Were the first Washington quarters hoarded when they were issued in 1932?
Contemporary accounts indicate that few showed up in circulation because, like the State quarters struck beginning in 1999, the public wanted them as souvenirs. It must be remembered that when they originally were issued they were billed as a one-year commemorative, and it wasn?t until later that the decision was made to continue them.
How did they go about making those cents that are in the center of a piece of aluminum?
The procedure by which these encased cents were produced was to take the blank aluminum piece, make a hole just slightly larger than the cent and then use the dies that stamp the design on the aluminum to force the aluminum to close against the cent. This results in the cent having a concave edge, as well as reducing the diameter of the coin and usually buckling the field.
What is a ?private treaty? sale?
This is a term that you don?t hear much any more, except perhaps at country auctions. It?s used for any private sale, where a buyer and a seller agree on a price for some item and complete the transaction. Technically, almost any purchase you make is a private treaty sale, although the term usually is reserved for a sale where there is at least some bargaining back and forth between buyer and seller.
I?ve been told that when they used to bid for coins at auction, bidders were allowed to buy by the piece or by the lot. How did that work?
Up until the 1950s there were two ways of bidding on coins at an auction. Pieces were offered in lots, with each lot numbered. The preferred method of bidding at the time was to bid based on a single coin in the lot, regardless of the number of coins. For example, if there were 100 coins listed in a lot and you offered a bid of $10, it meant that you were actually bidding $10 on every coin, or $1,000 for the lot. This method was cumbersome and frequently led to embarrassing overbids by novice auction goers.
What is a ?repeater? lot in an auction?
It?s a lot that is offered in a number of successive auctions, usually each time with a minimum that makes it difficult, if not impossible for the lot to sell. Very often a lot may appear to be a repeater when it is actually just a case of the new owner trying to make a quick profit on his purchase, or who wants the money to purchase some other note.
