Greysheet: HERITAGE COMES IN STRONG @ CSNS

The Heritage Central States auction garnered well over $22 million from over 5,600 lots. The three sale toppers were pre-Federal issues, with a pair of 1792-dated coins leading the way. At $998,750 was the pattern disme (Judd-9) graded AU50 by PCGS. This coin brought the exact same price in January of 2015. The second place coin was the Judd-10, which is the copper patter disme, which sold for $705,000. Third place was a very attractive 1776 Continental dollar graded PCGS MS65. Overall 18 coins sold for six figures in the auction, for a total of $4,010,356, accounting for a little more than 17% of the total sale.

On the positive side, it is clear that the rare coin market has a large enough base to absorb this amount of coins in a short space. On the negative side is the issue of depth. While money is readily available to buy coins of the highest quality, the middle and lower tier of the market struggles to find buyers in large amounts. It can be argued that money that was being spent in the past on these types of classic coins is now being diverted to modern coins and bullion related items and also world coins. We will continue to watch this trend to see where it leads us over the next few months.

THIS WEEKS MARKET

Eagles: Higher bids this week are in for early dates of brilliant uncirculated one tenth ounce gold eagles. There are still multiple buyers for uncirculated one fourth and one half ounce gold eagles as well.

Morgan dollars: Prices realized from the Central States auction are reflected in this series this week, with mostly negative news. A handful of CAC endorsed coins sold short of previous bid prices, necessitating adjustments.

Silver Commemoratives: As we have written in the past, this series can be very unpredictable in its prices realized at unreserved auctions, depending on the accuracy of the grading and the coin’s eye appeal. As a result, we tend to be conservative when raising and lowering prices in this series. In the CSNS sale the series was overall soft, however gold commems outperformed silver.

Gold Commemoratives: A few lovely examples of the gold 1915-S Pac-Pac series were represented in the aforementioned Heritage sale. A PCGS MS64 $50 “Round” realized $102,812 (almost exactly the Greysheet bid indication). An “Octag” graded PCGS MS65 with CAC validation, realized an impressed $205,625 against a Greysheet valuation of $160,000. Is this an outlier? Perhaps. Another example (PCGS/CAC MS65) sold for the identical amount in April 2015 (Heritage) but others without CAC approval have realized considerably less. In consideration of these factors we have bumped up bid level to $175,000 while we await further market validation for this popular rarity.