Houston Coin Club Hosts Final Major Show of the Year

This week commences with the 59th Houston Money Show. Hosted by the Greater Houston Coin Club, it features over 250 dealer booths and multiple educational seminars, including ones for young collectors. The show opens to the public on Thursday, December 3rd and runs through Saturday. Alongside this show is an auction hosted by Heritage which features over 3,300 lots of U.S. coins. The sale is rich with half dollars in particular, with a solid selection of Liberty Seated halves. Indian head gold are the main big ticket items, with a beautiful 1909 half eagle graded PCGS/CAC PR66+ one of the leaders. A notable Colonial piece is a 1787 Liber Natus / Eagle on Globe copper from the Eric P. Newman Collection. There are only 10 specimens known and the piece offered in this sale is the fourth finest, graded by NGC as XF40. Another very interesting Colonial is a 1652 Oak Tree Shilling with “ANDO” in the reverse legend, graded NGC/CAC MS64 and hailing from another famous collection, the Donald G. Partrick Collection.

MS67 Grades Added to Classic Silver Commems

The primary update we have for this week is the addition of the MS67 column for Classic Silver Commemoratives. As the majority of these issues were well struck and produced at an overall high level of quality, many exist in this grade. They are heavily traded and pricing in this grade level was a void that needed filling. During the process of reviewing this series, it became quickly apparent the near impossibility of pricing accurately the PDS sets that have been listed in the Greysheet for many years. Three coins from the same set rarely all grade the same (for example, two grade MS66 and one grades MS67), and are mostly broken up and sold as singles. Also, because the three different mints in a given year do not usually share the same rarity, the question becomes how to weigh the total set value. As a result, we have decided to take the step of pricing all 144 silver commems individually in the weekly Greysheet starting with the December 18th issue. This is an exciting development, and one which we have looked forward to introducing. We feel that this will not only help subscribers price every issue, but will also help to educate the wider collector base of which dates and mints are scarcer than the others of the same type. Hopefully, this will also generate renewed interest in this diverse and attractive series.