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Posted 11/25/2012 3:39 pm
I can't afford Carr's pieces, so for me this is a moot point, EXCEPT for this:
I'm a young collector, in the whole scheme of things. I was born in the era of dead Presidents on coins; I was ten-almost-eleven when the first State Quarters came out and eleven-going-on-twelve when my mom took me to the Post Office because I just had to see a real actual coin with a woman on it, you guys (my feminist tendencies started early). When I saw (and purchased, for $10) my first Peace dollar, I had no idea there was an earlier design (much less several of them!) and someone putting a 1909-O Morgan in my hands for ten bucks would have gotten away with it, because what did I know?
I don't worry about foolish new rich collectors; I worry about collectors like me, who have to save up for two or three weeks to purchase a single Morgan and occasionally have to put aside the hobby to, you know, eat. We don't have the money to buy things like the Red Book, at least not right away; we buy the VG/F coins because we want pretty things and it's all we can afford. "Look!" the unscrupulous shyster with a Carr strike says: "It's an error coin, probably worth a couple of grand, but man, I need the money. I've gotta turn it over. You can have it for thirty bucks." So you give up your grocery money, that thirty dollars, expecting that you can take the coin to a dealer and get--maybe not a couple of thousand, but a couple of hundred, at least.
The dealer tells you the coin isn't worth the metal it's minted on.
Now what?
I'm a young collector, in the whole scheme of things. I was born in the era of dead Presidents on coins; I was ten-almost-eleven when the first State Quarters came out and eleven-going-on-twelve when my mom took me to the Post Office because I just had to see a real actual coin with a woman on it, you guys (my feminist tendencies started early). When I saw (and purchased, for $10) my first Peace dollar, I had no idea there was an earlier design (much less several of them!) and someone putting a 1909-O Morgan in my hands for ten bucks would have gotten away with it, because what did I know?
I don't worry about foolish new rich collectors; I worry about collectors like me, who have to save up for two or three weeks to purchase a single Morgan and occasionally have to put aside the hobby to, you know, eat. We don't have the money to buy things like the Red Book, at least not right away; we buy the VG/F coins because we want pretty things and it's all we can afford. "Look!" the unscrupulous shyster with a Carr strike says: "It's an error coin, probably worth a couple of grand, but man, I need the money. I've gotta turn it over. You can have it for thirty bucks." So you give up your grocery money, that thirty dollars, expecting that you can take the coin to a dealer and get--maybe not a couple of thousand, but a couple of hundred, at least.
The dealer tells you the coin isn't worth the metal it's minted on.
Now what?
