Big Weekend New Pickup from my LCS

I’ve had my eye on this coin in my local shop’s inventory for a few weeks. I saw the coin in-hand for the first time at IMEX, but couldn’t lay out what they were asking. I was a little worried they’d sell it at Baltimore, so this weekend I brought them a few coins I’ve been working to sell, got some trade equity on a couple CAC Peace dollars, and struck a deal.





This vibrant proof fits perfectly into my set. It’s the ideal grade I was seeking, is fully and dramatically toned and wonderfully original, and it’s earned CAC approval, pop 9 in 64 across all services (although there are some CAMs also).

The coin last sold in 2021 on GC, although it was in an NGC 64 CAC slab with a provenance label stating “Rev. Dr. James G. K. McLure”—I wasn’t aware of him, but there’s an entire gallery of his collection on the NGC site.

Somewhere between now and then, someone crossed it to PCGS and reacquired the green bean—I'm very glad they did. These are my amateur iPhone shots that show the TV is indeed an accurate representation:






In 2016, Heritage described the McClure collection as “a pristine, fresh-to-market grouping of more than 3,000 coins collected between the 1860s and the 1930s.” @rhedden posted about it here when it was sold off at Long Beach that year.

The top photo below are high-res raw shots taken by NGC (yes, it's the same coin!). It's wild how different the coin looks in their lighting vs. the PCGS TrueView. These original 19th century proofs are ridiculously dynamic in-hand depending on the angle and lighting. The GC slab shots are very close in appearance to the NGC shots.






With this acquisition, I’m now more than halfway done with my 20c circulation and proof sets (5 of 8 coins down). It’s moving along a bit faster than expected, but sometimes the right coins come along in quick succession.