Innehållsförteckning för August 2020 från Coins

I received this 2008-D Hawaii quarter in a normal machine-wrapped roll of quarters from my local credit union probably in late January 2020. It was in the middle of the roll along with 39 other quarters. At first I thought it was your typical “someone has abused this” quarter like we all see. On closer inspection, I am not sure what is going on with this piece and how the damage occurred. This quarter shows the typical type of normal circulation damage seen on coins all the time with light scratches and other evidence of passing from hand to hand several times, although it is not severely worn down from mint state. The cupping (for lack of a better adjective) damage seen in four places along the rim seems to…

MANY YEARS AGO in my coin collecting life, I came to a momentous decision: I would concentrate my efforts on key coins and gold. Care to guess how long I stuck to this plan? You’re right, I couldn’t do it for long. There were too many other coins that weren’t either key dates or gold that I found attractive, and I soon got sidetracked by the desire to assemble Registry Sets of Washington quarters, Peace dollars, Carson City Morgan dollars, and so on. I’ll have more to say about Registry Sets later. Although I’ve tended to think of my coin collecting more as a hobby than an investment, like other collectors I like to see my collection appreciate in value. Thus, I decided to focus on gold coins and key…

With so many people today facing sudden financial hardships and possible time constraints, it may make sense to consider whether to pursue a pre-existing or new hobby. This could apply to every hobby, not just numismatics. Hobbies can involve a financial cost for references, memberships, supplies, and objects. Such costs for a “discretionary” activity might be hard to justify right now. Also, those who have more demands on their time because of family or work responsibilities imposed on them may have to limit forms of recreation. Despite these possible negatives, I think pursuing a hobby now makes a lot of sense for most people. Here are some of the advantages. With many people working reduced hours or having lost a job, they have a lot more time available to find…

Have you given any thought as to how this pandemic will affect coin collecting? Surely it will have an effect on our hobby, as it’s affecting everything else around us and in the world at large. For one thing, “sheltering in place” is bound to give most collectors time to spend with their hobby. If you have some disposable cash, either from savings or retirement income, you will now have the time to devote to adding coins to your collection. Of course, for the foreseeable future, coin shows and other numismatic gatherings will fall victim to the prohibitions against social gatherings. Even the ANA’s Summer Seminar has been canceled for the first time in its 50+-year history. As of this writing, the World’s Fair of Money is still scheduled for…

Circulation finds. Pulling coins out of circulation is a time-proven method of getting started. There is a wide variety of coinage in circulation, and the quickest way to become acquainted with it is to go through your change coin by coin. When you plunk a pocketful of coins on a table, you often see a wide variety of conditions. Cents range from the deep chocolate color of older pieces to a bright coppery red of newly struck coins. Various shades of color can also be detected as the modern nickel, dime and quarter wear. Studying these coins may not make you rich, but this time is well spent and might someday prevent you from a making a mistake that could make you poorer. Becoming comfortable with the aging process of…

The resiliency of the coin market is amazing. As the coronavirus pandemic ominously cast a shadow at first, the market looked bleak. Since the business of coins is not considered to be necessary, coin shops, conventions and publicly conducted auctions were shut down as people sheltered in place. Coin clubs soon followed, many of them being told the place where they usually meet had been temporarily closed until the pandemic is brought under control. As stock markets declined, it was anticipated that the interest in coins would follow due to a lack of discretionary money. Instead, investors and speculators flocked to coins as a shelter against the economic storm that followed. Collectors, finding themselves quarantined at home with time on their hands, moved their purchases and auction bidding from being…

FOR COLLECTORS GROWING UP at the present time with base-metal coins for their everyday use, the idea of a real gold dollar is well removed from modern thought. The gold dollars of 1849–1889 have always been something of a challenge because of being struck at several mints and having different sizes and artwork. Most numismatists think of 1849 as the opening date for mintage of gold dollars but there had been an earlier attempt at the Philadelphia Mint in 1836. Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury was convinced that small gold coins would aid the American economy and ordered that pattern coins be prepared. They were prepared but Mint Director Robert M. Patterson derailed the idea by remarking that only second-rate countries used such tiny pieces of gold for money. All of…

ANY ONE WHO HAS BEEN COLLECTING for any amount of time has most likely heard the siren song of gold. It is the king of the coinage metals, has been chased after by people all over the world for millennia, has been made into jewelry and coins for just about as long – and unfortunately, always seems to be expensive. Certainly, the cost of gold coins that we would claim are classic United States gold too often appears to be more than we would like to pay. But note I said, “seems” and “appears.” Let’s look into one popular series of United States gold coins and see just how much truth there is to this, and how much this is naught but a popular myth. Let’s look at the Coronet…