Monday Market Memories
homerunhall
Posts: 2,496 ✭✭✭
I'd like to do something different on Mondays. Rather than talk about grading problems, or what PCGS is doing, I'd like to share some market memories with everyone. I've been selling coins for 46 years and I've been a full-time show traveling dealer for 35 years. I've seen some pretty interesting things, So if you want, I'll give a market memory story every Monday. And please share yours with us!
hrh
This Monday's memory is a silver dollar story. There were so many dollar deals that went down between 1961 and 1985 or so. So many huge deals of original bags. I was an underbidder on the Redfield deal in 1976 (in partnership with Dave Bowers, Jim Ruddy, and Joel Rettew)...484,000 mostly mint, mostly scarce S-Mint dollars. A-Mark (Steve Markoff, Steve Deeds, Hugh Sconyers) bought the deal for $7.6 million...and probably made $20 million in four or five years. We'll talk about that one later. But here's a story that shows just the kind of incredible super cherry dollar deals that hit the bricks in the 60s and 70s. And this is just one little minor deal.
There was a huge holding of original dollar bags that belonged to a guy in Las Vegas. Larry and Ira Goldberg liquidated the coins over a number of years. Sometime in the late 70s...I can't remember exactly when...Larry called me up and said he had a deal of incredible condition original dollar bags...common dates. So I went to look at the deal and my eyeballs popped out. Totally monster Gems...by the bag (1000 coins in a dollar bag, for those of you who don't know.)
At the time dollars were selling for about $160 per roll of 20...$8 a coin. Larry said the coins were so nice he wanted $10 each. I said OK, but I wanted to pick and I promised to buy well over half the coins. He said, "OK, pick at $10 per coin, but you have to buy even bag amounts."
I called my buddy Gordon Wrubel who lived in Kansas City and he came out and helped me go thru the coins. I think it took us two days. I ended up buying the following...out of 10 bags of 1880-S dollars, I bought 6 bags (6000 coins.) Out of 5 bags of 1879-S dollars, I bought 3 bags (3000 coins.) There was a bag of 1878-S dollars...I bought the whole bag, no kidding 1000 Gems that would all grade 65 to 67 (at least) today. There were 3 bags of 1898-O dollars and I bought two bags. There were also 500 deep prooflike 1898-O dollars and I bought all of them (Larry charged me $15 per for those.) These10,000 plus coins were all minimum today's MS 65s and many were 66 and even 67, possibly higher. When I began to show them to local dealers...Hannes Tulving, Greg Roberts, Nick Buzolich, Mike DeFalco...they all went crazy and bought what they could. I advertised the coins in Coin World/Numismatic News and did great.
Here's the best part of the story. I had bought 10 or 11 bags (as I remember) from the Goldbergs and I had left 6 or so bags behind. But I had (with Gordy's help) looked at each individual coin and cherry-picked the whole deal one coin at a time. The coins we left behind were the "rejects" so to speak, but they were really nice too. In fact...true story...three days after I had picked up the 10 bags, Bob Hughes called me and said, "David I have just bought the most incredible deal of six original bags of dollars. These coins are so fantastic that I thought you'd be the right guy for them. You should see the quality!" So I asked him if he had bought the 6 bags from the Goldbergs and he said yes. I told him the deal was not for me. As it turned out, he had bought the "rejects" and they were so fantastic he thought I'd pay a premium price!!!
Oh those were the days!!!!!
More memories next week...if you'd like.
hrh
0
Comments
No story to compete with that one brother. Back around '75 I bought an unc roll of beautiful 1921 Morgans at $7.00 each. Thats the best I can do.
Thank you for sharing you memories! Please do it again!
Wes
Recipient of the coveted "You Suck" award, April 2009 for cherrypicking a 1833 CBHD LM-5, and April 2022 for a 1835 LM-12, and again in Aug 2012 for picking off a 1952 FS-902.
I'd be curious to know if you kept a couple of the nicest ones for your own personal collection?
Thanks for the story!
Collector of Early 20th Century U.S. Coinage.
ANA Member R-3147111
like in the 70s. It was not unusual at all, to see
a clear 15 inches in the mirrors with a full gem coin.
Them was the days indeed.
Camelot
Thanks for sharing that story.
You know, true coin stories-especially those great cherrypicks- are to a
true collector as a nice fish story is to a young fisherman.
Please keep them coming as I am sure you have many great stories to share.
I know there is a lot of time and effort involved, but these stories will be read word for word.
Thanks
Apropos of the coin posse/aka caca: "The longer he spoke of his honor, the tighter I held to my purse."
As for going through 16 bags of Morgans, I know how hard that can be. I have suffered though no more than two bags at a time and it is TOUGH. Of course, I am louping most of them and not just going on overall eye appeal.
The question is: is there any equivalent to these opportunities out there today? I only see anything close in variety cherrypicking. That is harder and really depends on a thickening collector base.
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
siliconvalleycoins.com
Wondercoin
Recipient of the coveted "You Suck" award, April 2009 for cherrypicking a 1833 CBHD LM-5, and April 2022 for a 1835 LM-12, and again in Aug 2012 for picking off a 1952 FS-902.
Thanks
Tbig
Wish I was your best friend......
President, Racine Numismatic Society 2013-2014; Variety Resource Dimes; See 6/8/12 CDN for my article on Winged Liberty Dimes; Ebay
Hoard the keys.
That's a DEAL alright!
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
You guys were intense. Still are.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
I think that has also earned you a "YOU SUCK"
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
<< <i>I enjoyed the story and look forward to more on Mondays.
I think that has also earned you a "YOU SUCK" >>
"Monday monday, can't trust that day!"
Me too!!!!
That is something I have always wanted to know about, i.e. how a hoard is done.
Please share more!
David Hall should have told us a Monday horror story!!!
This is HORROR week in honor of Halloween!
Someone asked about toners...
There was a time when a monster toner really had to be a monster. Some of the toners that bring premiums now were no big deal back in the day. It's all bag toning...dollars laid around in bags in the Fed banks for decades. I used to run adds selling "Gem" Morgans for $10 per coin...and you could pick from about 20 dates. Then some guys I was hanging with got on the toner kick...but they had to be really outrageous. So I bought a few and advertised them for $25 each and sold out pronto. So intense toners were always a premium coin. That was in the late 70s.
I think there may still be a few bag deals out there...but they are few and far between nowadays.
Remember...silver dollars really shouldn't have been minted...no real commercial use at the time. But the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 mandated that the Treasury would purchase 2 to 4 million ounces of "new" silver each month and mint it into silver dollars. This was all a political pork deal for the Western mining interests/lobby. But nobody really wanted them at the time, so they sat around in Treasury vaults for decades. Then rising silver prices caused a run on the dollars in the early 1960s. Between the late 1950s and 1963, the Treasury paid out something like 150 million silver dollars. People used to line up outside the Treasury in Washington. Harry Forman used to drive his Cadillac from Philly to DC once or twice a week and load up his trunk.
Bottom line...that's why Gem dollars from the 1880s are $125 or whatever. And Seated halves and quarters of the same era are 15 or 25 times that price.
But oh in the good old days...there were some real incredible dollar deals.
First BU dollar deals I did was in 1966. I bought O-mint rolls for $28 ($1.40 per coin) and S-Mint rolls were $30, because the coins were nicer, frosty and some prooflikes.
Morgan dollars are one of the most important coins in the coin market...have been for 50 years and will probably be for fifty more...if not forever.
hrh
Reminds me of this, but it certainly can't compare.
A couple years ago I got a hold of 3 rolls of BU 1878 7/8 TF Morgans. They ranged from 62-65, but many of the coins were by far the most stunningly DMPL coins I've ever seen--mirrors so deep that the surfaces of the coins were like water. Heavy cameo contrast on the devices, and not a trace of rub on any of them (they were all extremely "fresh"). I wish I had held onto a couple.
cheaper then dirt.....I didn't have no dirt.
Camelot
"I'd like to do something different on Mondays. Rather than talk about grading problems, or what PCGS is doing, I'd like to share some market memories with everyone. I've been selling coins for 46 years and I've been a full-time show traveling dealer for 35 years. I've seen some pretty interesting things, So if you want, I'll give a market memory story every Monday."
It was doubled bagged. A treasury bag was inside a FRB bag indicating it was the one in about 10 that had been audited. THe count was 999 brilliant uncirculated 1878 S and a beat up 1923 Philly. I think the auditor swapped his pocketpiece.
We were all quite disappointed. We already had 1878 S gems in our collections and gained absolutely nothing by this bag except some specimens of extreme toning. I now read this summer that this variety of 1878 S had hand touchup around the eagle's legs. I wish I had known it then.
Fighting the Fight for 11 Years with the big "C" - Never Ever Give Up!
Member PCGS Open Forum board 2002 - 2006 (closed end of 2006) Current board since 2006 Successful trades with many members, over the past two decades, never a bad deal.
<< <i>I wonder David- would you have made even more money today had you not sold a single coin in that deal yet? I believe there may be a very strong parallel between those MS Morgans of the 1960's-1970's and many high grade clad mint state coins in a number of different coin series from the 1970's- 1990's and forward.
Wondercoin >>
My thoughts exactly.
Buying Morgans at $4 or $8 each was a hoot but frankly it seems the real
opportunity is right now picking up clad for 50c to a few dollars. Slabbed
stuff is great too, but you have to pay ten or twenty dollars extra for each
one.
I once dumped a nice choice/ gem bag of '82-P quarters on a friends table
and observed it wouldn't be too long until you could buy a house with what
they would be worth. I picked out a few rolls of gems and carted the rest
the bank. I wouldn't be surprised if the highest grade '82-P in existence
was in that bag. There was just the one that really stood out but there were
numerous examples that were very nice.
That were lots of bags of Morgans. How many bags of clad quarters do you
think there are? Factor in that choice bags of clads were scarce even in the
year of issue and there's not much comparison.
These are the good ol' days.
Yep - can you imagine the story I may be telling the grandkids a few decades from now (hopefully!) about the early days of the 21st century when you could buy sub-10,000 mintage Proof Plat coins at about 1% over melt!!
Wondercoin
HRH, for you to take the time to interact with us, sharing as you have tonight, is PRICELESS and most certainly
will help re-kindle our Love of the Hobby thereby giving morale around here a much needed shot in the arm.
Thank you.
Somebody always trumps my brown wheaties story
I had the same, exact thought.
Added: oops, question answered.
I knew it would happen.
Also, if you can, please try to participate more on this forum. I think you have a lot to offer with all of your experience.
Didn't wanna get me no trade
Never want to be like papa
Working for the boss every night and day
--"Happy", by the Rolling Stones (1972)
********************
Silver is the mortar that binds the bricks of loyalty.
Nothing can take the place of experience. Sharing yours enriches my own. Thanks for the great recollection and what a great idea about "Monday Stories"!! I look forward to next week's episode.
Roger
It's story time
<< <i>
It's story time >>
Yeah, we want a bedtime story and want it now!!!!