How I Started Collecting and the 2018 San Fransisco 50th Anniversary Reverse Proof Set

I started this post as a little thing about the 2018 Reverse Proof set, but as I got to writing I realized just how important this set is to me as a collector, and wrote a whole story. The story might be boring to most of you all, but I figured I'd share since I really enjoyed writing it. Feel free to skip to the images if you like. To everyone else, here is the story of how I got into seriously collecting coins.

This will be a longer post for the subject matter (moderns), but I was cleaning out what I had in my collection and came across this set buried deep in my safe. There's a lot of memories associated with these coins, and I figured they could use some new images. I'll share both the story, the set, and a little history of the coins (there's not much history with moderns, but these have a decent one as far as moderns go IMO). The story is everything to me.

While I assume everyone reading this knows what a Reverse Proof is, I'll describe them quickly here. It's exactly what you might think - the opposite of a Proof coin. The devices show a mirror finish, and the fields carry the frost. Feel free to scroll to the first couple of images and it'll all make sense if you haven't seen such a coin before.

I absolutely LOVED Reverse Proofs when I was first getting stared in collecting. If we take it all the way back to the very start of my journey, I had seen effectively nothing numismatically, except for a couple of Ike dollars I had gotten from the bank, my birth year Proof set, and what was on display at the Denver Mint when I was able to go on a tour in I want to say 2012-14 (the Denali quarter sticks out in my memory for some reason, perhaps because it was the most recently struck). To say I was just getting started numismatically was an understatement, and I knew pretty much nothing. I think I first found out about Reverse Proofs sometime in 2015, after the March of Dimes release, from the Redbook. Following that discovery, I found a couple of articles on the 2013-W Buffalo and 2014-W halves online, and I was hooked beyond belief. The coins just grabbed my attention - there was something about how the devices just gleamed and how unique the coins looked that I just loved. Even now, this is my favorite finish on a modern coin. There's an article by CoinNews out there showing the striking process for both of those coins (2013-W and 2014-W), and YN me must have read those articles 20 times apiece. The articles were great, because they showed the coins being struck and the process of making them. I wanted one more than any other coin. Offer me the 2013-W RP Buff or the 1913 nickel, and I was choosing the Buff. Filling holes in an album wasn't really my thing either, though I did love coin roll hunting. I just was drawn to the special issues from the mint, and that carries on to the current day.

In a visit to my local coin store, I saw the 2012 Silver Eagle anniversary set and was just blown away by the coin. Me, being no more than 10 or so at the time, could merely dream of owning such a coin. For years, I researched and dreamed of owning any Reverse Proof at all, but caught the gap between 2015 and 2018 where there really weren't any affordable ones for a YN's budget (all were silver eagles in sets or the Presidential dollars at like $150 a pop in sets, which was insanity for me). These coins particularly started my chase of numismatic knowledge and research, because I filled my inability to own one of them with learning everything I could about them. Somewhere along the road I made a list of all of the releases, and I chased down every single bit of information there was on the internet about these coins, their production, and how they were made. To me now it's fairly mundane stuff, but I didn't know how well the knowledge of the minting process would help me later on. I think I watched every US mint video on the minting process, read the Redbook sections that interested me fifteen times over, and started coin roll hunting to keep myself busy. If you had asked me a question about any Reverse Proof in 2017, I'd bet I'd have known the answer. Same thing for the minting process for Proof moderns. Yet, the wait continued.

My fortunes turned in 2018, when this set was announced, and I knew I had to have it. I had some cash saved up for just this event, but the $54 for the set was actually a lot of money for me at the time. Thankfully, I had been saving for quite some time, and had the funds. When the release went live I was there in the opening minutes and snagged one, thinking they would all sell out in the first hour. I was wrong, but they did eventually sell out. The next week or so waiting for the set to arrive was agonizing, but I absolutely loved the coins when they arrived. They were everything I dreamed of and more, and still to this day I find them fairly attractive.

I managed to buy a Silver Proof set that year too, basically bankrupting me (thank god for shoveling snow in the winter and $5 a driveway). I figured that if I had the Reverse Proofs, I needed the Proofs to complete the collection of finishes. Lucky me, I struck gold in that Proof set. The 2018 Voyageurs quarter had a strike thru on the reverse, and researching strike thrus led me to discover NGC and the TPGs. I stumbled across Variety Plus on NGC's website, and for the heck of it sorted out my Ike dollars and searched them. Low and behold, I happened to find a 1972 Type 2 Ike (which happens to be a rather scarce variety, particularly in MS) and I put together my first submission a couple months later, consisting of the quarter and Ike. The Voyageurs went Mint Error PR69UCAM, and the T2 Ike went MS64. The Ike was later sold on GC, paying for the submission costs and both the Proof set and Reverse Proof set. I still have the quarter in my personal collection, as a reminder. Effectively, when combined with the rest of the story below, the Reverse Proof set opened my numismatic world from just myself to the TPGs, the auction sector, and cherrypicking. Once I realized that cherrypicking could finance my numismatic dreams, I was off to the races. I suppose you could say the reason I am where I am now is because of the below set - the origins of my numismatic story. If I didn't chase the Reverse Proofs, I would have never found the Strike Thru, and never had found the TPGs or the Ike. Chances are, without this set I would have stopped collecting entirely following 2019, because...

Ironically, the Reverse Proof coins would cause the shift to non-modern coinage the next year. I bought the silver Proof set for the 2019-W cent (obverse image below, I guess I never shot the reverse).

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The real prize that year was the 2019-S Silver Eagle in enhanced Reverse Proof. I was still naive to the world of flipping, and I figured that I'd be able to buy one at issue price. I was so very wrong. The flippers got a hold of that issue, and I never had so much as a shot at it, despite being on the mint website as soon as they were available. They still sell for over a grand on the resale market, and every now and then I see one pop up and remember how it felt to not be able to get one for my collection. I suppose I could buy one today, but every time I think of it I just can't imagine enjoying the coin. I took that disillusionment with the Mint and I tapped in to what I had just scratched the surface of with my first NGC submission. I researched, learned, and I found classic US coinage. The rest is history really. I started cherrypicking Accented Hair Kennedies, learned to grade from PCGS photograde and CoinFacts, and a couple years, lots of learning, chasing, and fantastic finds later, if you showed 10 year old me my current collection I doubt he would believe they were actually mine. That hunger for knowledge that started with these Reverse Proofs never really faded, and I like to think still burns within me.

As an aside, at some point, I managed to buy the 2014 Kennedy Anniversary set (another dream coin for young me). I'll include pics of that RP half below as well. Maybe one of these days I'll buy the 2013-W Buff, but with the way gold prices are it's hard to want to buy that coin over something like a Proof Barber in 66CAM. Unique moderns still hold a special place in my heart, but I never really chase them down like I would have if you gave young me access to the funds I have now.


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A little history for the main focus of this post, the 2018 set - as mentioned, this set was sold for $54.95 in 2018, and the 200,000 sets sold out over a period of a couple days. Today, the set is still fairly popular and goes for a little under $100 in OGP, slightly higher for graded sets. A standard silver Proof set for the year hovers around the melt price at $80. The coins themselves were the first time a quarter, cent, and nickel were struck in Reverse Proof, and the Sac dollar and quarters have yet to be struck again in the same finish. Advancements in laser frosting and polishing techniques due to modern technology allowed the mint to first strike Reverse Proofs in 2006, where Silver and Gold Eagles were the first coins to receive the finish. Almost every part of the die making process is now automated and computer aided, so it has become a lot easier to do fancy stuff like Reverse Proofs. Simply put in the right code for a computer to know what areas to polish, and the laser will do it for you. It's fast, and really no difference in production from a standard Proof.

Reverse Proofs appeared again more frequently following the success in 2006, when Platinum Eagles saw the finish in 2007. More Silver Eagles were struck in Reverse Proof in 2011, 2012 and 2013. A West Point Gold Buffalo was also sold in 2013. 2014 saw the Kennedy Half in Reverse Proof for the first time. 2015 had a Roosevelt dime included in a March of Dimes set and Presidential dollars saw the finish as well. 2016 had a Ronald Reagan dollar in Reverse Proof, but 2018 was really the next time the finish was used, for these sets commemorating the 50th anniversary of Proof coinage at San Fran. An enhanced Reverse Proof finish debuted in 2019, for a Kennedy half and some Silver Eagles. A 2019-W Reverse Proof cent was also included in the silver Proof sets for the year (the packaging for these coins was so terrible that it's a surprise many of them exist in high grade, see the one above). From then on, the finish has been used frequently for new releases, usually silver dollars or the Innovation dollars. The Reverse Proof finish was remarkably popular, with most of the coins selling out or having very high numbers of sales. 2018 marks the last time this finish had a unique feel to it, at least to me, as the finish shifted from being used traditionally in anniversary sets to random usage or for series. From then on, the finish became more of a mainstay in Mint offerings, appearing more than once a year usually, and lost a lot of luster as a novelty as the finish was reused in series like the Palladium Eagles, Silver Eagles, and the Morgan and Peace dollar restrikes. I don't think I'm missing any of the RP releases in the above, but they were so random in the first couple of releases that I might have missed one.

As far as images ago, these were fun to shoot. Moderns can present a challenge to image even though they seem easy at a first glance. I use them as a check for my photography skill, as they're much less forgiving to photographic errors than other coins, since moderns don't let you hide imperfect lighting or poor light placement. Reverse Proofs present a unique challenge, since you must balance showing the design and not blowing out the finish with the reflectivity of the design you're trying to capture. They're fun to do. The special meaning of the set added a little something too.

Below is each coin followed by its Proof variant. The Voyageurs Proof quarter is not included in this series of images since it had a lovely reverse strike thru as mentioned above and I forgot to grab it to image, and my old images are terrible.

I took some extra composition style shots at the end that I really enjoy. I've been trying new things like this more often, and I really like how these shots turned out. Please let me know if that is something you guys would like to see more of as well, since I could really see them being used as screensavers or prints to hang on walls.

Without further ado, I present to you... the humble coins that started my collection as it sits today, and perhaps saved my collection entirely.

Cents


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Nickels


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Dimes


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Quarters


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Halves


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Dollars


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Fun shots