Many retail dealers, myself included, welcome consignments from collectors. It’s a great way to increase the size of a dealer’s inventory without laying out cash and it is often an excellent source for dealers to place useful, fresh attractive coins to new or existing clients. As a potential consignor, what are some of the questions you should be asking a dealer and what are some of the expectations you should have? 1.

One of the things that new collectors are often told is that if they build a set, the collective value of the coins will be greater than the individual value when it is time to sell. Is this correct or is it just clever marketing hype? I believe that the answer to this question is yes, no and maybe.

I handled some very interesting coins at this year’s Boston ANA show. One of the ones that I thought was the most interesting was the Garrett specimen of the 1808 quarter eagle; a coin that was both very rare from a numismatic standpoint and historic from the standpoint of its pedigree. The 1808 quarter eagle is a one-year type with a mintage of only 2,710.

To be perfectly frank, I hate coin show reports. I hate to write them. I hate to read them. I don’t care what restaurants a dealer went to and what they ate and I don’t really care that Dealer X spent this much money on those coins at the show. That said, I also know that the ANA is the show that everyone who didn’t attend wants to know about.

I recently received an email from a collector who asked what I thought were an extremely intelligent group of questions. In a nutshell, he asked the following. As boomers age, are we nearing a bubble in coin prices? At some point will the number of collectors with the financial means to collect rare gold decrease and will prices suffer accordingly? Go to any coin show and you will see a disturbing trend.

A few years ago, I wrote a blog about 1841 quarter eagles that basically stated that the currently-accepted belief that all of the known examples were Proofs was wrong. After recently being able to examine no less than four 1841 quarter eagles at one time, I am now totally convinced that this issue exists in two distinct formats. Numismatic tradition states that the 1841 quarter eagle was struck only as a Proof.