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New 1817/4 Bust half
GOLDSAINT
Posts: 2,148 ✭
The grapevine has it that a new 1817/4 surfaced in Long Beach making 8 now discovered. As prices move up, and the hobby becomes more wide spread with additional specialists, it is interesting to see these very rare coins show up. Who knows in another 5 years this coin may move to an R6.
For those of you that visited my Bust Half Registry last week you might have read this in the 1817 section,
“In the United States in 1817/ In January 1817, John Reich was in his tenth year as Assistant Engraver at the Mint. The first two obverse dies he used in 1817 were over dates, the 1817/3 came first, then the 1817/4, Reich resigned in March 1817.
In the case of the 1817/4 there are now seven documented coins, but at least one other is rumored to exist in Colorado having been seen by a local dealer a few years ago in Colorado Springs/”
Does anyone know if this coin came out of Colorado?
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Jim
This appears not to be the coin in Colorado!
The info. I got while I was in Colorado Springs was that and older lady brought the 1817/4 in with several other rare date Bust Halves that her husband collected through the years. She told the salesman that her husband had passed away many years ago, and she want to know the value of the coins. It is interesting that Al Overton was in down town Colorado Springs. The salesman in the front of the shop helping the Lady thought the 1817 coin looked funny, and took it back to the owner in the back part of the shop to be put under their magnifying glass. The salesman told me that the owner turned white and went out to help the Lady personally. He evidently made her an offer that surprised her, and she picked up all the coins, said she would be back, and left the store.
Coin details are VF/XF BUT the coin was actually buried in the ground so it is pitted. This coin is now to be listed as the seventh best of the eight known.
There is a good chance it will reside in an ANACS holder soon. Since ANACS no longer gives a NET grade on problem coins it will probably say "XF 40 details pitted" or something like that, but no grade stated.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to dig up the ground and find a coin worth $125,000!
Perhaps even a little more with the VF 20 O-102a just selling for $193,359.
<< <i>“I cannot imagine what it would be like to dig up the ground and find a coin worth $125,000!”
Perhaps even a little more with the VF 20 O-102a just selling for $193,359. >>
It would only take two bidders to arrive at that $193,359 price; of course I do not know how many serious bidders there were for this coin. My thinking, in looking over 50 years of past prices realized on this variety, is that the market is very erratic very much like one might expect of someone having the bucks to bid on one of these.
The NGC 35 specimen sold raw in 2002 for only $132,000 which sounds a bit low.
The finest known specimen PCGS 50 but lightly cleaned which was discovered in 1930, had the following:
1952 sold for $1,500
1997 sold for $209,000
1997 later sold privately
1999 did not make $184,000 reserve
2003 failed to make reserve
2004 sold for $333,500
I rest my case on the variability of the market for this rarity.