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United States 1933 Double Eagle $20 Gold Coin The 1933 double eagle $20 gold coin is one of American Numismatics’ most notorious coins. Only one surviving specimen was ever monetized and made legal to own, yet an uncertain number of examples still exist. When the United States made the controversial decision in 1933 to suspend the gold standard that it had based its monetary policy on since the turn of the 20th century, most double eagles dated that year were summarily melted down. It was an ignoble end for the most spectacular of all American coin designs. That American sculptor Augustu...

Coin Collecting Strategies: 7 Ways to Improve Your Coin Collection   Someone recently asked me a question that I thought was interesting and that merited a detailed response. To paraphrase this question, they basically asked me this: can you tell me some ways that I can improve my coin collection while spending little or no money? Are there any actual ways that you can make your coin collection better without dropping a lot of coin (bad pun intended)? I believe that there are and here are a few that came to mind: 1. Bring Out Your Dead. Every collector has them. Duds. Bad deals. Low-end dupl...

The Curious Case of the 1855-C Gold Dollar   I can’t think of a single branch mint gold coin that has performed as poorly from a price perspective as the 1855-C gold dollar. Back around 2005 through 2008, these routinely traded in AU55 for $10,000-12,000 USD. Today, certain pieces in AU55 holders now bring only $5,000-5,500. 1855-C $1.00 PCGS AU55 CAC. Images courtesy Douglas Winter Numismatics (DWN) unless otherwise noted Why did this important one-year type coin drop so much in value? The answer is not as cut-and-dry as it might seem. Before I answer this question, let’s take a quick...

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 ...

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 ...