Has Anyone Ever Cornered the Market for a Specific Date?

jonruns

The Hunt brothers were almost successful in cornering the market for silver...shouldn't be that hard to buy up 25 to 50% of a specific date...

BillJones

There is one guy who owns a substantial portion of the surviving 1909-VDB Matte Proof cents. I think his hoard is something like 75 pieces. He has succeeded in driving up the price of coin, but his problem is he can't unload them all at once at those high prices levels because dumping that many pieces on the market will immediately depress the price.

It's a no win situation. He can't make the kind of money he thought he would make, and collectors who would like to have one are either priced out of the market or afraid to buy in a falling market.

If this guy had taken economics in school he could have predicted this would happen.

Ditto for the Hunt Brothers who went from billionaires or perhaps multi millionaires many times over to bankruptcy. If they had studied what excessive financial leverage and a lack of investment diversity can do to you, they could have avoided the financial abyss.

There was also a huge hoard of 700 or so 1856 Flying Eagle cents. In fact there were two such hoards, but one was made of substantially with coins from the other when the coins were sold. That hoard contained something like 700 + coins.

ctf_error_coins

RogerB

Markets have rounded corners.

PerryHall

There was also a huge hoard of 700 or so 1856 Flying Eagle cents. In fact there were two such hoards, but one was made of substantially with coins from the other when the coins were sold. That hoard contained something like 700 + coins.

I believe it was Virgil Brand that you are referring to.

roadrunner

Hoard of 1844 dimes was around 500-650 pieces. That must have been at least half of the surviving population....probably closer to 65-75% or more.

roadrunner

@BillJones said:

Ditto for the Hunt Brothers who went from billionaires or perhaps multi millionaires many times over to bankruptcy. If they had studied what excessive financial leverage and a lack of investment diversity can do to you, they could have avoided the financial abyss.

Actually, the Hunt Brothers successfully cornered the silver market in 1979 and brought their Wall Street competition to their knees. Those guys were the ones holding all the short silver contracts. But, what they didn't count on was them working with the govt to change the trading rules. In particular the CBOT, CFTC, Comex all changed their rules where large positions had to be liquidated. In essence the Hunts broke the Comex when they demanded actual delivery of all their contracts. The final straw was Jan 21st 1980 when the Comex suspended trading and only allowed liquidation orders. The Hunts had amassed $3.5 BILL in profits at that point with 130 MILL oz of physical silver with another 100 MILL oz still owed them. Their big mistake was not accepting deliveries all along where they would have been protected by the actual metal. They played by the rules and did nothing illegal. Their major failing was trusting in a rigged system. Leverage wasn't their down fall......changing the rules was.

Ironically, Warren Buffet did basically same thing with silver from 1994-2006 reaching 130 BILL ounces in physical silver. Along the way he must have received "guidance" from the US govt regulators as he ended up selling it all shortly after 2006 before the real profits would have began. No one ever mentions WB's role in trying to corner the silver market. And for years it would appear the US govt didn't know he was the one accumulating that much silver.

themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2009/01/hunt-brothers-demanded-physical.html

logger7

Having a truly rare coin, r6-7 the trick would be timing in selling it, probably the same would go for having a "corner" on a particular coin.

kranky

The 1856 Flyer had serial hoarders. A guy from Atlantic City had over 100, George Rice managed to garner over 700. John Beck's hoard was probably the best-known and was over 500. Rice and Beck were wealthy and probably just bought every example they could acquire. At one time Beck (who died in the early 1920's) had a standing offer to pay $10 for a 1856 Flyer regardless of condition.

JustMe2

I think that it has been done a couple of times with the 1870-S $3...

OnlyGoldIsMoney

I once heard someone was accumulating 1883 $2.50's. I found it surprisingly difficult to acquire one and examples seldom appear at auction.

Any number of 19th century Philadelphia gold issues with surviving populations estimated at less than 50 would serve as excellent candidates for a dedicated hoarder. That said, the number of collectors is still modest compared to the popular series.

jwitten

Working on it with my hoard of $2 1/2's (all the same date, and this is not all I have of that date)

ernie11

The Langbords tried to.

oih82w8

I made two of the three 1872-S H10C MM Below MPD FS-302 that are listed in PCGS Coin Facts...one more on the way! Not quite as impressive as a whole date, but...

http://www.pcgscoinfacts.com/Coin/Detail/510022

Overdate

I'm trying to hoard 2016-D cents but they keep making new ones . . .

CaptHenway

Eric P. Newman, and the few people that owned them before him, once owned all five 1913 Liberty nickels.

Baley

There was a forum member/dealer who had quite a hoard of 1824 quarters at one time, they were for a while the "go to" guys to acquire one, I won't say their name but their initials were jadecoin, I wanted one but waited it out and found one elsewhere, the date still seems to cost more than it should, perhaps there are other hoards of 1824 quarters out there..

ctf_error_coins

The key is to slowly sell off the hoard without anyone noticing ......

Stooge

@ErrorsOnCoins said:
The key is to slowly sell off the hoard without anyone noticing ......

This is the key...don't let anyone know you have 100 of the possible 150 VDB Cents. The reason this guy can't sell is that he acquired them secretly and then hit the coin world with the news that he had all of them. What he should have done is kept buying until collectors were left scratching their heads wondering where they were, and then release them back 1 every few months at prices more than what he paid.

Just my $0.10 worth

robec

The owner of the 53 VDB's probably could sell them. His major problem is he will only sell them as a group, not one at a time. This group includes the PR67+RB, formerly part of the McCullough collection, valued at over $250,000.

Walkerfan

I knew a guy that would buy 1938-D Walkers in gem, whenever he'd see them, at shows and whatnot. This is a coin that was heavily saved in mint state, so cornering the market would be very difficult, if not impossible. Suffice it to say that he had a nice little hoard, in any event.

291fifth

I suspect that there are more than a few large hoards of key and semi-key Seated Liberty coins out there. The hoarding of these probably began in the late 1970's about the time the Liberty Seated Collectors Club appeared on the scene. The club stimulated interest in the series and raised awareness of just which dates were really "scarce" ... though most are not really as scarce as many think, just hoarded.

planonit

Aren't all the 2000 Sacagawea mules owned by the same collector who has explicitly said he wanted to control the market?

HiBucky

I have bought every proof set that has gone down in price...

BillJones

@HiBucky said:
I have bought every proof set that has gone down in price...

You must have a complete set of modern Proof sets.

TwoSides2aCoin

Greed is an interesting attribute.

brg5658

@planonit said:
Aren't all the 2000 Sacagawea mules owned by the same collector who has explicitly said he wanted to control the market?

Tommy Bolack was buying as many of these mules as he could get his hands on, but I'm not sure if he's still hoarding these or not. @FredWeinberg would know probably.

FredWeinberg

Tommy still has all of his Mules - they're all part of his
museum, and he has no plans to sell them whatsoever.

And, to contribute to the Thread -

Back around 1974-75 or so, New England Rare Coin Galleries
(Jim Halpern) tried to (and did, for awhile) buy all the
1942 Type 2 PROOF Silver Warnickels they could find.

coindeuce

In a strict sense, J.J. Pittman did just so. And in several instances, he only had to buy one coin.

If having the only Mint State example of an ultra rare Morgan Dollar VAM counts as "cornering" the market, then yes.

jcp

Didn't Col. Greene own all 5 1913 Liberty 5c at the same time?

291fifth

The "cornerings" you have to worry about are the ones no one knows about.

derryb

I believe at one time Julian had a big piece of the 1999 W uncirc $5 gold eagle error market.

mannie gray

I have always thought 3 cent nickels were cool. I know I am in the minority on that point.
For some reason now unknown to me I became mildly obsessed with 1876 3cn, and would buy most every coin I saw if it was problem-free and priced right.
When I realized I had acquired more than 100 of them, I realized I had become a little carried away.
There was no effort to corner the market, because quite obviously the market doesn't really exist for that coin.
To this day, I don't know why I was so fixated on such a strange coin.
Thankfully, I haven't recently exhibited such strange behavior!

Steve

@robec said:
The owner of the 53 VDB's probably could sell them. His major problem is he will only sell them as a group, not one at a time. This group includes the PR67+RB, formerly part of the McCullough collection, valued at over $250,000.

The "hoard" of 53 1909VDB MPL's has been public knowledge for over 2 years now, yet no stories have been written about the hoard since Coin World reported about it in October, 2014. I believe that in addition to the 53 certified coins that the hoarder owns there are about 150 other certified 1909VDB MPL's in the hands of collectors. Very few transactions in the last couple of years probably because of the hoard. Surely, some reporter or specialist dealer has some further insight about this hoard. Why the secrecy. That McCullough example is probably the finest known and there are a couple of others also well known in the hoard. Bottom line is there really is only about 200 of these coins in existence today and I believe there are more than 200 Lincoln cent collectors who would like to own one for their collection. Steve

mustangmanbob

The best way, IMHO, to make it work, would be to quietly amass enough to tip the scales, so that the available market "dries up" and then "quietly" pass the information to a 1%, notwithstanding Salman v. United States, and then "dribble" my hoard out to various 3rd parties and have the designated pigeon gleefully soak them all up, until he is the one holding the bag, and the whole house of cards comes down.

Many years ago, I ran into a LOT of 1958-P Washington quarters with an X stamped on the face. I am talking in the hundreds of them. Literally, there were whole rolls of them stamped. The 1958-P is a bit of a sleeper, in the lowest 5 mintage since the 1930's. Nothing would have indicated it to be a "little" hard to get. My guess was someone was sitting on bags of them, and killing off all the others. Buy Main Sell, have basically nothing spent, but increasing the relative value of his holding.

Just my opinion.

Julian

I have been buying and selling the 99-w Emergency gold for many years. Probably have handled nearly 1000 total of the $5's and $10's. Rumors have been of a one ounce coin, but I have never seen it.

Nysoto

Recent hoards that I am aware of include a dealer who was buying most of the classic head gold that came to market, around 2006 if I remember right. Prices for CHG went up about 20-30%, and the hoard eventually was sold on Heritage fixed prices - and they didn't move very fast. Most appeared dipped. There was a collector who was hoarding 1794 half dollars and that did affect prices. Another collector had most of the small head 1795 half dollars, they were impossible to find for a while and then they got dumped on the market and prices softened.

seanq

I know someone who has amassed more than a roll of clipped 1950-D nickels. I don't know that there is a market for those coins beyond the one he's created, but if there were, he would definitely have it cornered.

Sean Reynolds

FredWeinberg

Sean, that's interesting info.

I wasn't aware there were 40 pcs. of 50-D Clipped Nickels out there......

Coinosaurus

I have a hoard of one issue that has been promised to me. It's not all of them but would seriously impact the market if released all at once. Obviously, I can't say what it is. It will be slowly dispersed, and everything will be documented for posterity and eventually published. But it will take a few years.

BStrauss3

http://www.fredweinberg.com/error-news/

Rexford

I always wondered what would happen if you immediately purchased the entire stock of a limited mintage US mint commemorative coin as soon as it became available to the public.

bkzoopapa

The most successful attempt was in the early 1980's when Ed Milas was handling the "Continental Bank " hoard of over a 1000 bags of dollars. He convinced the bank to let him sell slowly. Bu Bags were in the $25-30 thousand range at the time. He slowly ran the bid on BU Bags to over $80,000 a bag while getting very few hits on the buys.. Then distributed the bags through 2 dealers that fed the Hard Money crowd until they were gone without the Numismatic community ever knowing of their extistance till years later. Also going through the bags for pull outs in MS65 or better coins for later sale. The circ bags went out through Leon also without anyone knowing. Ended up with over 500 each

TomB

@Rexford said:
I always wondered what would happen if you immediately purchased the entire stock of a limited mintage US mint commemorative coin as soon as it became available to the public.

That is how some of the distribution of the classic commem series was done and it is one reason why the classic commem series was ended.

giorgio11

I used to see a guy at shows who would buy every 1933-S Walker I and every other dealer had, circulated, Unc, no difference to him. It was all he ever bought. No idea how many he ended up with or where they all went (I suspect he has passed on; he was quite elderly even back then, last time I saw him was maybe eight years ago). But you never know.

Kind regards,

George

rhedden

In the 1980s, had an uncle who brought me to his house to see his coin collection. He pulled out several cardboard boxes full of binders, and each binder was just page after page of 1921 and 1928 Peace dollars. He only had a handful of other material. I doubt a hoard like that would affect prices, except maybe locally, as a few hundred pieces of each date would not even put a dent in the available populations.

Someone hoarded 1804 quarters up until about 7-8 years ago. I recall they were very difficult to locate in the 2005-2007 period, and prices increased. All of a sudden, there were about 35 to 40 examples of them on the market at once. I had the misfortune of buying one as part of an old collection in 2008, right before the hoard was released. I still have not broken even on it due to the 30-40% price drop that occurred. If I ever find out who hoarded them.....

I suspect many, if not most, semi-key Seated coins are being hoarded by someone. 1866-S No Motto Seated half dollars are one egregious example. They always seemed way too expensive, considering the population reports, so I never purchased one. Then they started coming out of the woodwork last year. It's not like I saw that coming. I personally think they are only slightly scarcer than the 1866-s With Motto in most grades, if at all. The pop. report numbers are similar for the two issues in VF-MS65 grades, so why is there a 10X premium for the No Motto? I suspect they will continue to be bled off during the next few years. Much like the 1844 Seated dimes, which were hoarded and released suddenly, the 1866-S NM halves will very slowly (if ever) come down to the price they should be at due to existing price records, so I just won't ever buy one of these coins.

291fifth

1928 Peace dollars are way, way overrated so far as "rarity" goes. I knew a local dealer, now retired and moved to Florida, who had amassed a hoard of about 200 very nice examples of the date while he had been in business. He was very selective about what he would put aside for himself ... problem coins ... none.

As I said earlier, Seated Liberty key and semi-key hoards are probably very numerous. Circa 1980 a collector could go to a local show or dealer and find a good number of better date seated coins. Today you are lucky if you can find the common dates in presentable condition.

Broadstruck

For a few years I owned the full NGC pop for a couple hard times tokens in red brown.