The "Buzz" Coin Blog with Dave Harper

Shed a tear for Louis Braille
Posted by Dave

No, not the person. The commemorative coin program.

Here we are at the beginning of July. The prime sales season is pretty much over for the Louis Braille commemorative silver dollar program. The calendar doesn’t say that. My experience watching commemorative programs since 1982 does.

Sure, the coins will be offered for the next six months. A few more will be sold. But I would bet it will be relatively few.

It is amazing in a way. Collector behavior in 2009 is very similar to collector behavior before the Internet and before the Mint kept coins on the market for months or even years on end.

Demand is front-end loaded. Collectors who want the new coins act quickly. For a start, they want what we used to call the pre-issue discount.

Saving money is always a good reason to do something, but I think collectors just like to get on with life.

If they like something, they will buy it. They won’t dance a jig and then put the decision on the shelf for six months as a rule. If the toes start tapping when they see the coin, they are going to buy it fast.

Sure, come December in the final days of the program a few collectors will scan the sales numbers and decide whether they are low enough to risk some money making a purchase for a quick turnover on the secondary market.

But with 111,311 proofs already sold, the numbers aren’t going to look too appealing to speculators.

The current 42,020 uncirculated pieces sold so far is low, but not tantalizingly low. By December the number will be somewhat higher.

But what of the easy-open capsule? Will this new kind of holder inspire speculation? Some 18,016 have been sold so far.

Nah, I don’t think so.

Time to shed that tear.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:24:48 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I’m getting itchy
Posted by Dave

No, it’s not bug bites that are keeping me agitated. It’s my thoughts about what the June mintage numbers will show when they become available.

How many Lincoln cents have been added to the 2009 total?

I want to know. Many other collectors do, too.

The quarter mintages are also being closely eyed.

Who can blame us. Who would have thought 2009 quarter rolls can command such high prices.

You would think it was 1955 instead of 2009.

Collectors in 1955 seemed to have more fun. Then it was pending closure of the San Francisco Mint that got collectors scrambling for rolls of the current year’s coinage.

Mintages turned out low, but collector saving assured such a large supply that even 54 years later collectors can have an affordable crack at those issues.

What will conditions be like in another 54 years?

It could turn out the same way, but someone else will have to write the conclusion to that part of the story for me.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:50:39 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Wow, Moy’s in Colorado?
Posted by Dave

I gotta start going to the American Numismatic Association Summer Seminars again.

Mint Director Ed Moy is in Colorado Springs, Colo., for a meeting of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. tonight on the campus of Colorado College. This is the first week of the annual Summer Seminar.

George Cuhaj of our catalog staff is attending, so he will get to see what is going on.

That is appropriate. He is a longtime supporter of the Boy Scouts and the author of a guide book on Boy Scout collectibles.

Tonight’s topic will be possible designs for the Boy Scout silver dollars.
You would think we planned it.

We didn’t.

The Commission of Fine Arts has already seen the designs and its members were not impressed.

With a hoped for room full of committed hobbyists, perhaps the CCAC will have an even truer sense of what collectors might like in a design.

There will also be a public forum, so it is my guess that many opinions will be widely shared.

Even though I would like to be there, I think George deserves the assignment.

Go get ’em, George.

Monday, June 29, 2009 7:13:19 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Wake up, it’s over
Posted by Dave

The results aren’t in yet, but any ballots not received by today’s deadline will not be counted in the biennial election to choose the leadership of the American Numismatic Association.

Battling for the presidency are Cliff Mishler and Patti Finner.

Both worked hard, but it was a campaign that was largely conducted under the average Numismatic News reader’s radar screen. Considering my e-mail in recent months, that is just the way many of my readers like it.

Most of the obvious activity consisted of personal politicking at shows and conventions around the country. Anyone not present was free to ignore the campaign.

The lack of controversy between the two contestants is to be commended. ANA member voters simply chose between the records of the two candidates.

As a newspaper editor, something to generate a headline or two might have been nice, but as an ANA life member, what I have seen is a campaign that didn’t rip open any new wounds in an organization that has been beleaguered by legal problems, unbalanced budgets and political infighting pretty routinely for the past 10 years.

Kudos to both.

Results are supposed to be announced next Friday, which is a holiday, so I won’t get around to it until Monday, July 6, and that leisurely approach probably matches the rest of the hobby’s attitude.

Friday, June 26, 2009 12:53:23 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Here we go again and again?
Posted by Dave

Hot product.

Fouled up phone lines at the U.S. Mint.

We might be forgiven if we say par for the course.

The hot new product is the availability through the Mint’s subscription program of two-roll sets of the new Lincoln cents that will come out later this year.

A posting went up on the Mint’s Web site yesterday about this new program. Shortly thereafter, a message arrived in my e-mail apologizing for technical telephone difficulties.

I called the 800 number and the automated voice simply said call back later.

I am sure collectors are still excited about the prospect of buying the third design in the Lincoln cent set on Aug. 13, and what better way to get the earliest possible delivery than the subscription program?

Hence the rush. Online profits might be hanging in the balance.

Surely there has to be a better way of doing business than these electronic stampedes every few weeks.

What if grocery stores operated this way?

Food – Here – 2 Hours Only.

Imagine that kind of stampede in a culture now used to 24-hours of daily operations? We might actually lose weight.

Thursday, June 25, 2009 2:07:24 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ancient Rome still instructional
Posted by Dave

Every time the United States has recession it seems, pundits start comparing it to ancient Rome and predicting decline. While my education included some Roman history, it wasn’t my major focus.

I decided to fill some of the gaps in my knowledge by reading a book about Rome by Michael Grant.

Some of the history seems very instructive for American coin collectors today. The author notes that Julius Caesar was the first living person to be depicted on Roman coins and this was viewed negatively by those opposed to his power.

This issue echoes in American history when President George Washington declined to have his portrait placed on the first U.S. coins, insisting that it was a monarchical practice. He probably also thought that his political opponents could gain political advantage if the practice of Presidential portraits should begin.

His administration, which included Alexander Hamilton as Treasury secretary, was constantly accused of harboring monarchical ambitions, especially when Thomas Jefferson left the cabinet as Secretary of State and took up the lead of the opposition (though in secret).

It took roughly 117 years for Presidential portraits to appear on U.S. circulating coins and this was in the form of honoring the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, who had died 44 years before.

Even today the portraits of living Presidents is a touchy issue. They are forbidden for the current series of Presidential $1 coins. A former President must have been dead for at least two years to be honored by the series.

This might be an overreaction because what harm can living ex-Presidents do, or what political message would be sent by having their portraits included in the Presidential dollar series?

Today’s leaders aren’t taking any chances, perhaps remembering George Washington and maybe even Julius Caesar.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 2:14:35 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Where's the date?
Posted by Dave

Yesterday we were oohing and aahing over $1 coins in the office. It began when a colleague from the production department arrived in the catalog department to ask why the Sacagawea dollar had no date on it and otherwise looked different.

Stacy Krull had received the coin in a new change machine in our breakroom. Yes, for those who read my blog regularly, dollar coins are once again a regular feature in our main breakroom. Krause Publications is playing musical vendors.

I don’t think the lack of dollar coins was the reason the prior operator was ejected, but it makes an easy distinguishing point, because I had never eaten anything the vendor had provided during its brief time here.

OK, so Stacy was interested to know what was going on. I told her it was a new Native American dollar coin. The date is on the edge. To this, she kind of squinted to see it. She is considerably younger than I am so I didn’t feel particularly self-conscious about removing my glasses for a better look.

The coin is a 2009-P.

I was taking so much interest in it that Stacy said she would give it to me for a paper dollar. I quickly fished one out of my wallet and handed it to her and she walked off.

All the while this was going on, George Cuhaj in the catalog department was examining $20 worth of the change machine’s dollar coins to see what was in it. I asked him if he was going to blog about it, so I won’t tell his story.

I guess this means I am starting a new stash of $1 coins for potential use in a breakroom vending machine.

Life goes on in Iola and we can chalk up a small victory for the U.S. Mint’s effort to circulate dollar coins.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:08:08 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Intern gets bragging rights
Posted by Dave

Nothing beats first-hand reports when it comes to getting a sense of how the new Lincoln cents are being distributed. Since the Feb. 12 introduction of the first 2009 design, collectors have been anxiously awaiting their first look at the new coins.

These waits have gotten very long and very frustrating for some collectors.

I have not yet seen either of the new cents in change, so central Wisconsin might still be counted as a wasteland – or a waste of time – for looking.

But new hope was provided this morning by our summer intern, David Brierley. He is beginning his fourth week here and he reported that over the weekend at his job as a bar tender/waiter in Fort Atkinson, he spotted his first new Lincoln cent.

It was the second design rather than the first for the Formative Years of Abraham Lincoln, showing him seated on a log, reading a book, with his ax resting nearby.

Fort Atkinson is not exactly in Iola’s backyard. It is the backyard for the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater campus where our intern goes to school.

The find occurred June 20, so it is a fresh one, and it is gratifying that our work here in Iola is having an impact on our intern.

He did not walk in the front door as a collector, but perhaps we will make him one before he resumes classes in the autumn. At the least, he has bragging rights as the first person here at Numismatic News to have found a new cent in change.

Monday, June 22, 2009 2:06:09 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Call me skeptical
Posted by Dave

If a German company wants to dispense gold by vending machine, can a vending machine for slabbed coins be far behind?

I started having these thoughts when a colleague e-mailed me a link to a Fox News story. Perhaps you have already seen it as well, but just in case, here is a link. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,527055,00.html

Theoretically vending coins could work. The rationale for slabbed coins, which are coins authenticated, graded and encased in holders by a third-party grading firm, is that you could trade them sight unseen.

Vending purchases definitely would qualify as buying sight unseen.

Not attracted to the idea? I’m not really either.

Buying coins sight unseen has never really taken root in numismatics. Quite the opposite has happened. Hobbyists look at the slabbed coins closely to see if they could be ungraded on a resubmission.

So, as the results of the law of unintended consequences, coins are actually scrutinized much more closely in the professional field, because of slabs.

Perhaps the U.S. Mint could make this idea work. If U.S. banks don’t want to dispense current coinage, the Mint could place machines that vend Lincoln cents and Presidential dollars at those places around the country where collectors have been crying out for the them.

Yeah. Now there is an idea.

Friday, June 19, 2009 2:14:18 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Sharing elevates the hobby experience
Posted by Dave

I plan to have lunch with Russ Rulau today. He recently wrote two articles for Numismatic News based on his numismatic experiences in his military service in the Far East during World War II and then in West Germany in the late 1950s.

The first article generated a great deal of feedback. Everybody seems to have an experience of World War II or a family member who does.

The article about Germany also is anchored in his personal experience, but it is something much less widely shared with others. It was also a much richer personal numismatic experience for Russ that helped lay the groundwork for his subsequent numismatic career.

This is almost a paradox.

If you share a common reference point with someone, the recalled experience is much more realistic and interesting than if you do not, even if you did not personally gain as much out of it as from other experiences.

Collectors know this on all sorts of levels, perhaps unconsciously, but then often run in the opposite direction when it comes to chances of actually bringing them into contact with other collectors to create shared experiences.

Where there are many collectors, few actually join the American Numismatic Association, the national collector organization, and even fewer join a local coin club.

Yet it is these very same organizations and clubs that set up the hobby’s framework and give us the common reference points that can enrich the overall hobby experience for every collector.

Why is that?

Thursday, June 18, 2009 2:12:08 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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