Two Sales, Three Coins, One Opinion: One Dealer's Quick Take on the ANA Auctions

The ANA week has never been easy for a small numismatic firm like mine to handle, and when I learned that this year’s version included not one but two companies’ auctions I let out an audible groan. This was repeated when I saw the offerings online: both Heritage and Stack's Bowers had impressive sales, and I would need to carefully view them.

I booked flights to Orange County and Dallas to view the sales in person and at my leisure. One thing I have learned about auctions is that viewing conditions have to be ideal. For me this means the following: my special coin lamp, my music played loud over headphones, no distractions, and plenty of time to take notes on the coins I’m most interested in. I can’t do this at a coin show as, by then, my nerves are frazzled and I can’t properly concentrate. And when I don’t pay full attention, I make mistakes. In my level of dealing, a small mistake can equate to thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars so I want to be cautious, careful, and critical.

The sales were very successful for me. I spent in excess of $2 million dollars including a record-setting purchase of the ultra-rare 1861 Paquet double eagle. (But that’s another story.) The tale I want to tell here is about three coins which I have chosen for what I believe to be their overall level of interest to gold coin enthusiasts.

1. The One I Got at My Price

Lot 11077, Stack's Bowers. 1804 Small 8 over Large 8 half eagle, PCGS AU55, Old Green Holder.

A good client of mine has been searching for the “right” 1804 half eagle for the better part of two years. We’ve bid on a few at auction and always come up just a hair short; on others I’ve put the kibosh to the coin due to quality issues. The above referenced coin, after I saw it in person, was exactly what this collector would want and I knew it was a coin he would be excited about.

After we discussed it on the phone, we debated the value. I told him it was a coin I would gladly bid $10,000 on to stock it for my inventory. We decided to go to $11,000 in the sale, and I was told, “Don’t let this one get away.”

The coin opened at $9,000 and another floor bidder jumped in at $10,000. I bid $11,000 and waited to see if my bid would be topped. After a long pause, it wasn’t, and the coin was mine.

The collector texted me about fifteen seconds after the lot had closed and asked, “Was that our bid?” When I told him it was, I got back a short but rewarding text: “YESSSS!!!!!!!” He was happy, I was happy, and the coin now has a great new home where it will be appreciated for years and years.

2. The One I Ripped

Lot 12010, Stack's Bowers. 1854-S double eagle, PCGS MS64, ex SS Central America.

I’m going to be honest. It took me longer to “like” the SSCA coins than most gold coin experts. I had trouble with the coins due to the conservation and the lack of “originality.” But as time has marched on, I have come to like these coins, and certain coins from this wreck really excite me. This 1854-S was one coin that truly floated my boat.

This specific coin was the single finest of only 25 examples of this date found on the S.S. Central America. In addition, the 1854-S is a condition rarity in the Type One double eagle series, and it is desirable as the first double eagle from the brand new San Francisco mint. Not to mention the fact in person this coin was outstanding; quite possibly the best 1854-S double eagle I had ever seen and clearly finer, in my opinion, than the PCGS MS65 which sold for $115,000 in the Heritage 10/08 auction.

With this information at hand, I decided that I would bid up to $80,000 hammer on this coin and I might even stretch a bit if I had to. The coin, it turned out, was reserved by the consignor at $57,500. This meant that a $60,000 bid was required for a potential sale. The auctioneer opened the lot, I bid, and in a matter of seconds, it was hammered to me at $60,000, meaning I purchased it all in at $70,500. I considered this to be an excellent purchase and I grinned quietly, waiting for my next lot to come up in a few minutes.

3. The One That Got Away

Lot 4120, Heritage. 1865-S double eagle, NGC Improperly Cleaned, Uncirculated Details.

I don’t generally buy “problem coins” and I never, ever, ever doctor said pieces, but this lot was a really big riddle to me. It was the first and only truly Gem example of this date that I had ever seen except for one big problem: it had been lightly cleaned around the date years ago. Without this cleaning, this was a slam-dunk MS65 and, as an example with original surfaces (i.e., not from the Brother Johnathan or Republic shipwrecks) it could easily be worth $50,000++.

I had a dealer friend who is smarter than I am about such coins look at this and he agreed with me that it was a “no grade” now and likely a “no grade” in the foreseeable future. Still, I was haunted by this coin, and I threw in a bid of $5,000 just for the heck of it.

The coin wound up bringing $11,162.50, and I can guess which dealer bought it even without knowing the answer. I will be on the lookout for this coin in the near future and I won’t be shocked if it is in a “regular” MS65 holder and priced at some crazy number.

So there you have it: two sales, three coins, and one very tired dealer’s opinions. I greatly enjoyed my participation in both of these sales, and thanks go to Stack's Bowers and Heritage for putting on such a great group of coin auctions.

Do you buy rare gold coins?

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Contact me, Doug Winter, directly at (214) 675-9897 or by email at dwn@ont.com.

2013 ANA Show Report: 10 Observations

You know how I feel about show reports. They tend to be self-serving, inaccurate, biased as hell, and generally not very interesting. Which is why I stopped writing them a few years ago. But most readers of this blog want to know about my experiences at the ANA and my thoughts about the market so I’m going to do what I said I wouldn’t: I’m going to write about the 2013 ANA show but from a perspective that you might not have already heard before.

1. So how was the show?

The ANA summer show has been the Big Kahuna ever since I was a kid and although its impact has slightly waned over the years (for numerous reasons which I will discuss at another time) it’s such a significant show that if you are a dealer with even a reasonable amount of a clue on how to buy and sell coins, you are going to have decent results just on account of being there. On the Doug Winter Show Grading System (with 1 being a show cancelled by a nuclear accident and 10 being the show that a dude walks up to my table with a box of unopened 1873 Proof Sets) I would call the 2013 ANA a 7.5 to 8.0. I was very busy from the beginning to the end. I sold a ton and I bought some very cool numismatic items. More on this later in the blog.

2. Modern coins made huge inroads at the 2013 ANA show.

Chances are good that if you go to your local regional show, you will see moderns. But the ANA wasn’t a place I expected to see dealers like APMEX with the mack-daddy of all coin show tables. (If my hefty-sized table was Oklahoma, they were Texas…) The strong presence of modern and bullion-related dealers at this year’s show sends a clear message: more and more, the coin market is about alternatives to classic or vintage coins.

3. There seemed to be more foreign dealers at the show than usual.

I didn’t count the exact number of Brits, Brazilians, and Bolivians - but taking a stroll through the foreign/ancient section of the show was interesting and, for a coin show, downright cosmopolitan. For me, the ANA has an interesting social aspect. There are overseas dealers who I literally see once per year and my annual three minute "heyhowyadoin’" chat always occurs at the ANA.

4. The ANA remains an overwhelming logistics operation for a one or two-person operation.

I attended the pre-show (ANA Lite) and the regular ANA and committed to a full eight days and seven nights in the process. Even after deciding to blow-off the Stacks Bowers auctions due, frankly, to being overwhelmed, I still found it nearly impossible to accomplish even half of what I wanted to do at the show. I never made it to see the book dealers, missed the exhibits, and failed to talk to at least ten people I wanted to connect with. Being busy is a good thing (and on more than one day, I said to Jenna, “Hey, I’m hungry, let’s eat lunch!” only to look at my phone’s clock and see that it was already 1:47 in the afternoon) but being too busy can be kind of flustering.

5. What do you think about the location of the show, Doug?

I’m about as much of a city guy as anyone you know. I grew up in Manhattan, I vacation in big cities, and my house in Portland is in the heart of downtown. That said, I despise Rosemont and everything it represents. Would I ever spend a minute more in Rosemont than I had to? Of course not. But do I think it’s a good location for a convention? Yes, it’s actually a great location. Dead center of the country. Easy and cheap air access. Nice hotels within walking distance. A small but decent number of good dining options. (Although my Gibson’s overload factor went nearly off the charts this year. The seared crusted Ahi Tuna salad was a wonderful lunch but six days in a row?) If it were up to me, coin shows would be small, highly professional 100 dealer operations that lasted two days/nights at most, and were located in great cities like San Francisco, New York and Boston. But there aren’t so we make do with locations like Rosemont. For me it’s a true love/hate relationship, but when you realize analyze it, it makes sense.

6. Heartfelt congratulations to John Albanese for winning the Sol Kaplan award.

This is presented annually by PNG “for work in helping to fight fraud and thievery in numismatics.” John is one of the good guys in the coin business and he has done more for consumer protection and advocacy than nearly anyone I know. I’m happy to see him get some professional recognition from the PNG.

7. The coin show wasn’t all Rosemont/Gibson’s/Numismatics for me.

I took part of Saturday and most of Sunday off and stayed in downtown Chicago. The highlight of my trip was going to the Art Institute of Chicago. As you might know, I’m a bit of an Art Weenie and the AIC was on my shortlist of great American museums that I had yet to visit. It was worth the wait. It is spectacular and I highly recommend it. I mostly wanted to see this.

8. As you have no doubt read countless number of times in the past year(s), it is hard to buy nice coins now.

For a number of reasons, there are real issues with supply and this is across-the-board; whether you deal in Gem Proof gold or Conder Tokens, nice material is really in short supply. I actually was able to find some pretty neat coins at the show. (That surprised me.) I noticed a drop-off in coins around Wednesday afternoon and the reason for this was clear: PCGS was so slammed by submissions for walk-throughs that they shut off grading - and when I left the show on Friday, they still hadn’t returned coins. Had they done so, I would have had the appetite for more new purchases. And I’m sure so would have other dealers.

9.   In Observation #1 I mentioned that the ANA is the Big Kahuna of coin shows...

But for those of us old enough to remember back before, say, 2000, the ANA used to be a lot different. I can recall saving coins for three or four months to sell at the ANA. But that was before the internet made the coin market a 24/7 thing, and it was back when the only spring show of note was Central States, and the next show on the Coin Calendar was the Summer ANA. Back when people used to hold coins, you’d see some wild, wild stuff in dealers' cases. I remember how Dave Akers, Ed Milas, Paul Nugget, Mike Brownlee, and my other gold-coin-heroes would have crazy Territorials I had never seen before, insane early gold and groups of fresh branch mint coins (some of which I could actually buy for my fledgling business), and more. In 2013, the cupboard is pretty bare. Oh sure, I grooved on the Eric Newman silver coins. Legend’s 1894-S Dime was pretty neat, and the Proof 1921 Saint that a dealer friend of mine owns caught my attention. Ah, but for the Good ‘ol Days…

10. There were clear signs of what was hot and what wasn’t hot at the show.

The strongest areas included Carson City double eagles, Type One double eagles, virtually all interesting Liberty Head eagles, Dahlonega gold (I could have sold twenty half eagles had I found any for sale; where the heck are they?), and choice early gold with original color and surfaces.

To those of you who stopped by my table at the Throes in Rose(mont), thanks. And to everyone who has bought one or more of the new coins that I purchased at the show and listed on the website (www.raregoldcoins.com), double thanks.