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A fresh GEM 1851 seated half - a 15 year appearance and pricing history - lots of twists and turns

roadrunnerroadrunner Posts: 28,303 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited February 19, 2017 11:58AM in U.S. Coin Forum

In January 2002 I had the opportunity to buy an NGC MS66 1851 half dollar that had been off the market for decades, about as "fresh" as one could get. The 15 year circle was closed when I saw the same coin come up for auction this past December, the first time I had seen it show up since around 2003. The coin had a tough market life from 2002-2004 as I describe below. In short, taking a coin from $32K to $9K. I had discussed this coin in a number of old CUForum threads (2002-2006) so that information is still here in the forum archives. Now we have a 15 yr point to tie it all up together.

2002 was still a very weak point in the coin market as things hadn't recovered all that much from the lows of 1995/1996. That would all be changed by 2004. This NGC MS66 coin was offered to me at $32,500 which was not all that far from the then record price of upper $30K's ($38K?) for the Pittman PCGS MS66 which sold approx 4 years earlier. This fresh coin was part of a larger collection in which I took notes/asking prices at the time of every coin I inquired about. But those years of gradeflation from 1997-2002 made it quite clear that 2 coins with similar grades but in different TPG holders could be quite different in quality. I figured the NGC MS66 as a nice MS65+ coin as the luster was a bit muted, and field marks were too numerous. As I recall, I countered the dealer somewhere in the mid-$20's. My offer being refused was probably the best deal "I never made" in coins. I was one of the very first people to be offered that coin so I can understand the dealer's reluctance to not hold it longer to try for a stronger selling price. The dealer told me "they knew what they had." Unfortunately, no one else came forward. That coin lingered in inventory for months.

The next step in the life of this 1851 half was a series of trips to Bowers' auctions from later 2002 to at least later in 2003. The coin went to auction no less than 4 times in that period, each time being bid to a lesser number, and bought back by the dealer. I still have all those catalogs too. The first time out it was bid up to something in the middle $20's, similar to my counter-offer. Each successive appearance brought a bid of a couple $thousand less, and decreasing the freshness of the coin. When the coin wasn't at auction, it was put back into inventory for a brief period. The coin eventually made it down under $20K and still didn't sell/meet reserve. While I was tempted to possibly pick the coin off at those lower levels, it was a market train wreck in motion and it had become so over-exposed, I just stepped aside in disbelief. It finally took the dealer crossing the coin down a grade to PCGS MS65 to get it sold. My NGC Sept 2003 pop report is annotated with the NGC MS66 coin crossed off and a "0" replacing the "1." So from that record, the PCGS 65 was in existence by Sept 2003. It's last appearance (2004?) either in inventory or at auction was around the $16K-$17K level, where it apparently sold and disappeared. So when it showed up this December I was looking forward to seeing if it would match or possibly exceed the 2003/2004 price level.

I was very surprised that the Dec 2016 auction appearance only realized $9,694, about 40% less than 2004....and a whopping 70% less from the original Jan 2002 asking price. That's not a very good 15 yr track record when it seems every appearance brought less money. A $15K loss looking for a home....ouch. The coin itself is still an OK coin imo, probably in the top 3-4 of the condition census. Based on my recollection of the coin in hand from 2002, I would have expected it to CAC today as a PCGS MS65. I wonder how this coin would support Mark Salzburg's recent comments on PCGS grading as it's quite apparent here who's MS66 1851 won the 15 year race....by a factor of 6X no less. The Dec 2016 auction appearance noted that "no PCGS MS65 has EVER sold at auction before." While technically true I guess, the NGC 66 was at auction numerous times from 2002-2004 and would have been equivalent to a PCGS MS65....and has been PCGS 65 since late 2003. If my memory serves, I believe it did make one auction appearance back then as PCGS MS65. If it was bought back, then technically, it didn't SELL at auction. If it remained off the market from 2004-Dec 2016, it would have been "fresh" again in 2016. Though I have a feeling a lot of dealers and collectors (especially specialists) have long memories of coins that were hard to sell at one time.

The only real killer 1851 gem presently slabbed is the Pittman coin. It got a boost in price of $50K to $59K with the last upgrade to PCGS MS67, even if it lost the sticker along the way. All the other MS65 1851's are down in the $8K to $15K range. Quite a wide gap from Pittman. Which makes the original 2002 pricing of this coin at $32,500 (within 20% of Pittman 66) quite striking, as today it's worth only 1/6th of the Pittman coin. Clearly, there were issues with grading in general back in 2002-2004. It's not something new brought on in the past 8 years. In my mind, this was (and still is) a fairly worthy coin that just had a lot of "bad luck" along the way. No, I don't own it, nor do I know the current owner or who even bought it out of the latest auction. This is just an interesting summary of what can go wrong with coins. Just make sure, it doesn't happen to you.

Dec 2016 auction of PCGS MS65 1851 half.

http://legendauctions.hibid.com/lot/28550109/50c-1851-pcgs-ms65/?cpage=7

Coin Facts page. Note the ex-Pittman/Gardner MS66 CAC has now been upgraded to MS67. It sold raw for the upper $30K's at Pittman in 5/98 and remained a MS66 until sometime in the past 2-1/2 yrs. Sold at Gardner 6/2014 for $49,937 as PCGS MS66 CAC. The only 1851 half ever stickered as MS66 was the Pittman coin. Current CAC pops show only a single MS65 coin stickered with none higher. The Pittman (now) MS67 sold for $58,750 in 2016.

http://www.pcgscoinfacts.com/Coin/Detail/6266

Pittman coin selling at Heritage in June 2014 as part of Gene Gardner collection.

https://coins.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?Ne=16&Nf=US+Coin+Year|BTWN+1851+1851&N=51+790+231+373+1588+74&expand=Coin%20Grade&ic4=Refine-CoinGrade-102615#expand-16

That Heritage link may not take you to the coin. But punching in "lot 30496" or "1851 PCGS MS66 CAC" or "June 23 2014" will get you there.

Barbarous Relic No More, LSCC -GoldSeek--shadow stats--SafeHaven--321gold

Comments

  • SonorandesertratSonorandesertrat Posts: 5,695 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 19, 2017 8:53AM

    Not enough people collecting Seated halves in high grade. Top 4 in the CC? This would not have happened if it were a large cent (even a late date one).

    Member: EAC, NBS, C4, CWTS, ANA

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  • roadrunnerroadrunner Posts: 28,303 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 19, 2017 9:46AM

    @Sonorandesertrat said:
    Not enough people collecting Seated halves in high grade. Top 4 in the CC? This would not have happened if it were a large cent (even a late date one).

    Yeah, I get the large cent (or even Overton) reference. Seated coins have been fighting that forever.

    In 2002, the coin was being presented as top 2. And at that time, I'd have to agree that it probably was....and it still may be....though I haven't seen the PCGS MS65 CAC to compare it to. And at that time there were 3-4 really big seated guns adding to their sets. When the top coin is so far ahead of all the other guys, it might lessen the lower graded coins even more.

    There's no doubt in my mind that if more fresh gem 1851 MS66's showed up, they would find a ready home for $30K-$45K. I think the problem here is more that the quality separation is so huge. You have $60K on the top end and then a bunch of $10K ish coins at the other end. Someone will buy them for strong money when they show up. And not just set collectors of better-date superb gem seated halves. You will often see big type collectors who want to put something "special" into their set. So it would not be unusual for them to go after something like the Pittman 1851 MS67 50c as a "type" coin for their set. It's both rare, finest known, and still only one of very few No Motto MS67's graded. I recall David Akers having a monster NGC MS67 1850 seated quarter in his type set. He could have found an equal or better common date which cost much less. Yet an early date like, easily finest known, adds another level of "neatness." There's almost another level of demand and respect for the early gem seated stuff (1839-1852) that goes beyond just date set collectors.

    Barbarous Relic No More, LSCC -GoldSeek--shadow stats--SafeHaven--321gold
  • seatedlib3991seatedlib3991 Posts: 446 ✭✭✭✭

    I guess this story illustrates what the fellow who set the prices for Coin World always used to say, "One coin does not define a market." Someone would always write in to complain their price was wrong for a certain coin because this or that coin sold for a great deal more or less. Guess he is/was right.

  • roadrunnerroadrunner Posts: 28,303 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 19, 2017 10:24AM

    @seatedlib3991 said:
    I guess this story illustrates what the fellow who set the prices for Coin World always used to say, "One coin does not define a market." Someone would always write in to complain their price was wrong for a certain coin because this or that coin sold for a great deal more or less. Guess he is/was right.

    You can't set an accurate price without knowing an accurate grade and quality. In the case of the coin in this thread, the grade wasn't accurate until it was downgraded. That fixed most of the problem. The pricing of gem 1851 halves is not all that difficult. The hard question is how "gem" is it. Is it low end, overgraded, average, solid, strong, pq, crackout quality, or gold bean material? Is it + or star? Is it CAC'd? Whose holder? The price guide cannot account for all that. Most price guides assume a retail price for "average" grade quality. Any deviation and you get a price variation....up to 2X or more for Gem MS65 1851 halves. The price guide price is probably "right" or at least viable. What's usually wrong is how it is applied....and who is applying it.

    Coin World often lagged the seated coin market from the 1980's to the early 2000's. It had so many errors in the 1980's that I wrote a letter to Keith Zaner, Coin World Trends Pricing Editor at the time, of all the obvious discrepancies in seated quarter and dime pricing on better dates and scarce dates in UNC. He verified all that, and then changed the prices to about what I had suggested. In a number of cases, he removed pricing in "unc" because the coins basically didn't exist and/or there were no transactions in decades. I believe I wrote them another time years later, don't recall details though. Keith later moved on to the CDN.

    Barbarous Relic No More, LSCC -GoldSeek--shadow stats--SafeHaven--321gold
  • There is a killer PCGS MS65 CAC in a major east coast collection. It will easily rank as a full true GEM. The market is still very thin. The buyer struggled to pay above CU.

    Amazing, a coin roadrunner has never seen :o !

  • roadrunnerroadrunner Posts: 28,303 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 19, 2017 12:13PM

    No one sees them all.

    Thanks for the info on the PCGS MS65 CAC. That's the only gem currently stickered in any grade. And at a PCGS price guide of $15,000, would seem to be a bargain considering anything better used to be CAC MS66 at $50,000. Big spread for one grade diff at CAC. The 1851 has the same price guide # in MS65 as the 50-0, which is sort of odd considering their mintages are wide apart.... 2.4 MILL for the 50-0 vs. 200K on the 51, the 1851 is much tougher in circ with an AU58 costing $thousands and the 50-0 maybe $hundreds, much tougher in unc, and much tougher in gem. Could have to do with "O" mint favoritism. Some of those early Philly coins don't get much respect, even with low mintages. It's not like you can go out and buy an 1851 proof either.

    Barbarous Relic No More, LSCC -GoldSeek--shadow stats--SafeHaven--321gold
  • tradedollarnuttradedollarnut Posts: 20,146 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I recall that collection well. The surfaces of many of the unc coins were a little off.

  • logger7logger7 Posts: 8,022 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Nice coin; beautiful Seated design. I'm just curious on the changeover from the Bust material in the late 1830s to the Seated coins, if people were like "wow" at the aesthetic improvement over the tired Bust design.

  • roadrunnerroadrunner Posts: 28,303 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 19, 2017 9:07PM

    @tradedollarnut said:
    I recall that collection well. The surfaces of many of the unc coins were a little off.

    True. Many of those surfaces were off from extended storage in reactive, paper 2X2 envelopes, that often eventually burns the luster. I bought about 3 dozen coins from that collection, where most of the surfaces were just fine. And I recall you bought a colorful gem 1861-0 half. Fact remains that NGC graded this one MS66 originally and things seemed to roll down hill from there fairly quickly. Now when the 1862 MS67 half from the collection finally crosses to PCGS (currently NGC MS67 CAC), I'll have another story to add about said collection.

    Barbarous Relic No More, LSCC -GoldSeek--shadow stats--SafeHaven--321gold

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