Coin Stories and Tales (For Fireside Story Telling)

Comments

• Options

  WingedLiberty1957 Posts: 3,010 ✭✭✭✭✭

  February 19, 2014 1:23AM

  One of my more interesting personal coin stories involved a 1913 Matte Proof Lincoln.
  
  Where I had an incredibly lucky million-to-one shot story on how I was able to acquire this striking coin.
  
  
  
  It started off with me finding this 1913 Matte Proof Lincoln on CoinFacts .... and then deciding to target this (for attempted acquisition) because, along with my other two Matte Proof Lincolns, this new addition would allow my small (at the time) 3-coin MPL collection to cover the full spectrum of the rainbow (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet). Something which I thought would be an incredible feat and cool to look at.
  
  
  
  ROY G BIV
  Red (1914 MPL)
  Orange (1909 MPL)
  Yellow (1909 MPL)
  Green (1909 MPL)
  Blue (1914 MPL)
  Indigo (1913 MPL)
  Violet (1913 MPL)
  
  I started off my "cyber hunt" of this lavender-colored 1913 MPL on the PCGS Cert Verification page, hoping that the current coin owner might have this coin in a registry set, and if their email option was switched on, I would be able to send an email query to the coin owner. However the PCGS Cert Verification page listed no related Registry Sets.
  
  Next, I started to wonder if my attempts to "cyber stalk" the owner would be considered illegal or unethical so I posted my efforts in a thread on this Collectors Universe Forum:
  
  is there a (legal/ethical) way to track down a coin owner to make a generous offer?
  
  I was hoping for two outcomes:
  
  1.) getting feedback if my attempts to contact the owner might be frowned upon
  2.) hoping that someone might recognize the coin and know the owner and put me in touch with him or her
  
  Then when I hit a dead-end on that thread, I emailed my good friend Robec asking him if he knew any methods of hunting down a coin owner in order to make a purchase offer.
  
  It turned out that Robec actually photographed this coin about 5 years ago and recognized it (good memory!) and not only that, still had the email address of the owner (the owner five years ago at least).
  
  Unsure if the email address would still work, Robec sent a query email to the "years-ago owner" of this coin.
  
  We were both shocked when that old owner emailed Robec about an hour later that he not only still owned the coin, but that he was (at that very moment) filling out the paperwork to consign this coin to Heritage Auctions for sale. The seller then pulled the coin and said he would sell it directly to me.
  
  The owner then started to email me directly, and it turned out he was driving from south Jersey to Ohio and would be driving fairly close to where I live and we arranged a meeting. Two days later I met the coin owner in a shopping mall parking lot about 30 miles away from my house, where I exchanged an envelope with $995 in cash for this beautiful violet 1913 Matte Proof Lincoln (a 1.66x color premium I was more than happy to pay).
  
  I actually felt SO LUCKY over the previous few days' events that I went and bought a Powerball Lottery Ticket right after because I thought I must be on a huge lucky streak to have all this good fortune on my million-to-one shot paying off. (No I didn't win the lottery.)
  
  What were the odds that Robec had photographed that coin 5 years ago and would remember it? And that he still had a 5 year old email address of the coins owner at that time? And that the old email address still worked allowing contact with that old owner? And the the coins owner still HAD the coin in his possession? And that the coins owner was at the very moment in the process of filling out the paperwork to sell the coin on Heritage? And that he would be driving within 30 miles of my house in the next two days? If that is not the longest of longshots, I don't know what is.
  
  
  

  My Coin Blog
  My Toned Lincoln Registry Set

  0