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 Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Fast start for cent roll sales
Posted by Dave
How wound up are collectors about the new Formative Years Lincoln cent design introduced May 14 in a special ceremony in southern Indiana?
Very, if some statistics that I have just obtained are any indication.
On May 15 I wrote about the thousands of people who were present at the debut ceremony to obtain rolls of the new coins for face value.
However, most collectors could not travel to the ceremony. They had to rely on sales of the two-roll Lincoln cent set that the Mint began offering May 14.
While some are still grumbling about the $8.95 issue price, that sentiment seems to be overruled when it comes to taking action.
From May 14 to May 17 the Mint sold more than twice the number of cent sets than it sold in March for the first design.
Where it took about almost two weeks to dispose of 96,000 Brithplace two-roll sets (March 13-March 26), in just three days the orders for the Formative Years set totaled 200,055.
That’s huge. There is no telling where this thing can go. Obviously the Mint is working to increase the quantity available in light of the quick March sellout, but so far I don’t have word as to what sort of demand it is prepared to meet.
I see the Mint Web site is still taking orders, but I also note that the shipping date is now July 15, something that a number of readers have e-mailed to me as it relates to their own orders.
Those collectors who remember the roll and bag boom in the early 1960s might just be feeling a bit nostalgic about now. Perhaps the Mint should offer 2009-dated nickel and dime rolls, too.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 1:50:02 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00) 
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Mouth open, thoughts of coins
Posted by Dave
I spent a significant part of yesterday afternoon in the dentist’s chair. But even spending almost two hours there ended up with a numismatic component.
My dentist inherited a few coins from a grandmother and he knew I am editor of Numismatic News.
So, between having a mouthful of drill or goop used to make a mold for my pending crown, he was asking me questions.
He had a few silver dollars. At first he said a bag – and you know that conjures up the number 1,000 coins in the mind of a collector – but a little later he clarified and said he had around a dozen silver dollars.
They were circulated, so I didn’t have to worry about how to keep them in Mint State. I told him to look under the eagle’s tail feathers on the reverse for the mintmark. There is none for Philadelphia, but New Orleans has an “O,” San Francisco an “S” and Carson City “CC.” I suggested he concentrate on CC coins generally and, the 1889-CC specifically as well as the 1893-S.
(And you’re right, I did not mention the Denver 1921.)
I told him that many of the coins he had were likely common and worth about $12 each. He found that a little hard to believe until I told them that the Mint turned them out by the hundreds of millions.
He also mentioned that he had some Indian cents. I told him the rare dates were 1877, 1908-S and 1909-S. I didn’t get a chance to tell him where the mintmark is on these coins. By then my mouth was steadily filled with things going in an out.
By the end of my session, he decided that since I was coming back in two weeks, it would be easier for me to look at the coins rather so he wouldn’t have to try to remember what I had said.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1:56:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Monday, May 18, 2009
Tyler or Spears? I know who wins
Posted by Dave
It is hard for me to get mentally started this morning. My e-mail has the usual large group of messages that have accumulated since I left the office at 5 p.m. on Friday.
The calendar says that one of the news highlights this week is that tomorrow the John Tyler Presidential dollar will be officially introduced at his Sherwood Forest Plantation in Charles City County, Va., 11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
This event is significant, but it occurs in the immediate shadow of last week’s launch on May 14 of the second Lincoln cent design for 2009. This has already been followed by a lot of online auction offerings of the new coins.
Also, Tyler was the nation’s 10th President and is not particularly well known. Even if he were very well known, it might help public interest, but in any numismatic series the 10th issue just doesn’t generate the same level of excitement as the first couple of issues do.
What makes this event a little bit unusual is that there will be no coin exchange afterward.
Events of this kind don’t always catch fire the way the Lincoln introductory event did, but they are important. They help keep the public informed and they help point out the historical nature of the issues themselves.
Perhaps I should simply have started out by mentioning Britney Spears. I have done this twice in two years and the level of interest in my blog then pops higher. Why should I do this? Absolutely no reason except it makes me laugh. Sometimes a good laugh is better than anything.
There – I feel much better.
I bet you do, too. After all, we collectors are as human as anybody else.
Monday, May 18, 2009 2:11:51 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Friday, May 15, 2009
What ceremony? Give us the coins
Posted by Dave
Some 3,000 to 4,000 people made their way to the Lincoln Amphitheatre in Lincoln City, Ind., yesterday for the ceremony officially introducing the second 2009 Lincoln cent design.
They mostly ignored the actual ceremony. My contact, Don Mark, a hobbyist from Johnston, Iowa, who drove over with Mark Olson estimated the capacity of the theatre at 1,500 and of that only about 10 percent was used.
Why?
He said that people going to the ceremony would lose their place in line to get the rolls of the new coins for face value.
So Mint Director Ed Moy and other dignitaries basically talked to an empty house.
The six-roll per person restriction was in effect all day, unlike the event at Kentucky in February when at the end remaining boxes of the cents were available to anyone who wanted them.
However, participants could go through the line more than once – and they did.
Don and his fellow collector went through the line three times, each gaining 18 rolls for their effort.
The first time, he said, it took 30-45 minutes to get to the head of the line to get coins, but he pointed out that he arrived on site at 8 a.m. for a 10 a.m. ceremony and coins weren’t distributed until after the ceremony’s conclusion.
For the second time, Don said the line was 1,500-2,000 people long and it took an hour and a half to reach the coin distribution point.
The third time, he estimated, the time required was almost as long, at one and a quarter to perhaps one and a half hours.
Don said he witnessed the wheeling out of the last five boxes of cents from the Brink's truck, so he said all the available supply was distributed.
Don also said he talked to someone who had been at the Feb. 12 Kentucky ceremony and was told that the crowd in Indiana was about four times the size of the Kentucky crowd.
An interesting tidbit was that leaflets were distributed telling people that it was illegal to buy and sell in the park.
If everybody rushed home to offer the coins on eBay, the odds are that the wider distribution will help hold prices below those that prevailed for the first design.
However, if the bulk of the people were there solely to acquire coins for their collections, that would be another matter. The greater publicity might also help push prices higher as individuals who missed the first issue try to catch up with the second.
Friday, May 15, 2009 2:04:37 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
What's gold trying to tell us?
Posted by Dave
I did my usual gold check this morning and saw a price of $923. There is nothing remarkable about either the price or the continuation of my morning habit of checking up on it.
That’s just it. It has gotten – dare I write this – boring.
Since the record price of just over $1,000 was set in March 2008, the price has basically been going sideways at the $900 level. When the price goes over that amount, sellers seem to come in and dump a little. When the price dips under that figure, buyers come in and take a little.
It adds up to a scoreless tie in the 11th inning of a baseball game. Unless you appreciate the finer points of pitching and perhaps good defensive plays, the game is kind of dull.
That’s where we are with gold. For 14 months we have been going sideways.
The bulls are betting on inflation taking the price higher. They cite a rapid increase in the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, which has indeed more than doubled to around $2 trillion. They cite the $787 billion bank bailout and the $1.8 trillion U.S. budget deficit for the coming year. They also cite Chinese buying.
With all that, why isn’t gold higher?
On the other hand, some believe gold will fall because deflation is sweeping through the world. The prices of U.S. houses have dropped by 30 percent, drastically impairing the ability of many Americans to spend. The price of oil is down 60 percent from its $147 peak. The U.S. Consumer Price Index has fallen year-to-year for the first time since 1955.
OK, so why isn’t gold lower then?
Both sides cite plausible facts to support their case, but the price of gold doesn’t seem to be reacting to either.
So what is the gold market trying to tell us? What if it is saying economic forces are evenly balanced: catastrophe isn’t coming but neither is recovery?
What then? What then, indeed.
Thursday, May 14, 2009 2:01:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Clamor for cents begins tomorrow
Posted by Dave
Tomorrow is the big day. The second Lincoln cent design of 2009 will be introduced in southern Indiana.
Interest continues to build in the affair because individuals will be able to obtain up to six rolls of the new cents for face value.
The cost of $3 can be multiplied in value because dealers will be on hand to offer premium prices to those who get them. How high these prices will go tomorrow is a good question because I have been made aware that multiple dealers and other individuals will be on hand to buy coins from individual attendees who get their allotted share.
Minimum purchase is two rolls at a cost of $1. Maximum is six rolls that would cost $3.
Anyone who takes the minimum tomorrow will pass up the opportunity to make an immediate profit. I don’t see anyone willingly taking the minimum.
The greater likelihood seems to be a large crowd and a rapid depletion of the cent supplies on hand. We’ll see.
The Mint has given itself wiggle room by noting in its most recent statements that the limits are subject to change.
Members of the crowd probably would likely get a little testy if when they arrive they are told that they can buy fewer than six rolls.
In a roundabout way this is good news. Cents haven’t gotten much respect in recent years. Many or even most people won’t pick a cent off the street or sidewalk if they see one.
I still think of serendipitous finds of this kind as “lucky pennies.”
Those who are able to buy rolls tomorrow will undoubtedly find them lucky if they define the term as being worth more than face value.
How high will their values go online and elsewhere? That will depend, I suppose, on how many coins are acquired by dealers and others whose sole purpose will be to sell them as fast as possible.
More coins in those hands will have the effect of holding prices down, because they will be competing against each other to sell them and buyers will have many offers to choose from or lots to bid on.
Still, somebody will complain about how events unfold tomorrow. That is the price of success.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 2:05:47 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Back from the final frontier
Posted by Dave
If you are reading this at the usual time, then all is right with my blog after a server migration issue and then a problem with a local Internet provider made my life more exciting than usual.
Yesterday, when I was trying to be clever, my blog could not be posted until almost four hours after my usual time because of a local Internet service outage.
Things like this do happen, but it is uncanny that things like this tend to bunch together rather than being evenly dispersed through time.
Perhaps it is better that they bunch together because I can then put them behind me for awhile.
As you might have gathered from yesterday’s blog, I did see the Star Trek movie. I was a fan of the original TV show, which debuted 43 years ago.
There is something about getting into a jokey mood that makes it hard for me to refocus on the nuts and bolts of the hobby. I see Braille commemorative dollars are going up with the space shuttle. Rather than treat it seriously, I want to write that the Mint should arrange to send a couple of hundred million Presidential dollars into space.
You get the idea.
Perhaps a sentence to yard work will bring me back to the here and now.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:59:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Monday, May 11, 2009
Dollars held until the 23rd century
Posted by Dave
The new Star Trek movie hit theaters over the weekend. Capt. James Tiberius Kirk saves earth in the 23rd century.
What wasn’t in the plot but could have been was his Iowa hometown’s celebration of their new hero.
Among the events held there, U.S. Mint Director Edmund C. Moy VIII officially released some of the three billion Presidential dollars that had been in storage for over 200 years.
Moy, a direct descendant of the Mint director who oversaw production of some of the coins, took another leaf from his ancestor’s playbook and spent some of the coins for lunch.
They are still legal tender and the audience found the whole exercise fascinating because coins hadn’t been used on earth for over 100 years.
The Mint still exists as a small cultural office that oversees a museum in Philadelphia and is custodian of the Presidential dollars and other coins that were considered important enough to be retained in long-term storage.
The Numismatic Guaranty Coin Grading Service was on hand to grade the newly released coins. Trading among collectors of odd and curious money, which these coins have become, indicates that dollar coins in the top grade of MS-1,000, bring high prices.
President of the American Numismatic Association, Patti Mishler Horton-Finner, was supposed to be on hand, but could not be. Lawyers detained her with depositions in the pending lawsuit against ANA for changing the grading system from 700 points to 1,000.
Moy noted in his remarks that the coins were an important legacy of earth to the United Federation of Planets. He himself was pleased that this large backlog of coins still existed, despite the fact that official Mint policy in the 21st century, had it successfully introduced the Presidential dollar coins to everyday use, would have prevented their accumulation.
He added that perhaps in an alternative time line, Americans would have found Presidential dollars convenient to use and clamored for more of them.
Stay tuned for the next movie.
Monday, May 11, 2009 5:26:20 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Friday, May 08, 2009
More places to get new cents
Posted by Dave
Word came yesterday that the U.S. Mint is expanding the number of sites at which collectors will have an opportunity to acquire the second 2009 Lincoln cent design for face value.
In addition to the Indiana site that has received so much attention for a debut ceremony that will be held May 14, an event that I called a numismatic Woodstock in a Numismatic News headline, the new cents will be available on the same day in Washington, D.C., at both Union Station and in the lobby of U.S. Mint headquarters from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
On May 15 the cents will be available in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.
The same limits apply, though the Mint says it reserves the right to change them. What does that mean exactly? Is it simply legal boilerplate, or will the 2 rolls minimum, six rolls maximum be waived if few people show up and someone who does show up wants to back a truck up to the door?
This is probably harsh, but collectors are in a rather surly mood. The recession probably accounts for a part of this.
This mood will probably also lead someone to allege that the added availability being only in Washington is somehow aimed at aiding a select few dealers/politicians/profiteers/(insert your favorite whipping boy here).
I could be wrong. Some might interpret the Mint action as I do as a means of pushing out more coins more quickly so more people will have the chance of getting the coins faster at a lower price and the secondary market cannot run away with it to the same degree it did with the first.
A private firm would love to have the secondary market go wild, but the Mint is overseen by politicians in Congress who get complaints from constituents, so day-to-day life at the Mint is far more pleasant when things like this don’t occur.
Will we see another step toward a more placid life by making the new cents available at face value at the Philadelphia and Denver mints?
We’ll see.
Friday, May 08, 2009 2:13:04 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Server migration blocks blog
Posted by Dave
Normally I would post a blog on Thursday morning, but this week because of a server migration issue, my ability to post anything will be blocked. This is a situation that could possibly last all day. Rather than have people wondering what happened, I figure it is better to write something now. The Friday posting should proceed normally.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009 11:09:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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