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Who can help with a rarity estimate on a new SC$ I bought?? Pictures added.

keetskeets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited January 3, 2019 5:30PM in U.S. Coin Forum
A regular came into the shop yesterday, the guy collects esoteric exonumia and has a special fondness for California Gold tokens. We had talked about So-Called Dollars a few weeks back when he stopped in but I wasn't prepared for what he brought this trip --- an NGC HK-490 Charbneau Dollar graded MS62. Apparently he had bought it several years ago and after we discussed the medals and the book he pulled it out for his return trip. After some back-and-forth about the medal and a little research on my part we struck a deal this afternoon and he'll be bringing it back on Friday to make the deal complete.

The Charbneau Dollar(s) is a medal that's interested me ever since I first became hooked around 2000 and was able to buy a copy of the first edition Hibler/Kappen book. They are quite small at 12mm, come in Sterling Silver, 10K/14K/22K Gold, Gold plated Copper and Platinum as well as having several different varieties added to the mix. According to the book notes the bulk of the struck medals were melted after poor sales and the result is a low and relatively uncertain number, both by HK number and total of all extant examples. Jeff Shevlin has written a book on the medals which I haven't seen so all I have to go off of is what I have found searching the web.

The Gilt Copper had an initial mintage of only 50 and many examples of all medals struck seem to have come from the Bill Weber collection. Most I have found direct sales of are in NGC holders which leads to some confusion. The piece I purchased is attributed as HK-490a and dated as 1940: it is HK-490 and dated 1939. I found a link to another attributed as an HK-487 that is actually an HK-490. So far here is what I have found:

1 -- MS62.
2 -- MS63.
1 -- MS64.
1 -- MS65.

The HK-490 is easily discernible from the other Gold medals due mainly to the stippled fields. The others have flat fields and additional legends. I was hoping that if some members have any of these or have pictures of any HK-490 that they could post that here to get a better idea of what the true rarity might be. As it is from my scant research I see it still as an R8 with at least five medals still extant. This might seem like an odd exercise in futility but I have found from past experience that there's quite a bit of available information waiting to found, it just takes the right person with the right search. An good example is the Eutopia Dollar which has text in the book which states that the Dies are said to have broken on the third impression. With a thread earlier this year and a little searching I was able to locate eight unique examples.

Thanks for any help, I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow when I get home from work.

Al H.

the color of the medal in the slab is correct. in the close-ups I had to get the camera so close that it made lighting difficult(for me), especially for the reverse. part of the problem is with the pre-prong slabs: many small coins and medals get swallowed by the thick holder and that's complicated when they aren't sitting level. I suppose I will send this to NGC for corrections to the label and a reholder in the prongs should be an improvement.

--- I had returned this to NGC to correct the insert and they got it wrong again. After some time I sent to PCGS for crossover.



Comments

  • keetskeets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
    sinking like a rock, any help or comment?
  • LakesammmanLakesammman Posts: 17,282 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Man, if Broadstruck and Ambro can't help, you're sunk. image
    "My friends who see my collection sometimes ask what something costs. I tell them and they are in awe at my stupidity." (Baccaruda, 12/03).I find it hard to believe that he (Trump) rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world. (Putin 1/17) Gone but not forgotten. IGWT, Speedy, Bear, BigE, HokieFore, John Burns, Russ, TahoeDale, Dahlonega, Astrorat, Stewart Blay, Oldhoopster, Broadstruck, Ricko.
  • CoinZipCoinZip Posts: 3,253 ✭✭✭
    Sorry Al, the only help I can offer is a bump...........

    Coin Club Benefit auctions ..... View the Lots

  • ZoinsZoins Posts: 33,811 ✭✭✭✭✭


    << <i>Jeff Shevlin has written a book on the medals which I haven't seen so all I have to go off of is what I have found searching the web. >>



    Why don't you PM Jeff? He has an account here.
  • keetskeets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I e-mailed JS about some pricing and visited his website where there is some additional information. the estimates run from 2-4 to the "HK-490 is the most common" of the Charbneau Dollars. I haven't bought the book yet but decided to try to get an idea from my own modest research which has yielded the five from the OP. my hope is that forum members, who seem pretty tied into most things, would be able to help with either medals they own or no of. sort of like the Doily census.

    Any pictures?

    I thought I'd get pictured tonight but it's late so that'll have to wait till tomorrow or Sunday when I have the time.
  • jonathanbjonathanb Posts: 3,411 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I have records of 20 auction appearances of HK-490, compared to 30 for HK-488.

    There are some So-Called Dollars that consistently sell for prices that are much higher than their rarity would otherwise suggest. Some obvious examples are the Wilson Dollars and the Wells-Fargo Dollar. The Charbneaus are in that category also, where rarity is sort of irrelevant.
  • keetskeets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Jonathan, are those unique sales and how far back do they go?? would you be willing to share them with me via PM?? were you aware of them when the Second Edition was published and if so, was there a consideration that the Rarity should be changed??

    I agree that there are certain listings in the catalogue which seem to have a high demand such as those examples you gave and they tend to sell based on that instead of their rarity. it has thwarted my acquisition of more than a few medals. once I started to do a little checking I suspected that there were more Charbneau Dollars still extant than had been reported, but they still show up less often than most medals, just like the Eutopia Dollars and the Gold/Bronze Fulton Dollars.

    any help you're willing to share with me on numbers you have would be greatly appreciated.
  • YorkshiremanYorkshireman Posts: 4,493 ✭✭✭✭✭


    << <i>

    << <i>Jeff Shevlin has written a book on the medals which I haven't seen so all I have to go off of is what I have found searching the web. >>



    Why don't you PM Jeff? He has an account here. >>



    Plus 1
    Yorkshireman,Obsessed collector of round, metallic pieces of history.Hunting for Latin American colonial portraits plus cool US & British coins.
  • jonathanbjonathanb Posts: 3,411 ✭✭✭✭✭


    << <i>Jonathan, are those unique sales and how far back do they go?? >>

    18 out of the 20 were in the past 15 years. My records are spotty before that.

    Four of them were from the Weber sale, so those are definitely distinct pieces. I assume there are some duplicates among the others. I'm not trying to keep track of unique pieces, although it seems that overall So-Called Dollars don't tend to be resold all that often. I have 187 sale records for numbered Lesher Dollars, and only 39 are resales.



    << <i>were you aware of them when the Second Edition was published and if so, was there a consideration that the Rarity should be changed?? >>

    As I commented in your earlier thread:

    We did update the rarity numbers for the second edition. Overall I'm pretty happy with the relative rankings. With a few exceptions, the R-5/6 pieces really are rarer than the R-3/4 pieces, etc.The absolute rankings trend high, though. A lot of the R-6 pieces are actually R-5 or R-4; a lot of the R-3 pieces are actually R-2 or R-1, etc.


    For giggles, here are some composite numbers. I am only tracking sales from "real" auctions (not eBay, with a few exceptions for ultra rarities), so the commonest pieces are underrepresented because nobody wants to bother selling them. That's why the R-1 pieces show up as "rarer" than R-2s -- in terms of appearances in major auctions, the R-1 pieces really do show up less often.

    image

    There are 1369 distinct HK numbers in that tally, not including 12 numbers listed with an asterisk in the book because I'm pretty sure they don't exist (HK-163, plus 11 entries from HK-839 to HK-851). The summary is over some 33,000 auction appearances.

    The "most common" R-6 piece has 117 appearances (rank 53). The "most common" R-7 piece has 54 appearances (rank 154). The third "most common" piece overall (308 appearances) is actually listed as R-5. (Trivia: which HK numbers for those three?). So yes, there are some problems with the rarity values for specific pieces. I'm still happy with the overall trend.

    Keep in mind that we never intended to equate R-numbers with auction appearances. If I have only 7 auction appearances recorded for one item, that doesn't mean that it's automatically R-8 (5-10 known). More likely that it's actually R-6 or R-5, with the rest of the pieces simply not showing up in auctions so far. It doesn't even mean a whole lot when I have no auction records at all for a given piece. I personally own 21 pieces that I've never seen in a major auction.
  • keetskeets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
    thanks, jonathan. I don't keep the concise records as it appears you do but I tend to make the same assumptions. one of the things that makes these medals interesting is that they have been produced by a number of different entities over such a long period of time and many of them either kept shoddy records or the records are gone. hence, we are left with "estimates" in many cases. I note that you said "in the past 15 years. My records are spotty before that" which is a direct correlation to the upswing in the coin market overall and SC$'s in particular. coupled with the internet we are fortunate to have sales records that our predecessors didn't have.

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