To grade or not to grade - Baseball Hall of Fame Coins

I am sending  my clad and silver Baseball Hall of Fame proofs to PCGS for grading and encapsulation this morning.  This was not an easy decision, especially for the lower value clad versions.  

Note: All my coins are in a safe deposit box. I keep nothing in my home.

First, there is the issue of cost. PCGS has a quarterly special for grading these specific coins of $39 each. That's twice the original cost of the clads from the Mint and almost as much as the silver, so it adds a significant price burden to each coin.

Second, non-numismatic buyers might prefer original Mint packaging.  The possible wide appeal of this particular coin might create an unusual situation where it could be harder to sell the certified versions!  I don't expect that to be true, but anything is possible.

These issues are of particular concern to "flippers" - those who bought hoping to turn around a quick sale and profit.  Many of them seem to believe that the opportunity for profit will be short lived - they expect values to crash after initial euphoria.

They do have some history on their side.  Quite a few modern commemorative issues have lost value.  There simply have been too many issued, not necessarily in terms of mintage, but in variety of design.  While many coin collectors might be able to accurately name each of the older 1892 to 1954 commemorative coins, I suspect that naming those issued since 1982 would be far more difficult.   Individual examples might have done well by themselves, as a group they become a bit overwhelming.

I think the Baseball coins are different.  The radical curved design sets these apart and baseball is an incredibly popular sport, so that creates wider appeal. There are also already baseball card collectors; collecting this coin could be an easy decision for them.  My guess is that values will stay strong and may even increase.

So, I won't be a flipper.  I'll be putting these away for a long time. It's quite possible that the next people to see these (after they return from PCGS) will be my children after my wife and I are gone.  If so, I hope they are pleasantly surprised by the value at that time.

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

This week's Coinweek Giveaway: http://www.coinweek.com/~cd53550787d934d

Also multiple contests going on at http://www.moderncoinmart.com/forum/forums/contests/

Here's your crap: Baseball Hall of Fame Clad Proofs

Because some people don't bother to read and leap to conclusions from the title, please understand that the coins are fine.  Other than one small scratch, the packaging is fine also. What I'm complaining about here is shoddy packing and disrespect for the coins and the customer.

Yesterday I received part of my Baseball Hall of Fame proof coins from the U.S. Mint.  These were not the silver or gold, but only the clad composition.

In case you don't know, let me explain what "proof" coins are.  This is straight from the U.S. Mint itself:

United States Mint proof coins feature sharp relief and a mirror-like background. Their frosted, sculpted foregrounds give them a special cameo effect. Proof blanks are specially treated, polished, and cleaned to ensure high quality strikes. The blanks are then fed into presses fitted with specially polished dies and struck at least twice to ensure sharp relief. The coins are then packaged in a protective lens to showcase and maintain their exceptional finish.

"Specially treated" - remember that.

Here's what the box looked like when I opened it.  

Upon lifting off that piece of packing paper, this is exactly what I saw.

You may be able to see that there is another thin layer of packing paper at the bottom. That dark colored thing with the gold icon is a "mint bag"- something they give away with larger orders. Just what everyone wants: a shopping bag that screams "I have valuable coins!".  I've had two others like this and got rid of them as quickly as I could!

But notice the blue boxes toward the back.

That's as I saw them after lifting off the top "packing".  Nothing packed around them, they were free to bounce around all they wanted.

Now yes, the coins are well protected inside plastic lenses inside those blue boxes. But still: these are presentation pieces, specially minted and handled.  What message does it send when they are carelessly tossed into a box like this?  To me it says "Here's your crap!"

Earlier this year I had ordered silver proof sets - I sent those all back because sloppy packaging had damaged the cases that were protecting the coins.   Here's what those looked like after bouncing over potholes on their way to me:

That rubbing was on the inside of the cases, plainly caused by the coins moving against it during shipment.   Here's your crap.

Fortunately the lenses of the Baseball coins seem to be a tighter fit, so they didn't suffer any damage.

Or did they? They hadn't been hurt by whatever jostling insults they had to endure in shipping.  But..

Do you see that?  It's a scratch.  Oh, not on the coin, but on the protective lens.  Specially treated is for coins, not lenses, apparently.  Thanks for your money, here's your crap!

That didn't happen in shipping.  That happened before that and is large and obvious enough that it should never have got past inspection.  But hey, we are way behind - we gotta ship this crap!

I haven't yet thoroughly examined the rest of the coins. There was nothing that jumped out at me like this, but it won't surprise me to find other evidence of sloppiness.

Here's your crap.

Note:  All my coins in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

A commemorative half dollar at the price of bullion?

This is an unusual coin in many respects.

 

It was the first commemorative coin issued by the U.S.  Mint since 1954 and it was the first 90% silver coin since 1964.  It's one of only three silver half dollars made after 1964.

Yet you can buy it for little more than the value of the silver it is made of.  I bought the one in the picture for $13.75 and that included shipping.

That wasn't always the case, though.  In 2002, an MS70 sold for  $1,064.00.  Today even that could be had for a bit over $120.00 or so.

What happened?  Well, part of it was surely due to the mint going way overboard with Olympic issue commemoratives in 1995 and 1996.   That turned more than a few people against the series.  This 1982 had been produced in high numbers (over 7 million), so there were plenty to go around.

I suspect that all the clad commemorative halves also help push prices down - new collectors may think all modern commemorative halves are clad.

Do you know the two other 90% halves?  One is the 1993 Madison Bill of Rights and the other is the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy half.  The Madison also sells near bullion prices, while the Kennedy is a little more expensive.

(Wikipedia Commons Image)

Note:  All my coins in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

This week's Coinweek Giveaway:  http://www.coinweek.com/~cd534ba8f4568ba

Also multiple contests going on at http://www.moderncoinmart.com/forum/forums/contests/

Coin Collecting and Genealogy

Some of what follows is conjecture.  All of it is subject to the imperfections of my memory, but the whole of it is truth, at least as well as I know it.

The story starts with my paternal grandfather, Beardsley Lawrence, born in New Jersey in 1887.   As I promised genealogy in the title, I may as well get that out of the way first.  This is taken from my cousin Nick Dann's work:

Lawrence Line:

1. Thomas Lawrence (England) 

2. s. Joseph Lawrence (c1800 England – ) m. Sarah Bishop (c1784 England – ) 

3. s. Frederick Joseph Lawrence (1826 England – 1904) m. 06 Nov 1850 Eliza Jane Rogers (c1833 Massachusetts – ) – see Rogers Line 

4. s. Herbert Myron Lawrence (1851 Massachusetts – 1937) m. 16 Feb 1882 Anna Raymond Beardsley (1856 Wisconsin – 1949) – see Beardsley Line 

5. s. Beardsley Lawrence (1887 New Jersey – 1953) m. Helen Drake McDewell (1889 Boston  1984) – see McDewell Line 

6. s. Beardsley Lawrence (1914 Massachusetts – 1990) m. 06 Jun 1936 Harriette Azelie Herbert (1911 Massachusetts – 2007)

I think he has my mother's birth  wrong - I think it's 1910 and I need to check with my sister as to the exact date of her death, but it's the two Beardsley's and Herbert Myron who matter to this story.

As I was born in 1948, I obviously never knew HML.  I did meet BL senior just before he died. I remember only that he was a frail old man in a hospital bed and that he said something like "Pleased to meet you, young man".   That's not much.

Sometime later my father gave me an old cigar box full of coins.  This was a small tin box, perhaps 6" by 8" and an inch deep.  I've looked for it on Ebay hoping to recognize the style, but haven't seen it yet.  I can't tell you the brand, but I do think I'd recognize it.  It was pretty beat up, so I'd guess it was from the 30's or older.

The coins were much older.  Large cents and other coins from the 1800's and one very worn coin from 1787 or 1788 (more on that in a later post).  I do not remember anything from the twentieth century unless it was a "Peace Dollar" - well, there was a 1901 commemorative medal, but nothing else that I recall.  There were definitely a few late 1800's Morgan dollars.  There were no Indian Head cents and (strangely), no V nickels except one from 1883.

I do not remember my father telling me where these coins came from.  If I had any thought at all, I might have assumed that they had been his father's, but now I think that actually it may have been HML who collected them.  There are a few reasons why I think that:

First, although I did not realize it then, this was obviously an incomplete type set.  For those who don't know, a type set is one of each type.  For example, if we look at modern Lincoln cents, you'd have one or of the most modern cents with the Union shield, one or one each of the 2009 Bicentennial issues, one of the Lincoln Memorial type and one Wheat Ear (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_cent).  That's what was in the box.  It wasn't just a random pile of loose change; this was a collection.

Second, as I mentioned above, I don't think there were any 20th century coins included except possibly one Peace Dollar.  If Beardsley Senior had been the collector, you'd think there would have been 20th century coins - possibly not, of course,  but it seems more reasonable to think that.

Finally, there were two other pieces.  One was a Columbian Half Dollar.  These were available at the 1893 World's Fair and might have been acquired there.  Beardsley would have been rather young, though of course he could have obtained it later.  The other exonumia piece has a date of 1832, but was actually minted in 1876 for the "Philadelphia Exposition"  and MAY have also re-struck at the 1893 World's Fair (I'm still researching that - there is conflicting information on the Web).  Either way, I think it more likely that HML was the collector.

Columbian Half Dollar

1832 Philadelphia Mint "Lord's Prayer" Token

I'd like to be able to tell you that the two pictures above are from that box of coins.  Unfortunately, they are not: they are both coins that I recently bought to replace those coins.  I'll tell you more about that in a moment, but here is a picture of the one coin that I do still have from that box:

1855 Large Cent












Everything else that was in that box I sold at one time or another.

Yes, that's awful and I regret it deeply.  If my father had told me more about their provenance (assuming he knew, of course), I would not have.  To me, these were just a pile of old coins. They did spark an interest in coin collecting, but I had no sentimental attachment to them.   It is only very recently that the suspicion that this was an actual collection of my great-grandfather (or his son) formed in my mind.

My Quest

Because I regret this loss, I have been rebuilding this collection.  My intent is to pass it and some other interesting coins on to my children.  Neither of them have children of their own, but I'm sure they will find someone else in the family to receive them.   If that person decides or needs to sell, so be it:  I did my part.   I'll be including a copy of this post along with other posts I plan to make detailing the contents of the collection.

Note:  Everything is in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home.

Replacing these coins is not as easy as it sounds. Because of the guilt and regret I feel, I want to be very precise in the replacements.  That is, I'm not just cruising Ebay and buying the first Half Cent I see.  I remember dates (mostly) and specific conditions and appearance and THAT is what I'm trying to replicate.

This leads to interesting conversations.  For example, as I write this I have been looking for an 1816 Large Cent.  It has to be low grade, dark and somewhat porous.  I've had several people offer me higher grade examples, sometimes at good prices and I've turned them down because I specifically need to match my memory of that coin.  Other collectors seem vaguely annoyed by that: "Don't you want to upgrade the condition?".

No, I do not.  I want to replicate what I sold as precisely as I can.  My memory may be inaccurate, so I'm willing to make some adjustment, but I'm not going to replace what was a well circulated coin with a pristine example or even with one nearly pristine.

In future posts, I'll detail what I've found so far and include as much numismatic and historical information as I can.

Copper Coins
Nickel Coins
Silver and Non Silver dollars Part 1