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First Spouse - Are there still series collectors? Anyone Give Up? Lucy Hayes Sept 1st -- pray for go
MsMorrisine
Posts: 40,246 ✭✭✭✭✭
Are there still set collectors out there?
Anyone given up? If yes, have you sold off the coins?
Lucy Hayes is on the calendar for Sept 1st.
I will probably order online this time hoping for gold to still be lower than when the mint sales counters get them. However, playing the gold pricing game can be tricky. I'd hate for it to keep falling after the 1st.
((the sales counter was also delayed in receiving them just as we were. I think they are being struck off initial orders.))
Anyone given up? If yes, have you sold off the coins?
Lucy Hayes is on the calendar for Sept 1st.
I will probably order online this time hoping for gold to still be lower than when the mint sales counters get them. However, playing the gold pricing game can be tricky. I'd hate for it to keep falling after the 1st.
((the sales counter was also delayed in receiving them just as we were. I think they are being struck off initial orders.))
Current maintainer of Stone's Master List of Favorite Websites // My BST transactions
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I used to collect the Uncs, but just found the finish unattractive a couple of years into it. Haven't sold them, though. It's hard to tell if the very low Unc mintages indicate sleepers, or if folks will always feel less attracted to the Uncs, keeping values down despite the lower mintages.
Gold is in for a much needed correction after that run to 1900....this drop has not been too surprising. Can't see it falling too much further, as the fundamentals don't seem to have shifted, but who knows?
Incidentally, the mint put them back up for sale today at the same price they were at when they took them off sale.
- Ian
Owner/Founder GreatCollections
GreatCollections Coin Auctions - Certified Coin Auctions Every Week - Rare Coins & Coin Values
<< <i>I only buy the uncs. >>
Box of 20
<< <i>I am all in on the first Spouses! Some day you will be watching one of the TV Coin shows and you will see them selling the Coinmaster First Spouse horde.
LOL--Wishing you good luck!
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Ahhh, yes, “Lemonade Lucy” Hays … She was a religious teetotaler who got alcohol banned from the White House. It made for some dull events for those politicians who used to like to get into their cups. As for her husband, his supporters really did steal the 1876 presidential election. Despite the fact that he was said to be an “honest man” I think that the name his detractors gave him was more appropriate, “Ruther-fraud” B. Hays.
Here is rather unusual campaign token from Hays' 1876 run extolling his virtures. His running mate, William Wheeler is on the reverse. Presidental campaign tokens from the 1876 presidential election are rather scarce in general. Niether candidate generated a lot of interest, and the Panic of 1873 was still making for economic hard times.
I think coin collectors are often lovers of history. Seems to go hand and hand.
I wish I had started getting the UNCs from Day one-- two of each. Displayed so you can see the obverse and reverse, that would be an amazing set to see at a show when all is said and done.
<< <i>Collecting these as a set seems like climbing up a hill with a backpack that continues to get heavier. >>
Yes, I agree. Keeping up with the First Lady series is like hauling a 600 pound back pack up a hill that keeps getting heavier and heavier with each step one takes. Despite the fact that prices for the 19th century presidential campaign medals I collect have gone up, you could get several interesting examples for about the same price you pay for one of these modern hunks of gold.
Here’s a First Lady who is soon going to get a gold piece, perhaps two gold pieces of her own (because her husband served two non consecutive terms), Frances Folsom Cleveland. It seemed like Grover Cleveland was going to be old bachelor when he was elected president in 1884. He did have a sexual scandal connected to him, however. It was claimed in the campaign that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which he admitted. The thing of it was he had had an affair with a woman who had had affairs with other men, and no one was sure who the father of the child was. Since Cleveland was a bachelor and the other men who were involved were married, he took the responsibility. Cleveland paid for the child’s support although he had little or nothing to do with his illegitimate son.
When the mother proved to be unfit because of alcoholism, Cleveland, who was a lawyer when to court and had him removed from her care. The child was adopted by a wealthy couple who raised him. (There are a lot more juicy details to the story, but I don’t want this to be a novel.)
At any rate on June 2, 1886, Grover Cleveland, 49, President of the United States, married Frances Folsom, 21, in the White House. Although Cleveland was not the first or last president to get married while in office, he was only one who was married in the White House itself. The age difference would have been enough to have gotten tongues wagging, but it gets better.
Grover Cleveland had been Frances Folsom’s legal guardian since she had been a small child. In fact Cleveland bought her first baby carriage for her. Her father, who had been Cleveland’s law partner died in a carriage accident, and after that event Grover Cleveland became her guardian. Over the years a relationship developed between until a few months before the bombshell announcement it became romantic.
“The National Inquirer” could have had a field day with this story, but it didn’t work out that way. The public LOVED her! She became very popular in the press and much admired by American women. She became very much of a political asset to to her husband. They had five children, the most famous of which was named Ruth who was later linked to the Baby Ruth candy bar. That was probably a story concocted by the candy company to avoid paying Babe Ruth, the baseball player, a royalty, but it makes for interesting reading.
At any rate if you don’t want to spend $1,500 or more a First Lady gold piece, here are two 1888 campaign medalets that will cost you at lot less.
<< <i>Lucy Hayes is on the calendar for Sept 1st.
Looks like Lucy Hayes took hairstyling lessons from Susan B. Anthony (or vice versa).
<< <i>Not really collecting these, however I am doing much better on the ones I bought than on my numismatic purchases, however ridiculous the idea is. >>
It's easy to understand. They have a melt value which makes winners of those who bought the early ones from the mint.
<< <i>Looks like Lucy Hayes took hairstyling lessons from Susan B. Anthony (or vice versa). >>
I think that Lucy and Suzie B. would have been about equally as much fun on a date.
Like going out with an iceberg.