Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Coins

Last month, I discussed the desirability of creating an inventory of your coins if you don’t already have one. At the risk of belaboring the point, let me tell you briefly about the “collection” I’m currently helping with. Not long ago, a man my wife had worked with died following a brief illness. I had talked to him a time or two after church and knew that he was a big accumulator of all manner of things, including coins. His widow asked me if I would take a look at the coins and advise her about what to do with them. As you could probably guess, he didn’t have an inventory. Worse, there was no organization to the coins whatsoever. Coins of different denominations, different countries, different metals, and different…

About a month ago, I was shopping at my local grocery store and passed by the Coinstar sorting machine. A lady (obvious non-collector) was using the machine. As my habit is to check the Coinstars, I asked the lady if she had any foreign or Canadian coins. She didn’t know, and I told her to check the return chute below. She had several U.S. coins and a bi-metallic Canadian “Twoney” ($2 coin). She looked at the Twoney and said, “You can have this encased penny, if you want.” I offered to pay her for it (I knew it wasn’t what she called it), but she replied, “No need. It’s just an encased penny.” Bill T. Cleveland, Ohio I am 9 years old. One day, me and my dad were looking…

FOR THE collector with a limited budget, the length of popularly collecting 20th century coin series such as Mercury dimes or Walking Liberty half dollars is likely to appear daunting. In addition, the series have key dates, coins with low mintages and high values, which are completely out of the picture. One approach to collecting these series that avoids both the length and key coin problems is to put together a short set. A short set is typically a collection of dates at the tail end of the series, as these coins often had high mintages and were saved in large quantities. For the Mercury dime, the usual short sets are runs of coins from either 1934 through 1945 or from 1941 through 1945. Within these runs, all date/mintmark combinations…

It appears gold and silver have each recently settled into a new and higher trading range. It is challenging to get a fix on how this has impacted the sale of bullion coins, but we know the U.S. Mint sold 27,100 ounces of Gold American Eagle and 4,017,500 ounces of Silver American Eagle coins during January. This is an increase of 7,000 ounces of GAE and an increase of 782,500 SAE for same month sales of one year earlier. At the end of January, Comex gold for April delivery advanced to $1,325.20 while silver advanced to $16.072 an ounce for April delivery. This is a nine-month high and the fourth straight monthly increase. Platinum for April delivery advanced a modest three percent, while palladium increased by 8.6 percent. The scarce…