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DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 8, April 21, 2025



CAC Auction Results and Time for CSNS

 



Hi Folks,

            Tomorrow I head off to CSNS in Schaumburg, IL.  This is perhaps the most enjoyable of the numismatic conferences I attend. I will be at Table 609.  My Inventory will include the coins listed on the Desert Moon website, and about 30 more that I have not listed yet.  Please stop by and say hello if you are going to be at CSNS.  I will be there from Dealer Set Up on Wednesday until about 2 pm on Saturday.  Looking forward to some great numismatic fun.

            So a few weeks ago a numismatic colleague sent me an email about a Capped Bust Quarter that sold at auction at Heritage.  He asked ‘Why did this coin go for so much? Rare die marriage or auction exuberance?’  The coin in question was an 1835 XF45 CBQ and the die marriage was a B2, which has a rarity of R2, so fairly available.  It clearly had original surfaces, as it is uniformly dove grey, just like an old XF silver coin should look like that has not been modified/cleaned.  At the HA auction, it went for $960 with the buyers premium.  It has a CAC green sticker but again otherwise just an original, and ‘pedestrian’ old quarter.  However, this was 60% and 54% over the current retail guide prices for PCGS and CAC, at $600 and $625, respectively.  I have been listing a group of a dozen XF45/CAC small CBQ’s at $775 which is still over guide pricing, but they have been selling and I only have 2 left.  Both in my view have better qualities than the one that went for $960, so I thought, hey our pricing at Desert Moon is reasonable.  But this back and forth email exchange got me thinking again about why CACed coins are typically going for strong money.  I then went to my saved items at my Heritage account for this auction and this is what I was bidding on and/or considering:


As the table above shows, the auction was for the Old Chelsea Collection, Heritage Auction #63325, on 3/10/25.  This collection had 213 US type coins.  188 of these were XF and 186 of these were CAC green stickered.  Clearly the collector had a focus on what he/she wanted to collect – original US type in XF.  Clearly said collector had a great eye.  Hardly any of the coins stood out in terms of extraordinary and/or colorful toning, but just great quality un-processed examples.  In my list of coins above, only two of them had special eye appeal in terms of toning (73-S 25c, and 06 half), but they were all the types of coins I would like to offer in our inventory.  The sold for prices are listed as are the PCGS and CAC retail guide prices.  As shown, every single one of these surpassed the pricing by many 10s of percent and sometimes multiples of the retail guide prices.  Perusing the other Old Chelsea coins on the HA website, almost ever single example that I studied beyond those in the table above, had similar results.

So the question is why did this collection show such strong results?  First, I would say that the retail guides are almost always underpricing strong quality. That even goes for ‘pedestrian’ XF coins.  Second, crucial for this collection is that clearly, within these XF boundaries, the collector has chosen carefully and I suspect it took him/her many many years to put this collection together.  Let’s take a look at a couple of these:

 



Even though a humble XF45, this lovely 1807 half cent has everything going for it.  No major detracting marks really – maybe a small hit on the chin just below the mouth of Miss Liberty, but that one really is not that noticeable.  Smooth patina on both sides, and no ugly dark spots in prime focal areas.  Pretty hard to find a half cent in XF with such limited issues. One can certainly understand why it went for several hundred percent over guide. My highest bid was blown out of the water.   I would have loved to have obtained this for inventory but alas, no chance.

 

            There is no PCGS image for the 1835 XF45/CAC CBQ.  Here is the auction link:

 

 

Here is an image of the obverse when it sold for $441 in 2013 at Heritage:


As with the half cent, this is a nice unprocessed XF CBQ.  Lovely dove gray surfaces (the Chelsea auction images are much darker), no major detractions, exactly what one strives for in an XF silver coin for the early 19th century.

 

            In summary, perusing the Chelsea catalog on HA shows many similar type coins in terms of solid quality in XF.  These are the types of coins we love to offer but are very hard to find at anything nearing retail prices (as one can see from this auction).   In either case, the lesson I see in here is that if one buys strong for the grade CAC US type and holds for a few years or longer, when it is time to sell, one will be rewarded. 

 

Hope to see you at CSNS this week!  I have listed a few newps on the website.  Please check them out at

 




 
 
 
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