Fifth REVIVAL! Pics on Page 4 .There were five of us in two cabs rushing to the SMITHSONIAN!!!

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We were 10 minutes late to meet Jeff Garrett who must not have realized that CNBC was screaming about how the market would be down 1200 points once the market opened and one of us was a little late. In one cab was myself, Steve Duckor and Ray Moore (a high end Saint collector). In the other cab was John Albanese and Bob B., a lover of collectables and a very successful hedge fund manager but who cares about business because he's got a spectacular collection of superb 19th century rare coins. Finally after looking for THE entrance under construction, (among maybe SIX?) we found the right entrance under construction and there we were. We walked about 100 feet in the underground garage, signed our names in the visitor's book by the guard station and were greeted by two Smithsonian employees who proceeded to walk us through a short maze of halls to the coin vault. We got in an elevator and coincidentally there was the Director of the Smithsonian, looking very Senatorial and welcomed us to the place.

Through a few more doors and there we were...room one, the Library of the greatest assemblage of coins in the world. Jeff walked in with a black box...not just any black box, but an exquisitely made coin box with six drawers with 15 coin compartments each lined with black velvet. The hardware was all polished brass and we were informed that this was how the Lilly (pharmaceutical fame)collection arrived at the Smithsonian years ago to settle a tax obligation. Hundreds of these boxes!! It is to this day one of the quietest pedigrees among the greatest of the greats and what we were about to see from one tiny portion of it was going to kick our butts back in our seats so hard we needed seat belts.

This was the first phase of the viewing of the best of the Smithsonian's coins and the 20th Century Gold Club with John and Jeff were about to see marvels. The room was far from optimum for viewing coins. There were big institutional florescent lights in the 12' ceilinged rooms, somewhat similar to a well light factory. And then the box opened.......

(Allow me to write a disclaimer. With the described lighting and an iPhone being the only camera in the room you'll have to let your imagination fill in what these looked like where the pictures fall short. It's almost impossible to get good shots with a phone in one hand, coins in another and no macro anything...so it's an "impressionist"trip....ok...)

The first coin out was the UHR Double Eagle on the thick $10 planchet...

i think this is the right one. not something i handle everyday. LOL

...oh....THERE ARE TWO OF THEM. THE ONLY TWO!! Grade? I looked at John A, and he just said "they're perfect". That's MS69 or MS70 but the hell with technicalities, They were MS100's.

Mind-blowing. What more could we want? Well, there was a lot more. Another Ultra High Relief came out of the box, the "regular" size and this one was as nice as the MS69 that sold earlier this year. Not as cute as the "mini's" but what a monster.

OK...so we're seeing some real killer Saints (we ARE 20th C. gold, so no backtalk). There's a supremely rare 1921 that is a wonderful MS65 by consensus...there's a 1926-D MS67, a 1927-S MS66++...better or equal than the finest graded.


Oh...here come three together. I hold them all only to realize that they are all 1927-D's!!! Grades...one MS66/2 MS65's. Again, none are TPG graded, merely in protective NGC type holders but there's no debate among us.

NOW THAT IS A HANDFUL OF SATINY, GOLDEN RARITY!!


I spy a 1930-S, one of the rarest dates of the entire series. It's almost an MS68!! The highest graded coin is a MS66. It's got to be worth somewhere in the $750K range. This one is so thick with frost and velvety luminescence that it's among the best Saints I've ever seen. The picture shows nothing but it's better than no pic at all.

Finally, the political piece de resistance! The 1933 Saint, definitely a MS65. Looks just like a legal coin but not this one. And it's just another P date.

We saw the finest $5 1909-O that exists, I'll take Steve Duckor and David Akers word...both graded it a MS65+, Akers insinuated in 1987 that it's probably a 66, something very unusual for David. he's TOUGH! Jeff pulled out the finest $10 Indian in any date that anyone had ever seen! Again, "perfect" was the only word that could be used. It was every bit of a MS69.

i have no image representing the 1909-O indian so I think it wasn't part of the image package.

We went through about 30 coins in that sitting. Now it's time to go in the vault. We walked through an aluminum door with metal slats that hardly said "vault" nor did the room. It looked like a big office supply room. There were rows and rows of 4' metal cabinets with long 1/2" flat drawers and two 6' safes, surrounded by clutter to the ceiling all around the walls of the room. Now Jeff did his thing. The best of the best is in the safes. We started passing around coins and I have to tell you that after a certain amount of viewing at this speed it's so overwhelming that it becomes a blur. I saw more classic "funny head" $2.5 and $5 gold pieces that were one of a kind it was daunting. The 1822 $5 was simply awesome. One thing we noticed was the really high end UNC. coins looked as if they were modern in that they still were frosted, bright gold and almost flawless. I had never seen anything like these in any auction. The proofs were easily the highlight of the old gold. Every one was a tiny mirror and had they not been worth six to seven figures each one would think them to be common. And I'm sure a few were seven figure coins, certainly the $5 1822.

i think this one was part of the original image group, but not 100%, but here it is in any event

So now lets' see something special. The BIG GUYS!! There were TWO 1877 $50 gold coins that had to be 3" across and also magnificent! Like BIG mirrors. Now that's money!

Holding this was incredible. And next was perhaps the crown jewel of all the coins in the collection...ALL THE COINS...

THE ONLY 1849 DOUBLE EAGLE EVER MADE!!

I only wish I could have gotten a better picture but it took 5 shots to get one this crappy! I have NO IDEA what the vertical line is on the picture. It was not on the coin. The light sucked, the gold was so flashy and let's face it, you can't hold it still enough but this was it. Someone said it's gotta be worth $20 million. No one even blinked. Maybe more?? To think that this coin symbolized the incredible rush of humanity from all over the world to settle in California looking for riches and eventually becoming the main cause for the huge population flow to the West. And they even named a football team after it.. The gold rush of 1849 and there's only one coin to announce it.

So we see more stuff, and it's all going so fast and we see what's in the vault of the 100 Greatest Coins that Jeff and Ron Guth came up with for their book. So much stuff and they're passing hands so fast and the Smithsonian people are making interesting comments and I have to tell you that it became almost a blur by now.

But I had to get my hands on the $1 1804!! The fabled "mislabled" ultra-rarity that was minted thirty years later, one was given to the King Of Siam, (Yul Brynner?) yet is still amount the top of the top in coin lore. What a strange coin provenance.

There were THREE and they were amazing. Everyone of them had this incredible toning...very soft and seemingly coming from deep within the coin with subtle pastel colors, enough to create the same kind of Impressionist feel that a Monet does. Just lovely coins...and I did the best I could with the one Type I specimen. It was just impossible with those huge bare fluorescent lights above the whole room.

missing 1-2 images right here. i may have them but need assistance to confirm if they are the 1804 or not


Well, time was running out and one of our guides who I had been chatting with says let me show you a piece of paper. Hell, it's the Smithsonian so I'll look at whatever he has. He goes into a drawer and puts this crisp baby in my palm.

HAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

So that was it...and there's an interesting perspective that I walked away with that I think many of you will appreciate it of you think about it.

I think this thought will make us better and happier collectors. We all tend to look at our coins and mark them down from a point of perfection. This is absolutely wrong. I've seen most of the finest known examples of every series of coins and many of the finest known coins of the rarest of the rarities; the amazing truth is that none of them even approaches perfect!! There are NO MS70 coins in the classics so if you think your MS65 or 66 could be much nicer you're wrong! So chill out when you see hits on your best coin...because I've seen the best of the best and there's hits and stuff on all of them except a very small handful of amazing rarities. Old proof gold, the best and highest grades have marks. 18th C silver has marks rub and hairline scratches. DO NOT GRADE YOUR COINS FROM AN MS70 DOWN! It doesn't work that way.

I have a coin that I sometimes felt paranoid about as an MS65. I saw the Smithsonian specimen est. MS66 and realized that it's a 66 like the two graded by PCGS and mine is very much a 65; in fact it's noticeably nicer than their MS65!! Now I always loved this coin, especially because they are such rough coins in MS64 or lower, and virtually non-existant in MS65. The POPs say 5 but no one has seen more than 3 and one is grossly AT'd!! And seeing the best of the best convinced me that mine is indeed one of the finest of the top 4 or 5 that exist! That's a hell of a different perspective. I learned about perspective and we ALL do the same thing with our coins.

A great experience, humbling yet enriching beyond all these words! I'll never forget it. Less than 40 people have done so!

PS.. Many, many thanks To Jeff Garrett for arranging this for the 20th Century Gold Club. He is an extraordinary knowledgeable man and a fun guy to be around!

And regrets to those few members who had to cancel or couldn't make the trip.

Thread Revival in honor of Steve Duckor, RIP.