DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 1, AUGUST 21, 2024

Hi Folks. Thank you for everyone who has signed up to receive this newsletter.  Social media from the perspective of ‘branding’, ‘selling’, and ‘marketing’ is all new to us, so bear with us as we go through changes to improve both the website and these posts for presentation.  Our approach to the website is to keep it simple.  We want folks to be able to quickly scroll through our listings and then click on any of interest.  We don’t plan to have more than a few dozen offerings at a time (max will be ~70). I think that will work rather than having to navigate through a category list, bounce around from category to category, and go back and forth.  We feel this format will be more efficient with our limited inventory.  We also want to display the best images we can produce for the examples we offer. We aspire to provide images that look like the coins do in hand – no juicing, but if colorful, trying to capture that color in its best light.  Keep in mind all of our eyes are different, so our perceptions of this will be also. If anyone has a specific question about the coins, please feel free to contact us.   

We know you have heard just how red-hot ANA was this year as every dealer is saying this.  But to give more insight, how many of you bid on the fantastic set of bust dimes from the Palos Verdes Collection offered at Great Collections closing on 8/18/24? We viewed these in hand at ANA and all of them were very nice and bursting with color.  After examining them even more carefully with the supplied Great Photos on GC, we chose 10 to bid on for inventory (including non-CAC).  Every single one of our bids were over the stated PCGS and CACG retail price guides including a few which we considered to be ‘nuclear’ (i.e. crazy high) bids.  We put these bids in about 2 hours prior to the closing of the auction for these examples.  All of our maximum bids were increments above, and in some cases, many increments above, what were already super strong bids from other bidders.   We thought, okay, no worries, we will get a few, no one is going to bid up to these levels, right?  Well, it turned out they did, and even in most cases, several increments above what we believed to be very strong bids.  What does this say about the coin market?  For really great coins the price guides just don’t cut it.  Most of the price records come from data on all of the coins within a grade so they tend to be an averaged in price and don’t reflect to top end selections.  That means we all have to pay up for the nicest coins.  As long as the economy stays strong, I feel that will continue.

Last, we would like to present 2 cool coins that listed on the website today.  Here are the images:

Thanks for reading!  Desert Moon Numismatics