Stack’s Bowers Galleries offered several major collections as official auctioneer of the June Whitman Coin and Collectibles Expo in Baltimore. Part II of the Blue Moon Collection, featuring a broad range of collector-friendly coins that had been off the market for a generation, joined the collection of Robert Warner Wolfe and a group of Hard Times tokens from the collection of company co-founder Q. David Bowers. The June 22 to 25 Whitman Expo is the smallest of the three Whitman shows held at the Baltimore Convention Center, as many collectors and dealers wait for the big American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money (this year in Denver) to make big purchases. 

Here's one of three coins that we are highlighting from the Stack’s Bowers Galleries offering:

The Lot:

1896-S Barber quarter dollar, PCGS AU-58+, CAC

The Price:

$14,100

The Story:

The Blue Moon Collection was assembled by a Stack’s client years ago and then put away for decades. At the June Baltimore Expo, Part II offered a strong group of Barber quarter dollars including an 1896-S example graded About Uncirculated 58+ by PCGS and bearing a green Certified Acceptance Corp. sticker. With both a plus grade and a CAC sticker, it is about the best “AU” example one can find and this one has just a bit of rub on the high points that keeps it from a Mint State grade.

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It is one of three well-known key-date San Francisco Mint coins in the series — alongside the 1901-S and 1913-S Barber quarter dollars — and since most of the 188,039 1896-S Barber quarters entered circulation, few survive in Mint State today. This example sold for $14,100, a price exceeding what a typical AU-58 example might bring, even bettering low-end Mint State examples that have traded recently in the marketplace.