Simpson III: A Quick US Gold Coin Auction Analysis
Part Three of the
Bob Simpson Collection. As with the first two sales, the majority of the coins were non-gold but what few gold coins that were available tended to be spectacular. By analyzing the prices realized, we can get a better grasp of what is going on with the high-end segment of the US gold coin market.
1850, 1853-D, and 1856 Slanting 5 Gold Dollars
Bob Simpson had a terrific collection of gold dollars and, little by little, these have been selling at the various auctions that contain his coins. There were three important coins in Session III.
How Cellphone Photos Took Over the Coin Market in 2020
Beginning about three or four years ago, I noticed an ever-increasing amount of my business involved cellphone pictures of coins. This was especially true from the aspect of buying. And as the coin market had to re-invent itself in 2020 due to COVID-19, a significant amount of business became cellphone-driven. If I had to guess, I would say that close to 50%–if not more–of all dealer-to-dealer business is now done based on cellphone images.
This is both great and terrible.
The “great” part is that dealers found a viable way to quickly move new coins. The “terrible” part is that these transactions tend to be sight-unseen, and unless a dealer is very sophisticated and knows how to read a cellphone image of a coin, he or she is going to get stuck with some low-end coins.
The Big Mo Collection of Civil War Gold Coinage: Part Two
Nevada specialized collector over the last decade or so, the
Big Mo set of Civil War coinage was likely the single finest set of these issues ever assembled. The non-gold (and certain gold coins) was sold a few months ago and the remaining coins, all gold, were recently auctioned by
Legend in their 12/3
Las Vegas sale.
In this detailed analysis, we will look at this exceptional group of gold coins and determine the strengths (or weaknesses) of this market subset.
I am quite familiar with this collection as I sold the collector a number of the coins and also competed against him in various auctions over the years. There were a number of Condition Census pieces and even a few finest-knowns. Each coin was graded by