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With its sale for 3,737,500 USD on Jan. 7, the 1913 Liberty Head nickel dramatically improved its performance as an investment when compared to such things as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, gold, farmland and the Consumer Price Index.
Some doubted that the nickel, one of five known, would sell in this market, but the doubters were proved wrong. It was opened at 2.75 million USD and sold to a phone bidder after a couple of bumps up. Read more about Sale proves nickels vitality
The Perth Mint has appointed Coins N Things Inc. as the exclusive distributor for its Kangaroo Minted Gold Bars in North America.
Based in Bridgewater, Mass., the wholesale company has been in business for 37 years and records more than 1.5 billion USD in sales annually.
Already, CNT is a major distributor of the mint’s Australian Nugget gold bullion coin series.
Available in 5-gram, 10-gram, 20-gram, 1-ounce and 10-ounce sizes, the bars are made of 99.99 percent pure gold. Each bar bears the mint’s swan logo on the front. The back of each is decorated with kangaroo motifs, symbolic of the Australian outback where gold has been mined in commercial quantities since 1851.
Each bar is individually sealed in a tamper-proof presentation card featuring a unique serial number and the signature of the mint’s chief assayer.
“Mark and his organization have proved to be extremely effective distributors of our gold bullion coins in the highly-competitive North American market,” said Ron Currie, Perth Mint sales and marketing director. “I look forward to them achieving similar success with our Kangaroo Minted Gold Bars.”
It is a rarer and rarer occurrence when I get to feel like I am a 12-year-old kid again, but when Heritage sold a specimen of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel Jan. 7, I did.
I didn’t have a spare 3,737,500 USD to buy the coin for my collection, leaving the rarity to a fortunate East Coast coin collector to pick up.
What I did have was the memory of another sale. I did not witness Omaha, Neb., dealer Aubrey Bebee buy a 1913 nickel in 1967 for 46,000 USD, but I had read the news of the sale in Coins Magazine.
That put my mind into kid dream mode: what would it be like to have 46,000 USD and to be able to buy a 1913 nickel? Or what if my grandfather had scraped up 900 USD to buy one in the early 1940s when he was paying a monthly mortgage of 25 USD? (If you read a September column of mine, this is my other grandfather.) He was not a coin collector, but he was the one I imagined in my mind who would have been the one to buy the coin. Why? Well, his brother-in-law was a stamp collector who had once gone to a stamp club dinner and met Col. E.H.R. Green, who had owned all five 1913 nickels at one time.
That brother-in-law would never have been able to scrape up money for a major purchase like that, so that is how I traced it back to my grandfather.
Amazing how logical you can be when you are 12 years old and constructing a numismatic fantasy, isn’t it?
My finances at the time would never have allowed such a purchase and I knew my father would have considered the idea of spending so much on a coin as complete nonsense.
How do I know that? Well, I asked him at the time, of course.
I was getting along on 5 USD a week from my paper route and 46,000 USD was enough money to buy roughly 2 three-bedroom homes that could be found all over America.
A 1913 Liberty Head nickel that sold to a phone bidder for 3,737,500 USD Jan. 7 was the highlight lot of Heritage Auctions’ Florida United Numismatists sale.
Overall, the auction of U.S. coins realized over 36.5 million USD. All prices recorded here include a 15 percent buyer’s fee.
Heritage said the nickel price ties it as the third highest price ever achieved at public auction for a U.S. coin.
Buyer of the famous nickel, of which just five are known, was anonymous as was the seller, but he or she was described as a prominent East Coast collector.
Reed Hawn of Texas once owned that coin and the pedigree now includes his name on it as an owner of it from 1985 until 1993.
“They call it the Olsen-Hawn coin, which really stresses the importance to me,” Hawn said.
“Not only is it a privilege and honor to own those coins, but an obligation to handle them right.”
He reminisced a bit about owning the coin, but could only joke about who the current owner might be.
“I remember I used to say I’d be the first person to sell a million dollar coin and it raised just under that in 1993,” Hawn said.
Of the current price he said, “Well that’s great.”
Then Hawn returned to joking.
“It’s really nice to be back on the front page,” he said.
The nickel that sold grades Proof-64 by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. Only the Eliasberg specimen grades higher at Proof-66 by the Professional Coin Grading Service.
“The bidding on this coin was definitely competitive,” said Greg Rohan, Heritage Auctions president, who himself had acted as agent for a 3 million USD bid. “The winner is an advanced East Coast collector who, needless to say, now has the ultimate centerpiece to his collection and has assured his place in numisma Read more about Famous nickel gets 3.7 million USD
Element (Sb), Atomic No. 51, density 6.62 kg/litre, M.Pt 631°C
Known since ancient times.
A silvery metal which is very brittle, and is easily crushed and powdered, and is thus an unlikely candidate for use in coins. It is easily cast (melting at 631°C), and gives a clear impression of the mould. Its main use is as an alloying addition used to harden lead.
The only example of which I am aware of the use of antimony for an issued coin is a 10c piece struck(?) in China in 1931.
A pattern in this metal of a penny, struck in 1860, has recently been put on sale by Spinks of London.
It is used alloyed with tin, copper or lead to produce white metal used in the manufacture of medallions. Read more about Antimony
