ANACS the second and now the oldest since INSAB went out of business (for all intents and purposes) a few years after PCGS was founded. As I remember there were companies using plastic slabs before 1986. Accugrade and Global come to mind. INSAB was late to use plastic slabs because I was of the opinion it was a stupid idea. Collectors want to hold their coins right? LOL.
Before PGGS was founded there was a meeting of all the grading services at a convention. The idea was to standardize grading. At that time I thought there were only 4 -5 grading services including NCI to those mentioned already. I was shocked when over a dozen businesses were there! NO WAY there was going to be any agreement!
Blast white was all the rage until the mid to late 1990s to early 2000s.
I remember when dealers were selling raw Morgan Dollars as Gem for 200-250 dollars. they were probably 63-64's. Then the bottom fell out on them. These coins are probably $40 now. Fortunately I was not in to those as I was buying better date Dimes at the time which have gone up over the years.
It sure sounds like an amazing and exciting time. Also seems like coins were more pulled in than anything to the greed and excess of the 80’s. Along with art, real estate, cards, comics, etc.... I remember baseball cards being all the rage out of almost nowhere. I looked into them lately and they’re almost worthless, (with the exceptions of the big name rookie cards in high cert grades). At least with coins you get mintage numbers..,.
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
I had returned from living in Europe around the mid to late seventies....had not been focused on coins for those years (always had an interest and would pick up the occasional coin). I then lived in CA for a while, then TX, then AZ where my interest once again picked up. I went to shows in Phoenix/Mesa/Tempe area for a few years and really got back into collecting. Prices were much better then, but I also made less money. Cheers, RickO
Oh yeah... as far as being an OG.... I am pre-boomer years...
Cheers, RickO
I remember the photo certificates and process in which you sent coins in back when I was younger. I had got out(not really got out, but sidelined) coin collecting and such for several years between say 1985-1988. (high school) when I went back into it was talking to my old mentor and he was showing me pcgs slabs for the first time and how coins were now being encapsulated.
I can't remember what I had for dinner last light. The 1980's? FORGET IT!
Ahhhh the 80's. Thanks @topstuf @CaptHenway @291fifth @Insider2 @ricko for giving some 70's flavor, I was wondering how the 70's shaped things affecting the 80's. In 1980, one of my friends was all excited about the new dollar....the SBA! And a co-worker taught me how to identify old bills, you wouldn't believe how many 1950 & 1934 bills were being passed around. I didn't pay any attention to coins for years, but had held on to my wheaties. The 80's had a post-punk soundtrack too, Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, and Tears for Fears.
i was 1
@CaptHenway you forget the South African Gold Coin Exchange that was slabbing Krugerrands in the late 70s, but most of the action in the 80s was silver courtesy (up and down) of the Hunts.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
I remember going to coin shops, local shows at malls, VFWs, etc. This was before the internet, so I bought some, but very little by mail. It was all sight seen purchases. Around the middle of the decade, graded coin became popular. However, initially they were quite expensive, at least for me at the time. I got my information from Coin World, Numismatic News, Coin Prices and other publications. I remember the 80s as a pretty quiet and uneventful decade as far as my coin collecting was concerned.
Bid boards were very popular at coin shops.
Omniscient Guys
He who knows he has enough is rich.