Library
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December 11, 2015
Throughout American history, citizens have preferred to use federally-issued money over currency issued by foreign or private entities. Since the 1790s, the U.S. government has a reputation for issuing coins of unquestionable purity, weight and metallic composition. As a result its coins have always been universally accepted and trusted.
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December 10, 2015
From a technical perspective, the purpose of a proof coin is to display the original design as faithfully as possible. Historically, proof coins were made at the very start of a production run to check the quality of the dies being used. The key feature common to all proof coins is that they are struck by the die multiple times, often at a slower striking speed than usual, thus forcing metal into every crevice of the die and giving the coin a much finer detail compared to regular strikes. Usually, dies are specially polished for production of proofs, giving parts of the design (most often the “field,” or flat background) a shiny, mirror-like appearance.
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December 09, 2015
Proof coins have been issued by the United States Mint since the early 1800s, but the concept of the “Proof Set” did not emerge until the mid-19th century. From 1800 through 1850, proof coins were usually struck individually as official/diplomatic gifts or to commemorate special occasions. During this era, American coins had not yet become popular as collectibles, so proof coins were more likely to end up with dignitaries or politicians than with numismatists. This largely changed in the late 1850s as coin collecting took off in America.
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December 08, 2015
Until 2010, the United States Mint had issued a relatively narrow range of bullion products for investors. In the silver category, the only option was the one ounce silver eagle. Whereas other mints around the world issued multiple silver products (the Royal Canadian Mint also offered bars, the Perth Mint of Australia had multiple designs in various sizes) the U.S. Mint kept things simple. This changed in 2010 with the advent of the five ounce silver America the Beautiful series.
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December 07, 2015
From the earliest days of the American Republic, the Founding Fathers envisioned a decimal-based coinage system. This stood—intentionally—in sharp contrast to traditional European coinage systems, which rarely dealt in powers of ten. Though conceived of as early as 1783, the “disme” (derived from French, probably pronounced “deem”) was born in the original Coinage Act of 1792 which established the first US Mint.
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December 04, 2015
In American numismatics, the most popular series to collect are the 20th century issues. Series like the Lincoln Cent, Buffalo Nickel, Mercury Dime, Walking Liberty Half Dollar and Peace Silver Dollar are all widely and avidly collected. There are three common threads that make these series perennial favorites: design, affordability and nostalgia.
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December 03, 2015
Thanks to the advent of the Internet, auction records are rapidly becoming an important means of valuing coins. As recently as a decade ago, there was no central database of numismatic auctions records; this information was difficult to index and scattered among multiple sources. Now, several services offer collectors, dealers and investors a means of looking up auction prices realized (aka “APRs”) online.
While auction records can provide an excellent indication of a coin’s value, they nonetheless can be confusing—and misleading at times. Here are some primary factors to consider when evaluating auction prices realized:
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December 02, 2015
Compared to their small denomination counterparts, larger United States gold coins can be quite difficult to find in higher grades. This is a result of basic physics: the more surface area a coin has, the more likely it is to pick up marks, scratches and other defects. Furthermore, larger gold coins were often shipped and stored in bags instead of rolls resulting in deep contact marks from bumping against each other.
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December 01, 2015
Of all the statistics in numismatics, mintages are among the most important. Simply put, a coin’s mintage represents how many were actually struck. As one can imagine, this figure is an excellent indicator of a coin’s rarity—but it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. As this article will describe, mintages can be somewhat misleading both on the high and low side.
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November 30, 2015
One popular form of collecting is to acquire one example of every United States coinage design type. Rather than collect a denomination or series by date, a collector would instead seek to own one of every design or motif that was released. Doing so is popular for two reasons. First, it allows a collector to (largely) avoid key dates. Most series have a number of extremely scarce issues, which makes collecting by date very expensive. Conversely, if a “type” collector just needs one example of a series, he or she can buy a common date. Secondly, by buying a smaller number of coins in total, it is possible to concentrate one’s budget on higher quality specimens. If a collector spent $10,000 on a complete $2.50 Indian set, he or she would end up with a set in AU 58 condition. If the same $10,000 were spent on a single $2.50 Indian, the result would be one exceptional MS 66.