Florida collector Chuck Heck has been a numismatic hobbyist for more than 50 years, dedicating his focus primarily on United States large cents. For nearly two decades, Heck has concentrated his acquisition efforts on the die marriages of 1794 Liberty Cap cents. Now, Heck says, its time for him to part with his cherished coins and see that they find homes with...
There are wrong planchet errors that are obvious at first sight and there are others that are less clear at casual inspection. Take the “Eagalo,” for example. What's that?
Most numismatic authors outlive their books. R.W. Julian’s “Medals of the Unites States Mint: The First Century, 1792-1892” provides a modern example of the evergreen numismatic reference.
Bidders were willing to pay multiples of published estimates to acquire several certified and verified circulated U.S. gold coins from the Sierra Madre Collection when GreatCollections offered the assemblage Dec. 18. The Sierra Madre Collection, according to Ian Russell, president of the auction firm, was assembled by its unnamed owner primarily in the early 1990s, during a...
Pricing for the single Proof and Uncirculated 2017-P Lions Clubs International Century of Service silver dollars has been announced by the U.S. Mint. The enabling legislation authorizes the production and release of up to 400,000 commemorative silver dollars combined in Proof and Uncirculated versions. Both versions are being struck with the P Mint mark at the...
Also this week, readers enjoyed posts about a Netflix movie that tells the fictional story of a U.S. Mint heist, and the price of gold’s continuing struggles in the second half of 2016.
Former numismatic literature dealer Fred L. Lake, a long-time fixture for the Florida United Numismatists, died Dec. 25 at the Bay Pines Veterans Administration Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. Mr. Lake was 87. According to FUN Convention Coordinator Cindy Wibker, Mr. Lake had served on the FUN board of directors for 18 years, but also served the organization in many...
Don Hall sent in a 1959-D/D Lincoln cent that shows a very nice repunched Mint mark. It would be described as a D/D East with the most prominent doubling being on the right side of the vertical bar of the D. This one is listed in Wexler's files as 1959-D 1¢ WRPM-007. Before 1990, the Mint mark was hand punched into working dies, usually with more than one tap of the...
The numismatic world was rocked in 2016 with the bombshell announcement by Whitman Publishing that researchers had uncovered the existence of hubs, master dies and other tooling at the Philadelphia Mint for the production of 1964 Morgan dollars. The researchers’ sleuthing, however, did not yield proof that 1964 Morgan dollars were struck.
A coin can be used to teach history and economics; its designs can cultivate artistic and aesthetic values just as coin grading can teach about relative quality. All the many individual micro transactions, both economic and interpersonal, combine to create the greater rare coin market.
