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Dealers: most impressive collection?
rhedden
Posts: 6,617 ✭✭✭✭✭
A question for all of you who are dealers: What is the single most remarkable collection that has ever "walked" into your shop?
Here's a story to get you started. My friend owns a shop in a northeastern state. A nice cardboard box of coins came in the shop one day. In it was many stock boxes of all kinds of US coins, including rarities like a 1796 half dollar in F-12. One thing that I'll never forget was when he was looking through the partial rolls of solid-date Lincolns, and found a 42-piece "roll" of 1955 double dies in VF to MS-60. Not poor mans doubled dies- the good kind. All were genuine, though a few were cleaned. He ended up paying in the neighborhood of $100K for the contents of the box. Disappointingly, the 1796 half turned out to be holed and expertly plugged, but it was still a heck of a collection.
Here's a story to get you started. My friend owns a shop in a northeastern state. A nice cardboard box of coins came in the shop one day. In it was many stock boxes of all kinds of US coins, including rarities like a 1796 half dollar in F-12. One thing that I'll never forget was when he was looking through the partial rolls of solid-date Lincolns, and found a 42-piece "roll" of 1955 double dies in VF to MS-60. Not poor mans doubled dies- the good kind. All were genuine, though a few were cleaned. He ended up paying in the neighborhood of $100K for the contents of the box. Disappointingly, the 1796 half turned out to be holed and expertly plugged, but it was still a heck of a collection.
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Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Did you give them the standard dealer line....
We'll these are fairly common but I do have a guy who buys them..... I could give you a hundred bucks for it,. maybe 125.
Ditto: Wow a Stella
Although it is just one coin, so not a collection, it will be hard to tp that one.
Of course not. The jeweler down the street had already offered $150.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
The collection contained numerous 19th choice proof type coins as well as early BU rolls. I can't recall if it was 1911-s 1910-s Lincolns, but there were several rolls of those. Most graded out in the MS64-66RD range. Teletrade was selling those off for quite some time in the later 1980's and early 1990's.
RR
<< <i>Wow a Stella.................
Ditto: Wow a Stella
Although it is just one coin, so not a collection, it will be hard to tp that one. >>
Not merely a "Stella," but a COILED HAIR Stella. Big difference.
Spring National Battlefield Coin Show is April 12-13, 2024 at the Eisenhower Hotel in Gettysburg, PA. WWW.AmericasCoinShows.com
One of my favorite...and painful stories of collecting is the large hoard of Barber halves I was privvy to.
A seller was posting a run of key date and semi-key barber halves in the circulated grades of F-AU on Ebay about three years back, so I emailed him and struck up a conversation. We became friends after my first purchase of coins, and he then told me that his friend (he was a knowledgeable collector also) was very ill and that he had offered to help this gentleman sell off his collection to raise money for his medical costs. Bill (the seller) had so many coins to list and sell, he asked if I wanted first dibs at the coins before they went on Ebay to save him the time to list them....HELL YES!....er...yeah, I guess!
So every week before he listed his 15-20 Key date Barber halves I got a huge E-Mail file with all of his upcoming Ebay auctions and the prices. I would simply cherry pick the nicest original coins and the coins I felt were properly graded or undergraded. The sick owner had been collecting Barber coinage up and down the east coast for the last forty years and hoarded Barber coins along with some other series, but mostly it was Barber coins. I once recieved an E-mail with a pic of 7 XF-AU 1897-S Barber quarters and asked if I wanted them all or if I just wanted to pick the nicest one(s).
I was able to buy about 30 coins at very fair prices and with that "old time" conservative grading scale. Because of his exposure on Ebay, he started to get a lot of attention and a lot of requests to buy his material en bulk. The owner died a few months after the selling began and now Bill had the task of selling the whole "core" collection (I had just been buying loose duplicates) to liquidate the coins for the deceased's widow.
With the daunting task of listing thousands of coins, Bill sold the remaining core collection of Barber coins, Halves, quarters, and dimes to a wealthy West Coast collector who I also knew and communicated with. Bill told me the remaining coins were sold in the six figure range to this west coast collector. Bill was going to repeat the process of letting me have first dibs to the coins until they were all sold, but for time and sanities sake he sold them off en bulk and in the process cut me out of the loop for the core collection that remained.
I picked up some great coins, but felt sick to my stomach for a long time wondering what I had missed. For a coin addict that "wondering" is a fate worse than death. LOL
The West Coast collector told me that he has 40 complete Barber half sets (before the big sale) and numerous barber dime and quarters sets also. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that he had one of the largest barber coin hoards in existence.
Tyler