1836 Gobrecht Dollar - Letter About

That is too bad you didn't find the letter before you sold the coin, but you'll have to take things the way they are. You need to follow thsi just like Dave said....and you need to get the cert number somehow if you don't have it. you may have to hound the dealer - and speaking of dealers, has your dealer given you the name of the other dealer? if not, why? is he hiding something? it should be no skin off his back if he sold it to another dealer, so he should readily pony up the other dealers name and the cert #, if he has it. get whatever info you can from the coin too - like what die alignment it is, etc?.

The other prob you might have is that if/when you do find the new owner they may decide they want a lot more for it if they know why you want it, so be wary of this. Good luck.

P.S. - you an also join the pcgs site or find someone who is already a member and check the population to see how many of these were graded PR-62....gotta be a pretty small number. I'm a member of NGC and they don't have many listed, but it's even lower after the breakdown of silver vs copper and variety (gobrecht or J-58 to 65). I imagine the pcgs numbers aren't much different then NGC's, so you may be able to whittle it down. The dark side of this is that the coin could have been re-submitted and received a slightly different grade or an upgrade or is now an ngc coin, etc.

Well, I didnt buy it from you, so that eliminates one more person from your list

That must have been a NICE coin though!

Thank you all for your replies and help. I am on vacation until Oct. 6 and will get back on the forum soon after that. You've given me some ideas of how to proceed.

Hello, I am back from vacation and wanted to respond to all the helpful questions/advice. There is no certification number in the paperwork I got from the dealer I sold it to and I don't know how I would get it at this point. I sold it in October 2010. The web site that has the picture of it is:http://www.richuhrichcoins.com/archives.php. I obviously went into this sale quite naive and now can't really get info on the sale. I don't know if the Park Avenue coin might be mine. Would PCGS be able to give me a certificate number if my dealer says he doesn't have it? It was definitely graded last year at the Long Beach Show in late September of 2010 It was brought to that show by Harry Laibstain. Then it was brought back to my dealer and sold at the Philadelphia show of Sept. 30 - Oct. 2. I will call my dealer again and see if I can get info on the certificate number, but I'm not hopeful. If the coin is found and is too expensive for me to buy back, then my next choice would be to sell the letter. I do feel they belong together. Thanks all.

Thanks, I'll contact my dealer and PCGS and try to get the certification number. I also registered with the Park Avenue site and will see about that coin listed (price a lot higher than I sold mine for!) I'll keep you posted.

The story sure sounds like it belongs in a numismatic magazine. Do you have any pictures of it that could help identify any unique marks or specific features of the coin? The top coin graders can tell if the same coin has been re-slabbed, especially with the rarer ones... Just a humble thought... Good luck with this beautiful cause...

Statistically, I don't see how the parkavenue coin could be anything but yours. What is the chance of TWO PCGS PR62 graded 1836 Gobrecht dollars?

If somebody has a login for the park avenue website, they can get the cert number for you.

I think that if you put together a tight two page article about the situation and made a nice photocopy of the letter CoinWorld may post it as a little side article. It certainly is an interesting situation.