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PCGS Type 3 MS68 Saints off market
wheatcentcollector
Posts: 97 ✭✭✭
There are currently four different dates of PCGS graded MS68 type 3 saints
1910-S
1924
1925-S
1927
They have been off the market for a long time. Does anyone have any insight they would like to share?
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The best I could suggest is that they are "locked up" in registry sets. A 25-S in 65 ($288K APR)) is likely worth more than the others combined in 68. This dinosaur hopes so.
Why haven't they appeared lately. I'm guessing none of their owners have died.
My guess is the black hole called PEC (Prominent Eastern Collector) or Black Cat???
Coins go in but they don't come out.
I hear of these people but I have no idea who they are.
Maybe they are the same person?
Even Simpson doesn't have a 68 & he's the #1 top dog here in saints.
This is the only one of the 4 I can find and it sure looks nice!
My Saint Set
Not the same person
The Prominent East Coast Collector (who also owns J-1776 and three MCMVII Ultras) has never slabbed his Norweb 1911-D $10 raw MS68, Accordingly, he doesn't own the 1925-S in MS68 because he wouldn't have bothered to have it slabbed. Or he could have bought it raw 40 years ago.
Walter Breen never said the "Accordingly....." but he would have reasoned that way. West Coast Sour Diesel can have that effect.
I know PECC slabbed the 1921-P $20 I sold his agent, Jim Jelinski, raw in 1988 because it was unwittingly offered back to me privately (maybe 2005) as a PCGS MS64 by a very highly-placed dealer who turned white when I said "Oh, you're representing PECC now!".
That the coin was slabbed in anticipation of deaccessioning is clear. Whether with or without an intention of improvement is beyond any surmise. He's not a seller. Teddy's Coin is already locked up in a multi-generational trust. I don't know specifics about any of the others. AFAIK he's never had the intention of building sets. Just a smorgasbord of varied St. Gaudens-designed mega-monsters. Which common MS68's are decidedly not.
@Tradedollarnut's company has Black Cat's identity. As Tallulah Bankhead would say about PECC, "Simply anyone who is anyone has to have known his name for the last 35+ years, dahling". Consider that issue mooted.
That is an incredible example!
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When I was on the East coast... I wondered into a doctors house as a tag along. The gentleman was very quirky. He had a vault built into his house and inside said vault was some amazing things. It was funny because the dealer I was with was trying to part with a very nice piece of proof gold and the kind doctor was pissed off as he did not consider proof coins to be coins... His collection had no proof coinage. It was one of the more surreal experiences I had. Cannot speak to the 4 68's but I can sure this is one of the strongest hand collections I have ever seen. This was 13 years ago but last I heard he was still active... still half crazy. LOL.. I met a few wild ones while out there... Just late night rambling...
The same quirky black-and-white chasm he saw between business strikes and proofs surely resulted, in slightly altered form, in an exquisitely-curated collection of rare and high-grade business-strike gold and other sweets.
As Dave Akers once said to me as Ed Trompeter was leaving his table "Are we supposed to tell a guy with the biggest collection of proof gold ever that he's the King of the No-Brainers?". That might have been said by your quirkoid guy himself.
FWIW, you'll find many more proof gold coins, and least one MS63 '33 $10 IIRC PCGS MS62 (net), that Ed personally "de-originalized" by immersing them in freon. Ed "murdered" (per DWA) fewer coins than NCS and a lot more coins than Farouk, whom I believe to be guilty mostly of lacking a good press-agent. My source: Mike Kliman, who attended the sale with Abe Kossoff, his father-in-law, as his numismatic mentee and as a note-carrying go-fer in rigging it. In 1973, Abe was the first dealer to introduce me to coin doctoring.
When non collectors ask why anyone in their right mind would ever want to be a coin collector [so.........., so.........., very nerdy], the best response I can think if would be to show them an enlarged True View photo of the MS 68 1924 Double Eagle posted by Asheland (better yet give them the actual coin to look at through a 10x loupe under optimal lighting) and simply say:
"This is why."
I think the coin looks stunning in the photo, but I can't see many non-collectors being swayed by its appearance. On the contrary, I think a much greater number would be more impressed by a bright, color-free example.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
The 68 coin might have been a little farther back in the sock drawer than the first one.
The first one?
Ma'am, I see you scrubbed some dirt off of this.
Yes, ma'am, it would indeed make a nice piece of jewelry !
And you have another? Just wrap it up in tissue like this one and bring it in. No scrubbing yet, promise?
Ma'am, some people like yellow cars and a few others might just like red ones more.
I have owned for a while two PCGS MS-67 Saints. One is a 1924 and the other a 1928. Both are CAC stickered. One of them is in the OGH slab. I tried to locate one PCGS MS-68 that I might have liked better than the two 67 I already had but did not find one that I liked any more than what I already owned.
A few years later CAC seemed to agree with my thinking as they did not sticker any of the 4 PCGS w/m MS-68 Saints.
I admit I never even got to see a MS-69 Saint but quite frankly I cannot tell the difference between an MS-68 and a MS-69.