​“The Spotsylvania Hoard"-A Quarter Century Later

TomB

I drove through Vermont this past weekend and the sun, as it crossed over the mountains, reminded me very much of a day in November, 1998. This is something my wife would roll her eyes at as she is not one to get memories triggered by sight, sound or smell. However, the view immediately reminded me of the weekend in mid-November, 1998 when I acquired what I call “The Spotsylvania Hoard”.

An image from this last weekend driving through Vermont showing how the sun lit up the landscape with colors that are reminiscent of natural toning.

On November 12, 1998 I had a lab based out of a hospital in Providence, RI and my wife was on a business trip. We had not had kids yet and I was free to work as late as I wanted. I had decided to skip the Baltimore show, but at about 11:00 PM the night before the show decided to head down anyway, even though I had not gone home and was still working at the hospital. A friend of mine, who lives in very rural section of the Poconos in PA, told me to stay at his house for the night and he would meet me in the empty parking lot of a shopping center in order to lead me to his house. He said he had purchased a collection that I would not believe. I reached the shopping center about 3:00 AM and he met me shortly thereafter. For those too young to remember, at this time relatively few folks had a cell phone and almost everyone made calls using booths that were routinely placed in outdoor strip-malls or other public areas. I dropped a dime into the phone and called my friend.

One thing that stood out to me was that the night was incredibly dark and the evening extremely cold. A bit later he pulled up with his truck and we drove through winding mountain roads for about 15 minutes until getting to a small break in the roadside tree-line; this was his street. I would have never found the place if he hadn't shown me where it was.

Upon entering his home he took out a double-row box of raw coins and told me that the collection I was about to see would blow my socks off…and he was correct. The first coin was a 1958-D Roosevelt dime that was a stunner. I was amazed. Remember, this was a time before most folks had internet access at home and also a time when photography of toned coins was barely in existence. Additionally, widespread digital photography was essentially non-existent (it was in its infancy) and most coin images of any quality were produced by film photography, which was time consuming and expensive. Therefore, one rarely saw fabulously toned coins unless one held them in-hand.

The 1949-D Washington quarter saw its late 1990s PCGS MS67 population double from a whopping one (!) coin to two (!!) with this piece.

My friend is a chain-smoker, while I do not smoke at all, so he usually does not light up when I am around, but that night he was too excited not to light up and I was too excited to care, so he smoked non-stop for two hours while I went through the 61 coins in the collection. I was in awe at the quality of the color and surfaces of the coins. Each coin was in a Kointain that was then inserted into a 2x2 flip and some of the flips had a notation to Spotsylvania, VA. The coins were purchased from the mid-1960s through the late-1970s or early-1980s. In fact, the Kointains had slightly yellowed with age. From that moment on I called all the coins from this collection “The Spotsylvania Hoard"

Approximately three-quarters of the collection was composed of silver Roosevelt dimes and Washington quarters, with the rest being split between Mercury dimes, Franklin halves and Jefferson nickels. I looked at coins for about two hours until I was exhausted and collapsed on the couch for two hours of sleep. That morning, we were driving to Baltimore and I asked my dealer friend what he wanted for each coin. He hadn’t priced the collection out individually, but told me what he paid and asked if I would let him make a $50 profit on the one-day flip of the coins. I agreed immediately and at that point owned these 61 coins for less than $1,200 total. My friend exhaled deeply and told me he had been afraid that he paid too much for the coins and would lose money on the group. I didn't buy anything at the Baltimore show, but it didn't matter because I had this wealth of wonderfully toned coins in my hands.

This violet 1950-S Washington quarter, from a non-US Mint Set year, appeared almost grey through the ancient, yellowed Kointain.

About a year later he told me the sequence of events that led to my obtaining the coins. A mutual friend/acquaintance of ours owned a jewelry store and also helped his clients with coins. An older woman walked in and offered the collection to him. It had been assembled by her late husband, but no one in the family wanted the coins and no one wanted to be bothered with selling them and she was tasked with the liquidation. Recall also that ebay was only a tiny fraction of the Goliath it is today and I can vividly remember those days of going through the entire inventory of US coins listed on ebay in only a few hours. Therefore, the jewelry store owner bought them.

He paid a small premium over bullion for each coin. At the time silver bullion was around $5.22 per ounce (the average of 1997-1999 values). He paid $5 each for the Roosevelt dimes and Washington quarters or about $1 per Washington quarter for the bullion and $4 premium for the color and 40-cents per Roosevelt dime for the bullion and $4.60 premium for the color, and so on. He then brought them to my friend who paid him $10 for each Roosevelt dime, $15 for each Washington quarter and similar dollars for the other coins. The next morning, on Friday, November 13, 1998 I purchased the group. Therefore, four folks owned this collection of coins within about 18-hours.
​
At the time of purchase, PCGS did not offer the (+) grade designation and also rarely awarded the MS67 grade to Washington quarters, yet on my first submission of coins to them I received a batch of MS67 grades. Similarly, many of the Roosevelt dimes also went MS67. The MS67 grade at PCGS was almost a glass ceiling for the silver Washington quarter series with a total of 519-coins given the grade from all the issues combined (1932-1964) and only a single MS68. The grade was also not evenly distributed throughout the series as three coins (the 1939, 1957 and 1958) combined represented the sole MS68 coin as well as almost 30% of the MS67 coins (153-pieces). Today there are over 11,000 PCGS MS67-graded Washington quarters from 1932-1964 and more than 200 PCGS MS68 examples.

One of three 1951-S Washington quarters with exceptionally similar US Mint Set toning that graded in consecutive holders as PCGS MS67 in 1999.

I submitted many of the coins in early 1999 and made three 1951-S Washington quarters in MS67 and the PCGS population for the issue “exploded” from nine coins to a dozen. Similarly, the 1949-D Washington quarter population in MS67 doubled from one (!) to two (!!). The other coins generally graded MS66 with a few MS65 pieces in the mix. Approximately a decade later CAC would come into existence and all of the coins that had been submitted back in 1999 received CAC stickers, with a fair number of the MS66 Washington quarters receiving gold CAC stickers.

In the first few years after my acquisition of the coins, I had many graded and then sold, but kept quite a few others. Over the years one or two of the coins have been repurchased when the opportunity came and some have been seen in higher graded holders. In hindsight I wish that I’d kept all of them, but at the time the toning market was not nearly as vibrant, expensive or competitive as it is today or, really, since around 2004 or so. I did keep a couple dozen of the coins and when I look at them not only do I recall the “old” coin market from the 1990s, but also remember what one might have expected to find on the bourse “in the day” and the crisp Autumn weekend when I had one of the best numismatic experiences of my career.

The drive continues...

erwindoc

Great story Tom!

TheRegulator

Great read. Thank you for that.

Sometimes I wish a provenance page could be established with information like this included. But I think it might get into a weird area if names are included without permission.

braddick

Thanks Tom.
I will sleep tonight dreaming of beautifully toned lustrous dimes and quarters. . .

alaura22

Great story indeed, thanks for that Tom

Lazybones

You can always count on Tom for fascinating, riveting stories. Totally interesting and enjoyable. Thanks Tom!

calgolddiver

Great story Tom ! thanks for sharing. Beautiful coins.

lilolme

Nice. Besides the limited cell phones, digital photos and eBay - the population reports were transitioning from brochures to the website(s), the set registry was just beginning in a brochure and as noted limited internet 'coins' and I would walk aisle after aisle at the shows looking for that next Morgan dollar for the set. Oh an occasional one would come from a dealer 'mailer'.

yosclimber

the Kointains had slightly yellowed with age.

Do you think this may have been a factor in creating the toning?

Batman23

A great story, awesome coins and some neat history. Thanks for sharing.

Barberian

That's a great coin story, TomB! It's fun to read people's adventures in various aspects and 'levels' of the hobby and there are some good storytellers here.

That looks like I-91 along the Connecticut River.

Catbert

Tom - a very enjoyable read and quality post. Thanks so much for sharing your story from long ago. Simpler times, no?

Part of the fun of collecting is the sharing of our passion. Again, thanks for doing so!

nwcoast

A great story and read.
Thank you for sharing Tom.
Too bad we don’t know anything about the collector that initially assembled the collection.
Great taste!

rsei0120

I like the 1950, what a beautiful story, and thank you for sharing, also the pictures of the coins and the drive and surround country side. I have always heard to go back east to see the fall colors sometime. Definitely on my bucket list, it really brought out the meaning of true collecting. Again thank you

golden

Thanks for the story.

OAKSTAR

Really nice! 👍

MarkKelley

I enjoyed reading this immensely!

TomB

@yosclimber said:

the Kointains had slightly yellowed with age.

Do you think this may have been a factor in creating the toning?

No. The Kointains were simply old, they had not degraded, did not smell like smoke and there was no damage to them. This collection was assembled with superb toning as the qualifier and the coins no doubt looked the same when I purchased them as they did when they had been purchased years prior.

RichieURich

Cool story, thanks for posting it, Tom!

psuman08

Great story, thanks for sharing.

shortnock

Nice reading, thanks for posting.

jt88

Grete post. It shows the history and the memory.

asheland

I really enjoyed reading that! Fun stuff and great coins!

SanctionII

Great story and I can only imagine the fun you had acquiring and owning that collection of 61 toned coins. 25 years worth of fun.

Coinscratch

Man, great story. The stars lined up for you on that day.

FlyingAl

Incredible story! Thanks for sharing!

What was the best coin in the hoard?

retirednow

Nice background ... independent of lacking wide spread use of cell phones in the late 90"s .... I would worry about ... meeting in an empty parking lot of a shopping center at about about 3:00 AM " Friend or no friend

geekpryde

Awesome write up.

pursuitofliberty

Thanks Tom! Great coins and a great post!!

TomB

@FlyingAl said:
Incredible story! Thanks for sharing!

What was the best coin in the hoard?

Great question.

As I went through the hoard there were numerous times where I stopped and laughed at how attractive a coin was and other times where I thought "this has to be the best one...". However, after I flopped on the couch for the remainder of the evening, the coins kept flashing through my head and I wondered how much it would cost me and how many I could obtain. During that time I kept coming back to four coins with the top two being the 1949-D and 1950-S shared in the opening post.

TomB

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read this title with the "A Quarter Century Later" written it makes me feel really old!

alaura22

@TomB said:
I don't know about anyone else, but when I read this title with the "A Quarter Century Later" written it makes me feel really old!

Tom, that's because WE really are

BLUEJAYWAY

Enjoyed the read and photos.

divecchia

Great story for sure. I enjoyed it immensely. It reminds me of how I hunted down some Nolan Ryan cards in the early 1990's.

Thanks for sharing a great experience.

Donato

Nic

Thank you for the great post Tom! I wish they were Barbers!