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Let’s talk about the 1970’s! OG’s ASSEMBLE!
50cCOMMEMGUY
Posts: 211 ✭✭✭
My previous thread on numismatics in the 1980’s was a huge success. It resulted in fantastic tales and insider knowledge I feel blessed to now know.
I’m hoping we can do it again, 70’s style! So, like before, can all our OG’s impart on us their knowledge of the 1970’s. Lend us your stories, your back room dealings, your scandals, and your wins and losses. Let’s do this again fellas!!!!
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
1
Comments
All I remember from the 70’s was a lot of fun.
I began collecting in the mid to late 70's. I was born in 64 so I was too young to have enough money to buy much more that the occasional common Morgan or Peace $. The early to mid 80's was better for me. I can't wait to hear some good stories from you real OG's.
Many collectors, who did not really know what they were doing, got burned. Coins were raw, and counterfeit/altered/harshly cleaned coins were all over the place and even sold by dealers who knew better. Collectors paid attention to prices in the Red Book, unlike today. Coin World was an important source of information and the big ads were closely scrutinized (no internet back then). I relished reading the latest copy of the Rare Coin Review (today, these issues are avidly collected).
Many dealers bought coins from walk-ins and then sold them to others at higher grades (it's much more difficult to play this game now). The dealer-collector playing field, regarding numismatic information, is more nearly level now, making life for dealers more difficult nowadays, I think.
The AU-UNC boundary actually meant something back then, unlike today (due to market grading). Wildly toned coins were not popular.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
Again, hazy memory, but I'll NEVER forget this; at the 1973 NECA show in Anaheim I was shmoozin' with a young Fred Weinberg (picture young Wolfman Jack) who had THE most gorgeous blond at his side. She was an 11! ...and an 8.5 on the Richter Scale.
Seventies were when my income went beyond allowance to include lawn care income from various neighbors. I would watch for the Sage Coins ad on the first Sunday of the month. The specials would typically include a date set in the Washington Quarter series in BU. Did my whole set through them over the early 70s. Sid & Ethyl Katz. Sid passed early, so Ethyl ran the shop for years.
Mowed lawns (gas was .26c a gallon) to make a bit of money to send out for mail-order coins. You could look in magazines and there were lists of dates for 10c or 25c . . . . and then a special list of those for $1. Lincoln Cents in slick-AG . . . . . . .
I remember Robert Vaughn and I sending off for our orders . . . . 5 or 6 old Lincolns each and then waiting every day with such excitement that 55 years later I remember it like yesterday. I remember my first 1909-VDB. I dumped at least a buck into that and when it arrived . . . . . I was the Hansen of the neighborhood.
Drunner
A lot of bad music, bad hair, and bad fashion. It was a great time to collect coins because you would still occasionally find silver, Indian Head cents, etc. in circulation. I remember having a very decent collection of Morgan and Peace dollars in Whitman folders (no key dates) that I sold for mad money right after I graduated high school in 1976. Probably got a few hundred bucks (a fair sum in those days!) and had blown the wad well before summer was out. Really wish I'd held onto those as a memento of my youth.
Slabs were relatively unheard of and the Vietnam was wrapping at that time
In early 1976 I was burned out on coin collecting. I had put together a partial US type set and just set it aside. I became interested in collecting Ethiopian stamps (I had been stationed there while in the Army in 1971) and put together a rather impressive collection over the 1976-1979 period. In mid 1979 I started becoming interested in coins again and eventually started putting together a collection of ancient Roman. I wish I still had the ancient Roman coins.
I never got caught up in the "investment" frenzy that US coins were in by the end of the decade. Overgrading of US coins was rampant when you were buying but not when you were selling.
Okay, when you read the title, how many of you old farts out there thought of Old Golds?
Nice times.
and Larks.
Ah the 70’s. Paper route, Led Zeppelin and acid. I don’t remember much else
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
A lot of first's for me in the seventies. None involved coins!
Fun times. In college. Coin market had nowhere to go but up till 89 crash. Buying low selling high good retail sharing tables with coin club friends. All raw stuff no slabs (till 86). Easier make money then. USA large size notes cheap. A good buy then. Buyers went by red book / CW Trends.
Toned coins not wanted. That term came out with slabbing (marketeers). People in 70’s called them tarnished coins their real name. Remember dipping rolls of Franks putting them in 2x2 marking up for good retail putting Gem BU on holders. Bright shiny coins sold real well. Most stuff did keystone markup (cost x 2). Would buy world coins by pound put in junk boxes they sold strong. Had some USGTC in case spruce up display. Remember telling guy pulling out greysheet “go open a shop.” Some guy tried argue with friend gem bu his tray dipped coins not original - he laughed at him and told the guy “no hope loser go write sci fi.” Remember roll of bu France 20 for I bought near melt nice bu marked up cost plus 50 pct they sold out fast. Usually wore sport coat with my rare coin investment co business cards handy. Would sometimes hand card to buyers “how much you want invest let me pick you out some nice ones.” One guy handed me $50 I quickly gave him some nice coins, he was delighted.
Miss those fun times especially now.
Sold off most my coin collection to buy a Hardware store in rural Colorado. Was having babies and learning all sorts of things, non numismatic. But, one of my regular customers was a family that owned a dairy farm a few miles down the road. I remember their first purchase in 1974 was a fancy self propelled lawn mower that was a few hundred bucks. Best of the best mower wise at the time. They paid me in gold notes. Yes, really. 1928 style gold notes and all quite circulated. I remember the granddaughter there with gramps. Her name was Vicki. I remember gramps pulling a round wad from his overalls to pay and he just handed it to Vicki (as if he was not good with numbers). She counted out the correct amount and they took the mower and left. Now, I had just purchased the store in '73 and did not have two nickels to rub together. Every cent earned went back into inventory. I took home $700 a month to live on and put all the rest back into the store.
Long story shorter is my banker was a collector and I made sure he got the notes. Didn't feel right to do that but I needed to have a very friendly banker for the future. Every time that family made a purchase it was with real old money. I got Vicky alone once and asked her what's up with that and she said gramps got burned in the depression and didn't believe in banks....he stashed everything at home. Never could save any notes but did have a good banker friend!
bob
Show us your Lark!
Lance.
I was living and working in the West Indies and Europe during those years.... Kept some old local coins, still have a few...no real value but memories. My U.S. coins were in storage in a friends garage and some at my brother's house. Great times though...
Cheers, RickO
Bad Music? At least it was Music...unlike most of what is coming out today!
The 70's. FM was cool, 8-Tracks were all the rage...Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Credence Clearwater Revival, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Eagles, Allman Brothers....then KC & the Sunshine Band, Donna Summers, and Bee Gees. The Godfather, Jaws, Cheech n' Chong, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, and Star Wars were hitting the screens...yes there were Drive-In Movies....you watched the whole movie sitting in your car with a wired speaker hanging on your window...if you were lucky, you could park between two spots and have two speakers for a pseudo stereo effect. Coins? Well the IKEs were the BIG silver dollar, but were mostly just clad. The big rush came with the bicentennial designs....wow look, they changed the quarter design to celebrate! Cool man! I was just a kid so focused my collection on wheaties. Still have that coffee can full of em. I should check them out, I bet they're worth about $25 or so!!! LOL
Athen's GA was a hippy collage town in 1977. With cow pastures full of mushrooms. That place was a trip. Lots of free love going on. Not that I got to take part in any of it....darn it. I only lived there for 1 year. Seemed like 3 years or more.
I had even more fun when I moved to Bham Al in 1978. I was still in high shcool. Met my girl friend on the school bus on the very 1st day. Loved that girl all the way thru high school and many years after that.
We had a smoking area in the courtyard in the middle of school. Me and Trish would meet between classes talk and smoke our cigs. Great times!
Done with college in 1972 and started my National Park Service career as a tour Guide at Fords Theatre in DC. This also meant I could move from searching rolls and actually buy coins from dealers. There were at that time 7 in the DC area. And lucky for me, one was at my bus stop on 11th street. I could finally put on layaway my 1910 S, and a few others and drop off $5 a month till they were paid for.
Now a bigger story for me was about 1976 when a fellow gets assigned to work with us and he is older and widowed. To pass his time when his wife died he started coin collecting. So we had something to chat about now and then. He was a modest means man, had a single bedroom apartment and did not own car. One day he announces he is getting married! But the fiancé says the coins must go so he can buy a home and car in the suburbs. So he ask me to help him sell the coins by driving him to those 7 coin shops in the DC area. So about every week or so I would pick him up and drive him over to a B&M shop. I would wait outside since he often met with the owners behind close doors. Occasionally I would Get a glance of that weeks coins, almost always type coins in albums - complete albums- and nothing less than MS 65! He would drop back in the car with a check in hand most often over $50,000 boasting he got $17,000 for this one and $10,000 for that one, etc. I know some of those outstanding coins are in some of your collections now. He later told me he flew to big coin shows and evidently was a heck of a collector. So as a thank you, him comes to work with a big box of assorted (and empty) capitol plastic boards, and supplies and gives them to me. I still got the cent boards.
WS
Yeah, in my attempt to take a swipe at disco, I overgeneralized. There was a wealth of fantastic music produced in that decade. But we digress...
If you knew where he lived that would be a property to metal detect
No telling what might still be on the property. Great story!
When I was about 6-7 (1977) I used to get excited when we would go to the sears dept store. Inside the store between the two escalators there was a coin shop. I remember buying wheats and putting them in a blue folder, but more importantly, buying my first silver coin there. It was a really nice BU mercury dime for $3 . I remember holding in the dressing room while my older brother tried on clothes.
And chesterfields
You didn't like the song "Disco Duck"?
I started collecting ca. 1973 as a youngster, my dad returned from his tour in Viet-Nam and gave me a bag of coins and paper money that he had saved along the way. Mostly Viet coins but also US MPC's as he missed a C-day when he was out in the field. The most interesting coin in terms of value is an 1897 Japanese 50 sen coin that my dad said he got in Japan but no idea where or how. I thought the MPC's were interesting because of the colours and the 25c and 50c denominations. I still have most of the stuff. A couple of years later we travelled to where my dad grew up and that was where my coin collecting really took off - he gave me a Folger's coffee can full of coins that he had saved from when he was a kid - right on top was a brilliant uncirculated 1878 Morgan. My grandfather gave me some coins that had come down in the family, the 1867 two cent piece that his brother gave him in 1897 when his finger was amputated by a corn shucker - he was supposed to buy candy with it in town but saved it until he gave it to me in 1976. My grandfather gave me older coins like the 1841-O half dime that he had saved from when he was younger.
With that inspiration I started buying older coins and hanging out in coin shops on Saturdays.
Jim Croce ...Operator..you can keep the dime
Shore . . . . .
Back in the days when music had the 'ballad' theme and writers and performers took pride in giving just a slice of life back in a performance . . .
Damn plane crashes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Drunner
I would purchase BU 1881 O Morgan dollars from a lady named Elsie Corriel in Campbell, California for $3.25 which included shipping. I would sell them to the other kids around town and in school for $11. each. I would purchase the 1961-63 proof sets for the same price, break them up and sell the coins individually. After awhile, I started typing my price list on a manual typewriter, having my sister run copies off the copier where she worked and bringing them home. I would fold the paper 3 times, type my return address and the person's name and put a staple in the paper. She would take them to her office and run them through the stamp machine and send them out. I made many trades and sold a beautifully toned 1835 bust half dime, I considered AU for $85. The dealer I traded it from said it was Gem BU, but I disagreed. I saw the coin in, I think it was, an NGC holder and it was graded MS67 several years ago. Going to shows back then was a treat. You would see all the museum quality pieces in coin dealers showcases. I bought and sold many original rolls of Mercury dimes, walking liberty halves and buffalo nickels in the 70s and 80s.
1979- Gas shortage.
Loooong gas lines around the block.
Fill up odd/even days.
Use a whole lunch hour, or more to fill up.
My sister in law would take me to the flea market in another town on Saturday and drop me off with a card table and chair at 6am and pick me up at 3pm. Dealers would bring me quite a bit of things to purchase and I would buy and sell. One dealer could not get rid of his 1853 and 1854 with arrows halves and traded them to me for proof coins. It wasn't unusual for me to bring home $200 cash and double my original inventory. For the small dealer, at the time, Coin World was what we based our buy prices off of. We would go to the back of coin world and check what the big guys were paying for coins and use that as our baseline. But...after I started driving and got a taste of girls, things were never the same.
But I still remember filling my VW Bug up for $5.00
I started collecting around 1965 as a 10 year old (with very little money). I had a paper route, mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter. I was in High School in the early 70's. I recently found a forgotten about 3 ring binder with vinyl 2X2 pages in it. There were many world coins in it; I seem to recall a nice gentleman at a coin show I went to gave them to me. It also had numerous Lincoln 1C and Jefferson 5C in it from the late 60's to 1972. Each of those coins was assigned a number, but I can't remember why. Most of them were very lightly circulated; I have to believe I saw some sort of variety or error on them and cataloged my findings somewhere. Some of the flips have my 16 year old hand writing on them. There are other misc. coins in there as well- none of them worth much. It's interesting to take a journey back into my head 50 years ago, however.
I started putting pennies in folders when I was 5 and remember pulling my first 1970 Cent from my Dads change around that time.
In 1972, I talked my uncle into taking me he to a local show (he had a small collection and thats how I got interested). I removed him spending $10 for a 1950-D nickel and telling me what a bargain it was. He also bought me an 1880-s Morgan for $1.25 that was lucky to be VG. I really liked the $20 Gold Liberties but he wouldnt but me one. $50 was a lot of money.
One of my favorite Christmas presents in elementary school was the Coin Collectors kit from the Sears catalog. It included a copy of Frank Spadone's Variety and Oddity book. I loved that book.
I continued collecting throughout the 70s, spending birthday and Christmas money on coins. One thing I distinctly remember was that accurate information was hard to find. Outside of the Redbook, there wasn't a lot of reference material. I had a couple European coins from the early 1800s and had no idea what they were. Somebody told me about Coins of the World 1750-1850and I bought a copy. It still sits on my bookshelf.
My friend and I decided it was time to become dealers. His father was a General and collected old Colt firearms, and Capped Bust half dollars so the son got the collector gene. My friend put up the money (I had none) and "we" purchased 100 1969 Proof Sets at a great wholesale price from a local dealer (Willian Crowl) thinking we were going to strike it rich. It turns out"we" bailed out the dealer because the market for them was dropping like a stone.
Several years later my friend still had the sets and we remain friends to this day.
Does he send you a 1969 proof set every year for your birthday?
For many years my coin club used to buy 1968 through 1972 proof sets to use as raffle and attendance prizes. Everyone considered them to be numismatic duds but the club was able to get them cheap. We finally switched to circulated three cent nickels in the mid-1980s after we were able to buy a full roll cheaply. The members got very tired of winning those as well.
In a nutshell, I recall the 70's as being the time of poor market information when it came to the rarity of better date coins, especially the sort of forgotten seated coins (and dated Liberty gold coins) from 1837-1891. Everyone went by "mintages" in the Red Book, and their "gut" feel as to what was rare and what was common. A LOT of it was wrong, including the mintages....lol. Very little expertise done to assess survival rates for anything but Large Cents and Half Cents. So starting in 1974 I was on a mission to explore the entire US market for undervalued circ coins. My tools were simple yet crude.....the weekly Coin World magazine, and the various price lists, fixed price catalogs, and auction cats I received from the bigger dealers. The information in Taxay, Scott's coin catalog and other sources were just too anecdotal, and usually influenced by mintages and "other people." I just wanted the raw data.
Imagine sitting down each week and listing EVERY seated and bust coin for sale from CW in a book. The first few weeks I spent hours and listed thousands of coins. Months later I had removed many common dates from consideration (as multiples of another scarcer date) and had found the cream of the crop to continue on with. I logged price-condition-seller to avoid duplicates. While far from a perfect data mining, it would at least ensure that for coins that almost no one ever had or claimed to have (like a 1874-cc dime or 1872-s quarter) they were indeed rarities despite low CW Trends and Red Book pricing. In one sense, it was a field day with so much of the better date coin market mis-priced. You could buy a circ coin for $50 and flip it for $200 the next day. A lot of dealers were keeping an eye out for these same coins though.
Within my first couple months I knew what coins were over-rated and over-priced. With a year of tabulating I had a good list of what coins to keep an eye out for. And I continued on with the UNCs only for several more years. There were no shortage of these either considering I was looking at the entire US silver type coin market. Money was the issue. 1804 dimes and quarters, 1801 and 1802 halves, dozens of Liberty seated dimes, quarters, halves, dollars (mostly S and O mints, some P mints, few CC's) that were priced in CW Trends as nearly common dates, yet impossible to find. Coins like an XF 1872-s quarter listed for $75 in 1974....after all its mintage was "high" compared to other "favorite low mintage" dates. High on my shopping list were the quarters.....40 WD, 41-0, 42 LD, 42-0 SD, 43-0, 47-0, (49-0 and 53 NA, 57-S, 58-S, 59-S were mostly too expensive for that time and not good values imo), 51-0, 51, 52-0, 60-s, 64-s, 66-s, 67-s, 71-s, 72-s, 71-cc, 72-cc, 75-cc were the more obvious ones. I routinely ran across these at local and regional shows and picked them up very reasonable. $25 for a Fine 1852-0. The half dimes, dimes, halves, and dollars offered less than the quarters but had their winners too. For example a 70-cc half was not that prized. I found a wonderful F-15 for $175 back then. Didn't want to keep it and took months to find a buyer at $225. Quarters were my main focus. Seated dollars were generally over-priced with so many "low" mintages but I found a few to buy such as an XF45 1867 for $135. It was quite clear back then though that circ 1854, 55's were the keys.
Coin World had a full page ad from World Wide Coin Investments in 1975/76 iirc listing dozens of rare seated dates with many multiples. By the time I got through to someone on the phone all the best dates were gone...and they had most of them listed. But no one wanted the 1867-s quarters....bought all 7 of them in Fine-VF at $55-$65 each. All clean, mark free, original specimens, like you don't find today. This later got me on my hunt for rare S and O mint seated quarters in choice/gem unc. And despite modest CW and Red Book values (like $375 for an UNC 1867-s 25c) there were almost NONE of these dates to be found from 1975-1986. If you looked at the 1974-1976 Coin Market price guides today (I still have them) you would laugh out loud....a combination of laziness and lack of inquisitiveness by whomever published those lists.
I ended up owning multiples of all those better date coins above....with the exception of a 71-cc or 72-cc 25c. Never found those back then in the wild at a price I could justify....not when 72-s quarters could be bought for a fraction of their prices. Probably my best "value" find back then was an orig XF45 1867-s 25c for $130 - straight out of Coin World ad. I knew some day that coin would be very valuable - maybe 10X that price. I gave it to a friend in the 1980's for $190 once I acquired the only gem 1867-s known. That XF probably reached $4000 in the past decade.
I also did similar studies in the late 1970's for MS gold coins, Gem Barbers, Gem SLQ's, 3 cent silvers, etc....didn't leave many stones unturned in seeking out under-rated coins. And quickly found out that many "common" P and S mint gold coins from the 1878-1892 period just never showed up in real unc, despite very low "book" prices. $20's like the 1879-s, 80-s, 81-s, 82-s, 85-s, 87-s. They just never showed up in real "non-baggy" UNC condition. I looked around and never saw a worthy specimen to buy until Eliasberg in 1982. So you can you be armed with the knowledge to buy but if the coins don't really exist, you're out of luck. A lot of these better date S mint LIB $10's and $20's finally showed up in mini-hoards dispersed over the past 10 years....it was a long wait to see a pile of choice unc early 1880's S mint $20's. The price guides and pop reports are 100X more accurate today than what was presented to us back in 1974-1985.....the Wild Wild West. And one advantage with cherry picking the rare circs back then was that you avoided a lot of the rampant over-grading that came with the choice/gem UNC type coin market.
As far how the market worked back then, and trying to find honest coin shops that knew what they were doing, I could write a book on it with so many insane stories almost no one (except those who lived this era) would even believe it today. We'll leave that book on the "fiction" shelf today despite it being mostly true. Bringing that stuff up brings up all the horror stories that I'd just assume try and forget. It's better remembering the wins....not the burials. A considerable percentage of coin dealers back then probably deserved time in in jail, including the majority of my "locals"......but it was a different time. You couldn't even keep track of all the crooks and shysters if you wanted to....lol.
My best story from the 1970's (avoiding all the rip off and 'kill' stories) was holding Steve Ivy "hostage" for a $16,000 coin package sent to me on approval in 1974/75....coins I had never requested....and couldn't afford. I supposed they were one of the firms that got my seated coin "want list." But I was looking for circs not uncs...and not for over a $1000. They simply put together a package of rare coins and just shipped it out hoping for a connection. Imagine my surprise to see a choice/gem 1865-s flat head dime in there for $1500. There were other similar rare seated coins. Heck, I was a "poor" college student who barely could spend $100 per week on coins. I couldn't even afford the $25 REG Mail fee to return it. So I didn't send them back right away. I told SIR Coin that they could have the coins back once I was paid up front for REG mail. I couldn't risk them not paying me back. The check came and I sent the coins back. It was an interesting way to start my relationship with them....LOL.
The 1979-1980 blow off with gold ($875) and silver ($50) running up was quite astounding. All of a sudden all the trap coins and mistakes I had bought along the way while trying to grade in new series were now in demand. Most of them I was offered cost or a decent profit. I didn't hesitate to unload almost all of them in late 1979/early 1980. Chances like that don't come around often. Cleaned coins, AT coins, hacked up coins, sliders, all of it was selling easily for pretty strong money to coin dealers. I figured out that original, and toned 19th century type coins were better than dipped or cleaned ones.
Actually no, he does not believe in freebies. His dad was Army General. He was raised to provide for himself or die. I learned it was like that at one time in this country. Put a bunch of self-reliant folks together and they can/will help each other - the old American way "
My memory included standing on my tiptoes in front of the coin case to try and see the bold headline of a graysheet laying a few feet away on the dealer's desk. When successful, you became the go-to guy with the "scoop" of the week.
Amazing stories, @roadrunner !! May I be the first to confer upon you the title of True OG!
Ditto!
"Today the crumbs, tomorrow the
loaf. Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie." - fictional Jack Rackham
I remember my Dad brightening silver dollars with baking soda and selling them at the flea market. Cleaning was not nearly the bug-a-boo it is now. He sold average circulated dollars for $2.65 each.
Collecting BU rolls was popular and I had a strongbox full of cent rolls along with a few nickel rolls and a roll of 1962-D quarters that I think I recall paying $12.50 for.
Coin World was a whopper of a paper that made a thud when it hit the floor. It was loaded with ads and served as my primary tool to determine values and what dates were rare. It had lots of buy ads in the classifieds and regular lists of coins for mail bid.
There were bargains to be had in the '70's. Gem could be had for little more than regular chBU. Indeed, they were often no more expensive at all if you were the first one to get to dealer stock. There was still silver in the junk boxes and frequently it sold for less than melt. I didn't avail myself much of it but there were still lots of varieties in dealer stock, rolls, and in circulation. It's still in circulation.
About the only way to go wrong was to buy what everyone else was buying or to "invest" in coins. By now though even most of those things would be back to what you paid.
One of the best auctions of all time was the March 1975 James A. Stack quarter and half dollar sale. There were dozens of the some of the most killer bust, seated, and Barber coins - a number of them still considered finest knowns today. All you had to do was keep your hand up on "most" of those lates and you were rewarded. Not many people even knew what to pay for them. I know I didn't. Who knew what a gem rate date seated quarter was worth when the price guide or Red Book said it was $375 in UNC? Or how do you price a superb gem and wonderfully toned 1901-s Barber quarter? Dave Akers and others cherry picked some of the best coins (Akers bought the gem 65-s 25c for $2600, the 1901-s for $5500, and the gem 1904-0 25c for $850..incredible bargains in hindsight). In fact those same coins would be worth 5X to 15X those prices in just 5 yrs. Bill Grayson of B&B coin bought the monster 1873-cc NA 25c for $80,000...an incredible amount of money considering you could have bought both the gem 59-0, 65-s, 67-s, 71-cc, 91-0, and 1901-s quarters for around $25K-$30K. The winners over time were those "lesser" thought of dates - most of those are still the finest knowns today.
Imagine going back with $80,000 and being able to cherry pick about 3-4 dozen coins out of that sale? That really was a once in a life time sale in an opportunistic market, where the premiums for extreme quality were not well understood. I have to wonder why the consignors chose the recession years of 1975-1976 to sell? The market was strongly up by 1977-1980. They'd have done 3X to 10X better waiting just 4-5 yrs. The years of 1975-1980 were about the best ever for truly rare coin appreciation. In that brief 5 yr. period the better gems of the James A. Stack collection went up 15X on average. The 1901-s 25c in particular went from $5K to $80K by 1980.
I found this in a drawer in the hutch yesterday!
Started with 1 Indian Cent in 1965, paper route added a lot of stuff. A lot of boys traded coins to fill the Whitman push in albums. Roll searched like crazy in the late 60'/70's.
The world caught up when I was outside and saw the car with the Army people pull into the driveway of my next door neighbor. The wife was outside, realized who it was. I hope I never see total anguish again, as she collapsed on the ground screaming. Their only child, and my buddy,.Kenny, had been killed in Vietnam. Uncle Sam came soon enough for me, and I wound up in Korea instead. Most of my collection disappeared through the younger brother self serve mart, and my parents moving overseas. I got back into coins in 1982, IIRC, on a monster trade: Stereo equipment for a mishmash of coins, including my first slabbed coin, a 1/2 dime in EF-45.