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Please send copy of article that you published in 2000
I read Dennis Matuszewski’s letter in the June 11, 2013, issue of Numismatic News and I would like to know if there is any way I can get a copy of the article he referenced from the Feb. 8, 2000, issue about heirs selling coins.
Steven Kawalec
Clifton, N.J.

Hello, I was just reading the 6/11/13 issue of Numismatic News. The letter “Heirs need to know value of coins before selling” was quite close to home as I am 76 years old and none of my heirs have much interest in my collection. Is there any way to get a copy of this article/book mentioned in this letter?
Henry L. Pearce
Lewisville, N.C.

Editor’s note: We received so many requests for copies that the article is reprinted in the “Viewpoint” column.

Current U.S. coin series fail to interest collector
How is the coin collecting public reacting to the Presidential dollars? The National Park quarters? The non-circulating commemoratives?
Any real interest in a palladium bullion coin?
When will the Native American dollar series be over? It is not much of a series with the designs being offered in my opinion.
I have really just lost interest in the junk the Mint is producing. National Park quarters to me are a waste. And the 5-ounce silver versions are just a waste of silver. I like a few Presidential dollars. No interest in palladium. The current Jefferson design on the nickel makes me ill. The same for the Sacagawea dollar.
Wayne Pearson
Indiana

Date on proof box refers to copyright, not issue date
Paul Zukowski mentioned in the May 28 letters that his 2013 proof set boxes are dated 2012. That is actually a design copyright date for the design on the box and is not related to the contents of the box.
Kevin L. Bruner
Address withheld

How could such a typo appear in the paper?
I know typos appear all the time, but really, Numismatic News, May 28, 2013 issue, p. 26, “Georgia show attracks bigger crowd” hit me hard.
This is a headline.
Who should I contack about this? Ken aye subtrack any muny frum my subskripshun? That would hep sum. Aye seam to be loosing mi skils uv prufereeding. Mi mined is going. Ken anewon hep me?
I know you put in the mistakes just to keep us old fogies alert. No need to teach spelling in school anymore, or handwriting, or grammar, or vocabulary, or anything else about the English language because we don’t use it properly.
Have a grate daze.
Dugles Jenins
a.k.a. Doug Jennings
Address withheld

Casino proves to be great source for 2013-D coinage
Want to get 2013-D coins? Go to Mississippi. I went to the casinos down there (you can look up where they are) and when I got my change from my “credits” they were all in 2013 coins, 1, 5, 10 cents straight from the bank roll.
I asked to buy some of the rolls. All the casinos said no. It was the weekend and they needed their change. The banks were closed and I had to get home before I was wearing a barrel for clothes.
I did not get any 25-cent pieces as the change machines only cash credit slips from the slots, but the cashier said they got “new quarters” that Friday. So go south collector to get Western coins. I hope you have better slot luck than I did, but I did get to keep my clothes.
Tom Mooningham
Maryland via Tunica, Miss.

It took until June to obtain examples of 2013 coinage
Here it is June 7, 2013, and I finally received this year’s coins, few but finally. My wife scored two new dimes from the local hospital in the cafeteria during lunch. She then came home with one dime, one nickel and one penny from a co-worker she swapped change with, and I finally got a dime from the 7-Eleven near my house.
All coins were “P” mintmarks and in very nice condition for circulated coins. I couldn’t believe it has taken almost a half year to get new year coins. This is the longest since I began collecting in 1995.
A. Jones
Charles Town, W.Va.

Coins searches yield new ‘D’ and “S” mintmarks
I finally got a 2013-D nickel in a box of nickels May 18. On June 3 I got a 2013-S Perry Victory in 100 of machine quarters.
Jay Cook
Lakewood, Wash.

Sky-high coin prices might be new form of showing off
$248,750 for a dot cent
Impressed? Wait a moment, there’s more.
$3.2 million for a 5-cent piece of nickel (alloy?) I don’t even know if I used enough zeroes, the dollars are so high.
Nothing happens unless a willing seller is approached by a willing buyer is an old saw.
Then, a monetary agreement is made at that point. Why? What else could you purchase with $3.2 million. Homes now sell on the market in the millions dollars. We see stock trades on the market in the 10s of millions. So, is 5 (that’s five) cents worth an amount I can’t even calculate in percentage of increase as an investor? How many years must pass before even a modest 5 percent increase in value could be realized. Would it be 10?, 20? Ever?
I worry that the gap between the haves and the have-nots has gotten so out of whack we’ve lost track of why we “save” and invest in coins for the future. I would gladly sell my entire coin accumulation for $2,500, which would be ridiculous.
Have we lost sight of numismatics as a self-directed hobby in favor of who can throw the most money in the hat to show they have it and can afford it? Kind of reminds me of the hotshot at the casino who pushes all his chips in hoping he has the winning hand.
Just asking.
Robert L. Brommer
Address withheld

People of The Netherlands don’t mind rounding prices
In the June 11 issue, you had typed an article on the one- and two-cent euro coinage being considered for dropping. Here in The Netherlands neither coin circulates. As for the rounding up/down, people don’t seem to mind. This scenario only is done when cash (euro) is used in payment. Debit and credit cards pay the exact amount.
I had given a similar viewpoint in my email question responses (on the cent subject). Within the same time frame, someone typed in that it costs an average of $35 per person to mint the cent for circulation (in favor of keeping the cent).
With the one- and two-cent euro coins not circulating, for myself, I use cash. Over a year’s time, I don’t lose even three and a half euros in total. Can I dare to say, saving 90 percent on the person’s $35 dollar total. I wonder how he came to this figure?
Gary Kess
Berkel en Rodenrijs, Netherlands

If you want to know what kids are thinking, ask them
A lot has been written in Numismatic News about the effect of electronics and the Internet on young people being involved in coin collecting. So I asked the Young Numismatists (YNs) in our coin club, the Buffalo Numismatic Association, to write about why they like coin collecting.
Below is the winning essay and they do not mention electronics or the Internet. Instead of us old-time collectors hypothesizing and conjecturing reasons about the involvement of young people in coin collecting, maybe we should ask them. The reason is clear, they like the interpersonal interaction with other kids their own age.
If you want to attract young people to coin collecting, start a YN group in your coin club and offer the Boy Scout Coin Collecting Merit Badge. I did and now I have about 20 to 25 kids that come to our coin shows (with their parents) every month. I hope to have even more next year. Additionally, there are a number of parents (mostly Dads) that took a break from coin collecting and have now returned to it because their kids are interested.
If the ANA wants to get young people involved in coin collecting, they should create resources that local coin clubs can use to get youngsters involved. It’s not hard. It just takes a little time and dedication. Isn’t that why our coin clubs exist?

Why we like being Young Numismatists
By Matt N. and Liz N.
Collecting coins is fun. You may find rare coins which no one else has. Going to coin shows and the meetings are fun. We like completing collections of coins. We like starting new collections of coins, too. Getting big and small coins is fun.
Looking at all our “loot” when we get home is super fun. It is fun having different coins like ones that have errors and ones that look like they are worth 50 cents and then turn out to be worth $10.
It was very interesting learning the different parts of a coin. It’s interesting learning the qualities of a coin that you never knew.
We had fun talking to other kids that have the same interests as we do. We like comparing the coins we own to the coins the other one owns. It makes us want to own both coins. We enjoy talking with our parents about coins. We can learn a lot about our cultures through coins and money and changes in them through history. We enjoy going to coin shows and seeing others collections and making wish lists for ourselves that we would like to own someday.
James Bucki
Buffalo, N.Y.

Why haven’t we abolished cent and paper dollar?
There is a folk song titled, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” One of its refrains ask, “When will they ever learn?” This song was popular in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War era, but could be applied to today’s troubles with government spending and waste in producing currency, which includes both coins and paper.
Over 30 years ago, the United States changed the composition of the cent coin from bronze to “copper washed” zinc, hoping to reduce the cost in the cent’s production. It might have worked for a short while, but today the cost has risen back to nearly twice the face value of the coin. Yet, the government continues to produce this coin, which has virtually no purchasing power, by the trillions each year.
Most nations of the world have eliminated their lowest denomination from their “physical” accounting systems and have gone on to rounding to the “nearest zero or five.” Their “cents” exist only in the virtual world of electronics (credit/debit cards), saving their governments millions in the process.
Recently, Canada has eliminated its cent and has seen savings in doing so. The euro group is also considering ceasing production of both the euro cent and 2 euro cent coins, which are made from copper-plated steel planchets, as these low values have little or no purchasing power in the community.
Even with steel at its core, the euro cents are becoming increasingly more costly to produce as well as less popular with the public. Soon, the United States will be the only country to have a worth-less coin costing more than it’s worth. When will (we) ever learn?
Once again, over 30 years ago, many countries of the world eliminated their lowest denominated paper bills for coins of the same denominations. Over those 30-some years, those governments have seen savings in the millions, even perhaps billions. The U.S. produced dollar coins in the 1970s, but both were unpopular with the public. The Ike dollars were too big and heavy, like the dollars from earlier in the century. The Susie dollars, though they were smaller and lighter, were unpopular because they were a little larger than the quarter and made of the same composition (Cupronickel clad copper core). And the paper dollar still circulated.
Twenty-one years later and 13 years after Canada produced its Loonie dollar coin featuring the Loon on the reverse, the U.S. got it half right by minting the Golden Dollar, but not eliminating the paper dollar. While the Canadians are saving millions each year by producing only dollar and $2 coins we in the States are wasting money by producing both a dollar bill and Golden dollars.
The U.S. government is looking for ways to cut spending and waste. Right here is one of those ways; eliminate the $1 bill, even the $2 bill, and produce only coins.
When will (we) ever learn?
Several years ago, some countries of the world switched from paper to plastic, or polymer, for their folding money. Even though it costs a little more for polymer notes in the short run, there is savings in the long run.
In the U.S., a paper note lasts anywhere from about 22 months to nearly 10 years, depending on its denomination and use. The longevity of polymer notes is still inconclusive, however, there are other advantages to polymer notes.
Canada has recently switched to polymer notes and found that the counterfeiting rate has dropped significantly since their conversion. Unlike paper money, a polymer note cannot be properly reproduced by a printer/copier machine. Polymer folding money is the future of the modern world.
When will (we) ever learn? The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
Bill Tuttle
Cleveland, Ohio

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From the June 7 Numismatic News e-newsletter:

The Mint hasn’t made platinum bullion coins since 2008. Should it restart production?

Here are some answers sent from our e-newsletter readers to Editor Dave Harper.

I always thought it was a trinket for the rich. I have found that in my store, the interest has been more in silver than gold. Take care.

Paul Fisher
Address withheld

Why not restart these coins once again? Due to the current financial times, take orders from individuals and make no more than 10 percent above that. Hopefully this will be sure that everyone who wishes it will have it plus extra for aftermarket sales.

Gary Kess
Berkel en Rodenrijs, Netherlands

I always buy the collector version of silver or gold Eagles, 5-ounce America the Beautiful coins or whatever. I collect coins. I am not an investor of precious metals.

These slabbed bullion rounds and phantom mintmarked rounds are not coins. They are bullion rounds. Would you slab your ingots? Probably not. Nobody wants to pay a higher premium when investing in a precious metal because one gold ingot is graded MS-63 and another is graded MS-70. That makes no sense.

So why slab silver and gold bullion “coins?” It makes no sense to me. I want coins for my collection, not hunks of metal.

David Tortorice
Buffalo, N.Y.

More Coin Collecting Resources:

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• Limited quantities of Australia’s Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake 2013 Silver Coin and the 2013 Mongolia Argali 500 Togrog Silver Coin are here!

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• Get the 2012 Coin of the Year – limited quantities remain!

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Yet because of the huge variation in mintages, the possibility of finding something that was worth more than a cent was a great motivator.

Who wouldn’t want to find a 1909-S VDB or a 1914-D coin?

For a time, that was my goal – that and filling up the two Whitman albums I had. The first was 1909 to 1940. The second was 1941 to date.

The second one, of course, was much easier to fill up. The oldest cent in it was just 26 years old in 1966 when my interest in cents peaked.

The most elusive date for me was the 1955-S and the steel cents of 1943 were not far behind, though I did ultimately find them all.

The the first Lincoln album was much harder. I never finished it before I lost interest in the denomination. It is still unfinished.

Lincoln cents were my gateway to numismatics and in that they served me well.

I was thinking about this the other day as I came across a 1963-D cent. It is 50 years old this year. Is there a kid somewhere who might be impressed by something so old?

Possibly, but coins today, even 50-year-old ones do not show the same level of wear on them that coins of the same age showed when I was a kid.

A 50-year-old coin then looked 50 years old. Nowadays they basically do not.

They seem to have spent too much time in a drawer somewhere.

The 1963-D cent that just came my way looks just it would have had I come across it in the late 1960s.

While we all recognize the attraction of searching for something of extra value in circulation, was there also an attraction to an object that looked like it had had an active life?

It used to be that when you opened a bag of cents and spread them on a table, your eye would see the changes in coloration from red to brown and you could practically group the coins by decade without ever looking at a date.

Nowadays, if you spread cents on a table, the odds are that coins even 30 years old still have a great deal of their original mint red coloration.

In short, they tend to all look alike.

Do those missing visual cues diminish the sense of satisfaction in looking at circulating cents today?

When I searched cents and picked up a coin with a deep brown color and significant wear, there was a sense of anticipation, perhaps like someone might feel with a lottery scratch-off ticket as each number is revealed.

If it looked like it came from the 1930s, my mind in that split second would wonder if it might at long last be a 1931-S. If it looked older, my mind would race to 1922 or 1914-D.

Though I never found any of those dates, I lived the possibility of finding them and that was wonderful while it lasted.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper “Numismatic News.”

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The Mint has posted 24 semi-finalist entries in its competition to find a common obverse design for the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame commemorative coins.

See all 24 below.

The winning design will be revealed Sept. 10. It will be used on $5 gold pieces, silver dollars and clad half dollars. The common reverse is a baseball.

More Coin Collecting Resources:

• Get the U.S. Coin Collector’s Value Pack at a special price through June 30.

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• Limited quantities of Australia’s Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake 2013 Silver Coin and the 2013 Mongolia Argali 500 Togrog Silver Coin are here!

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• Get the 2012 Coin of the Year – limited quantities remain!

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How can I tell if my 1912-S Liberty Head nickel is genuine?

What is the reason the military has been using pogs at our bases in Afghanistan?
My sources tell me weight is the major reason. Troops need physical currency to use at military canteens and exchanges. The weight of bulk coinage would limit the amount of other strategic supplies that could be transported in the same shipment.

Stay up to date on the value of your collection and go in-depth on the coins you collect with four trustworthy resources at one low price. Quantities are limited,
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Why did arrows at the dates return to silver coins in 1873 to 1874?
Silver weight increased. No one is certain why the arrows were the design applied, but the reason was to identify the coins as complying with metric weights and measures being used by most other countries worldwide. The arrows were dropped in 1875, though it isn’t clear if this was the order of the Mint Bureau director or the Philadelphia mint superintendent.

Why is it that there are more proofs than circulation strikes available of some of the low-mintage U.S. coins?
The chief reason is the lack of collector interest in the circulation pieces at the time. What few collectors there were (prior to 1900) kept the proofs, but the circulation strikes disappeared through normal attrition.

More Coin Collecting Resources:

• Get the U.S. Coin Collector’s Value Pack at a special price through June 30.

• New bundles for paper money collectors are 50% off for a limited time! Find them here.

• Limited quantities of Australia’s Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake 2013 Silver Coin and the 2013 Mongolia Argali 500 Togrog Silver Coin are here!

• Get exclusive collectors’ value packs at special discounts for investing in collectible coins, world coin collectors and North American coin collectors

• Get the 2012 Coin of the Year – limited quantities remain!

• Get them instantly! Buy digital editions of past issues of World Coin News, Coins Magazine and Coin Market eXpress!

In the header it said “Your Payment is Approved.”

Of course, it was spam.

It had also gotten through our company spam filter.

Naturally, I was curious as to what the latest online scam is.

It purported to be from our recently appointed Treasury secretary, though the name was written as Jacob Jack Lew rather than Jacob Joseph Lew, or the more informal Jack Lew.

The body of the email read something like an edict from an ancient or medieval king that mentions all of his titles.

He is secretary of the Treasury, confirmed by the Senate, was White House chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget and deputy secretary of State for Management and Resources.

What could someone with so many important titles want with little old me?

“By virtue of my position as the 76th Secretary of the Treasury, I have irrevocably instructed the Federal Reserve Board to approve your fund release via issuance of a CERTIFIED CHECK drawn on the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK, which is the authourized bank for your fund release.”

With so many grand titles employed, obviously this email could not simply offer me my annual income tax refund. It had to be something more.

It sure was.

“However, as a former White House Chief of Staff under the Obama Administration, I wish to state categorically that a CERTIFIED CHECK of $6,500,000.00 USD drawn on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will be issued and sent to you via the US Postal Service at no cost to you.”

But the no cost to me part was quickly followed by:

“The only cost associated with your fund release is the cost of processing a Fund Clearance Certificate.”

I am supposed to send $150 by Western Union to a person with a Chinese American name in San Francisco.

I don’t recall ever receiving a spam message from someone claiming to be from the Treasury before.

There are the standard spam messages that say my account at such and such a bank is frozen until I do what the email says, or that someone in Africa, who has a very large sum at a bank, wants me to help deposit it somewhere else to my great benefit.

I am sure you have received many of these as well.

What I am waiting for is something more plausible and dangerous as spam, like an offer of MS-65 Morgan dollars at half price. Collectors have been falling for that one or similar offers of discounts for the 50 years I have been collecting.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper “Numismatic News.”

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How’s your mental health?

Isn’t that an awfully personal question? Sure, it is, but I cannot help myself this week.

If you look below, you can take a numismatic version of a free-association test. It is not a Rorschach test. I am not a psychiatrist. But I do think that we collectors on average are probably mentally fitter than we would be if we were not collectors.

We certainly know how to escape from our problems from time to time for a little mental rest and recreation with our coins.

Thanks to the U.S. Mint posting the 24 semi-finalist designs for the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame commemorative coin, we can have a little more fun.

Who doesn’t like to be a coin design art critic? By looking at these designs, not only can you pick your favorite, you can test your thoughts about each one and write a comment about it online if you want to.

I enjoyed going through the designs. I think the Mint’s art competition to determine the common obverse design for a clad half dollar, silver dollar and $5 gold piece is a fantastic idea. Keep in mind that whatever the winning design happens to be, it needs to look good on the tiny $5 as well as on the large silver dollar.

As I happily went through the 24 designs one struck me as something that would look good being worn as a law enforcement badge. I think that it just looks so incredibly official.

Another design of a player sliding into home plate brought a little word play to my mind as I considered its merits. For some reason, I wanted to put “America Safe” with it. Crazy? Probably, but that is what popped into my mind.

I noticed that the Mint rotates the designs on the web page so they do not always appear in the same place That’s probably a good idea lest we fix it in our minds that the first design is somehow superior because it appears first.

I came a way from my review thinking that it is a shame that we cannot use three of the designs. Some designs I thought would look much better on a small coin. Others I thought would only work on a big coin.

The one-size-fits-all requirement will give the judges a bit of a headache. It makes me glad that my opinion has no impact on the eventual outcome.

After you have studied the designs and thought your thoughts, why not email me at david.harper@fwmedia.com and share them? I can put them in the Letters section for all readers to dissect.

Perhaps a consensus will form. Perhaps not. Let’s see what develops. The winning design will not be announced by the U.S. Mint until Sept. 10. That gives us all plenty of time to chew the topic over in a leisurely, summertime sort of way.

Whether you find a design to love, or one to hate, I think you will enjoy making your own determination, sharing it with readers and then sitting back to see what other readers are thinking.

The best part is participating in this process is far cheaper than seeing a shrink.

More Coin Collecting Resources:

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The seminar is an opportunity to learn from the industry’s leading experts. John Highfill, author of the Comprehensive Silver Dollar Encyclopedia and founder of the National Silver Dollar Roundtable, will be speaking for the first time at this show with Logan McKechnie, publisher of the VAMView Retail Price Guide.

Stay up to date on the value of your collection and go in-depth on the coins you collect with four trustworthy resources at one low price. Quantities are limited,
so act fast!

Special guest speakers participating in this forum are experts and authors Jeff Oxman and Mark Witkower.

The first 60 seminar registrants will receive a numismatic publication, and a drawing will be held for the Comprehensive Silver Dollar Encyclopedia at the end of the event.
It will be held at 12:15 p.m. on Saturday. Seating is limited.

For more show details, visit www.ckshows.com, email info@ckshows.com, or call Dawn at (888) 330-5188, or (800) 208-1810.

More Coin Collecting Resources:

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• Get the 2012 Coin of the Year – limited quantities remain!

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In every conversation or email communication I have, there seems to be a number of assumptions that I make.

Most of the time, these assumptions work pretty well and help both the telephone caller or email writer and me get to the meat of the matter.

Sometimes, though, my assumptions can be way off the mark.

I had a telephone call last week from a fellow who liked to examine his paper money. He had either our Standard Guide to Small-Size Paper Money or our Standard Catalog of U.S. Paper Money – possible both.

He simply said had run across something that was not in the book.

I get telephone calls from people who do not even know that guide books of various kinds exist. When I get a call from someone who refers to one or more of our books, my mind gears up to the next level.

In this case, the caller said he had a star note that was different.

The caller knew that star notes are notes that are created as replacements for regular notes that somehow got damaged or were defective in some other way.

The star appears at the end of the serial number instead of the suffix letter that is used on regular notes.

Now the note the caller had was different. I was told that not only did this Series 2009 $10 Federal Reserve Note have a suffix letter, but it also had a star. That is not supposed to happen.

My first thought was that someone was playing games with a photocopier. I told the caller that I assumed that it was an ordinary note, but what he said puzzled me enough that I transferred him to George Cuhaj, who creates and edits our paper money books.

George had the presence of mind to ask the caller to email him an image. Several days later the image arrived.

I was a little bit surprised. What was on the note was simply a dark smudge of some kind. It did not look like a star. It did not look like anything. It did not even look like it belonged with the serial number.

I could never say something to a caller like, “Are you sure it’s a star?” But I guess I will never assume that when someone tells me that they see something that it is in fact what it is.

This was also proof that smart phones are wonderfully useful tools.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper “Numismatic News.”

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This is a reprint of Mr. Merrill’s “Auction Perspectives” column that appeared in the Feb. 8, 2000, issue.

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I can’t begin to tell you how many times it happens. Once a week, a day, an hour? What I’m writing about are the collections that are sold for a fraction of their value. No matter what anyone says, there is absolutely no substitute for knowledge in numismatics.

Consider for a moment an experience I had only last fall. Collector R was like so many numismatists. He enjoyed and studied his hobby, but his family had absolutely no involvement with his collection.

Over the years, R had consigned to us three or four times. I had met his wife and upon more than one occasion R had mentioned in my presence that if anything ever happened to him for her to call me. Since all of us, even someone at such an advanced state of preservation as myself, think we’ll live forever, I was surprised when a telephone call last fall resulted in Mrs. R informing me that R had died of a heart attack the prior month.

Now, I’m not going to be so coarse as to say something like, “Sorry to hear that; got any coins to sell?” Instead, what I did do was express my condolences and leave it at that. What else can one say at a time like that? There is absolutely nothing that I could do that would make Mrs. R feel better.

Some 30 days went by and I received another call from Mrs. R. She inquired about the auction process and indicated that at some point she might like to sell the collection and that neither she nor her son had any interest in the coins.

We talked for a while and – this is important – she specifically told me that she was in no hurry to sell because there were so many things that had to be settled. She asked if I would call her in about three weeks. Twenty days later, we were on the phone again. After the initial howdys, a story that I’ve heard all too often started to unfold.

Son Dufus (not his real name; just an appropriate adjective) needed money to restore his 1960s muscle cars. What do you think happened? (a) he consigned to one of our competitors; (b) he decided to pay 18 percent interest and charge it on his handy plastic; (c) he robbed George W’s presidential campaign war chest, or (d) he sold the collection outright for all of $15,000 in green money.

Choice “d” is the correct response, as in it’s a done deal. OK, add these values as we go along – a full set of all the Barber coins (except the ’94-S dime) in VF to UNC; a like set of Walkers; a pair of 12-piece gold type sets, a complete set of $2.50 Indians …

Shall I continue? Well, let’s see. There was also a partial Morgan set with about 85 pieces, some proof type coins and a few silver commemoratives. If you haven’t passed $15,000 by now, please return to Mrs. Brooks fourth grade arithmetic class and place the dunce cap on your noggin, because all of this happened in 1999, not 1949.
Shocked, dismayed, angry, you name it; I was. After my initial reaction subsided, a vengeful thought came to me momentarily – to tell Mrs. R what her impulsive son had done. But you know what? All I would do is make her sad and add to her tragedy. Rather than make me feel good by making her feel bad, I just mumbled something really intelligent like, “Oh, um, OK.”

Since the collection was now gone for pennies on the dollar, I asked to speak to son Dufus whose language and attitude did not disappoint my expectations. Dufus managed to get the collection as far as the closest listing in the yellow pages, which was the equivalent of the Ajax Pawn and Fish Emporium.

Oh, the temptation to chastise Dufus was great, but this was the end of the ’90s and I needed to get in touch with my sensitivity and feminine side before the decade terminated. And so, with a false smile in my voice, I listened to Dufus tell me where R’s collection had gone.

Muscle Head now had $15,000 to work on his muscle cars and I was about to call the new owner of the collection. Three minutes later I was in contact with Ajax & Co. I explained my interest and was interrupted by a cackling laugh. Ajax then proceeded to tell me how he had “stolen” the collection, had disbursed it in a week and had made himself $50,000.

I thought I was talking to one of those puffed-up male turkeys who was strutting around the yard. R’s collection was gone at a fraction of its value, Mrs. R and Muscle Head would never know, for they, like you, can sell their collection only once.

Someone once told me to never forget what is worth remembering, or remember what is best forgotten. I think there just might be an application of that in this month’s column.

This “Viewpoint” originally was written in the year 2000 by Bob Merrill of Heritage Auctions in his “Auction Perspectives column.”

Viewpoint is a forum for the expression of opinion on a variety of numismatic subjects. To have your opinion considered for Viewpoint, write to David C. Harper, Editor, Numismatic News, 700 E. State St., Iola, WI 54990. Send email to david.harper@fwmedia.com.

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