Innehållsförteckning för February 18, 2025 från Numismatic News

The Long Beach Expo has announced a strategic adjustment to its 2025 schedule. In a move designed to focus more on the core needs of the collectibles hobby, the Long Beach Expo will pause its June and September shows, focusing exclusively on delivering an exceptional February event. Stephanie Sabin, President of PCGS, shared her thoughts on the decision: “For decades, the Long Beach Expo has been a vibrant hub for dealers, collectors, and enthusiasts to connect, trade, and celebrate their shared passions. While our community’s enthusiasm has remained unwavering, the rising costs of hosting such an iconic event have necessitated a thoughtful reassessment of how we can best serve our attendees and exhibitors. This pause in our schedule allows us to focus on delivering a premier experience in February while…

The United States Mint’s United States Constitution Platinum Proof Coin Series began in 2021. For five years, the series featured a new coin each year, with a new obverse on the 99.94 percent platinum coins. The five freedoms of the First Amendment are highlighted on each coin, with 2025 being the last year of the series. The fifth and final coin in the series shows the Right to Petition. A mature, spreading oak tree with the inscription “WITH THE RIGHT TO PETITION LIBERTY ENDURES” surrounds it, taking center stage on the obverse. The common reverse of the series depicts an eagle in flight, carrying an olive branch in its talons. The $100 one-ounce coin will be available on February 20.…

How can you get more common than the 1959 Lincoln cent? It is a question that, over the years, many collectors have asked, for much of the time with very good reason. Yet the 1959 Lincoln cent is important. Even its high mintage of 610,864,291 is starting to look a little better with the passage of time. Many factors influenced its place in numismatic history and our view of it. Start by going back to 1959. It was a glorious time for coin collecting. It was getting tougher, but there were still some excellent coins circulating. Certainly, it was not as good as it might have been back in, say, 1947, but you could still do awfully well just checking your change. One day, it might be a 1910-S Lincoln,…

The year 2025 marks the end of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarter program. The following year, 2026, will see new quarters, a new dime, and a new half-dollar, all to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Citizen’s Coinage Advisery Committee met in the fall of 2024 to discuss the designs for the semiquincentennial coins. Now, the Mint is calling on the people for their input for a new quarter program that will begin in 2027. “In 2027, the United States Mint will release its newest quarters program highlighting youth sports played in the United States,” reads the announcement on the Mint’s website. The program will last through 2030, with up to five new designs each year. The Mint has also been authorized…

In the past, we have been fortunate enough to speak with several artists who have been involved in coin and medal design, sometimes for decades. Recently, we were lucky enough to speak with Jeanne Stevens-Sollman, an accomplished artist whose medals are truly beautiful and who has volunteered to serve on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and has now done so multiple times. Here are some of the topics we discussed. What was your inspiration, and what got you started as an artist? Stevens-Sollman says she started in an unusual spot; as a child, her family raised meat rabbits, which became an informative start to her observing animal behavior. Being creative, her mother made cutouts of rabbits to decorate the house during the holidays, indoctrinating her daughter into many crafts and…

Are we in a strong market? We may want to actually call it a powerful market. This was demonstrated by the results of the January 22 Heritage Auctions, where the total price realized broke $65 million. That figure was helped by such individual lots as one of the near-legendary status 1894-S Barber dimes, which in Professional Coin Grading Service Proof 66 CAC realized $2.16 million by itself. Heritage is reporting auction sales surpassing the almost unbelievable figure of $100 million during just the first three weeks of 2025. It can be anticipated that other rare coin auction houses will likely achieve similar results. Rare coins are hot. The 1894-S dime just used as an example would not have been consigned if its owner didn’t believe the current market would ensure…

Following its dominance of the 2024 top auction results and continued major sales trends in January, Professional Coin Grading Service (www.PCGS.com) has made it easier for customers to use its services. The company recently launched a revamped online coin submission center that offers customers a wealth of tools to make submitting coins for grading faster, easier to understand, and more efficient, no matter how big or small the submission. “The PCGS Online Submission Center 2.0, or OSC 2.0, is a reimagination of the entire coin submission process,” says PCGS President Stephanie Sabin. “It makes submitting coins more convenient while giving you all of the necessary tools and resources to better plan for and organize your submissions to custom-tailor the submission experience to your unique needs.” An items-first approach is one…

■ Of how much value are mintage figures I see published in coin catalogs? Coinage mintage figures can be deceiving. Early U.S. Mint mintage records indicate the number of coins shipped rather than the number corresponding to the year in which the coins were produced. Some collectors use mintage figures to determine rarity. The number of surviving examples is a better statistic. Foreign commemorative coins, for example, that don’t sell are often melted by their mint. ■ How can I learn what the number of surviving specimens of a specific year for a denomination is? Several third-party certification services have what we call population reports. These reports aren’t 100 percent accurate since some coins are submitted for examination more than once to a particular service or are submitted to a…

Author’s note: This is the fifth in a series of articles discussing the coinage of 1792 and the steps leading up to it. Previous articles, which covered 1776 to April 1792, appeared in the Numismatic News issues of Dec. 10, Dec. 31, Jan. 14, Jan. 28, and Feb. 4. The present article begins after President Washington signed the amended mint bill into law on April 2, 1792. April 2 to July 9, 1792. Once the mint bill had become law, a number of individuals were interested in becoming an officer of the new institution, especially the post of director or treasurer. The President, however, had already decided to pick the eminent scientist David Rittenhouse as the first director. The latter, in turn, made it known that his choice for chief…

Many readers are no doubt familiar with the History Channel’s long-running program, “The Curse of Oak Island,” which documents the continued search for the treasure believed to be buried on Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. The series, which has run for 11 seasons, features the Lagina brothers’ (Rick and Marty) continued quest to find the supposed treasure. Islands located off the coast of Nova Scotia have long been believed to have been a haven for pirates, and some of the theories as to the treasure supposedly secreted in an ingeniously engineered “Money Pit” on one of them, Oak Island, have linked it to everyone from Captain Kidd to the Knights Templar. So far, only some historical artifacts have been found. In the October 1965 issue of Coins…