Treatment Of Coins On TV

Fox news! but that said Fox News tends to be the best comedy program around!!

Slightly more seriously: Nearly every TV show I have seen on coins is rubbish

Fortunately, the coins I saw were not being sold, but on reality TV. I wonder about how good the "expert" was in these cases. Perhaps the camera guy playing a part. Entertainment should not be misleading.

rant time!
So there are 2 things that bother me, one is a commercial another is a show.

The commercial: So I've been seeing this commercial recently advertising " Morgan silver dollars" for $29.90. It keeps on showing beautiful BU Morgans but they state that the coins are in "Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine condition" (de-emphasizing the "Fine" in their speech"). I'm guessing most people don't know how low fine grade is and how big of a difference there is from BU to fine. They probably think they're getting a BU coin because of the beautiful Morgans they show, which is very misleading. Then they keep on trying to imply that Morgans is some sort of super-rare coin because of how "millions were melted" and these were the last few remaining in bank vaults. Last, they emphasize the silver value. They state how it was at $40 and ounce and speculate that it might get that high again because "China, the biggest buyer of precious metals, is getting rich, which is sure to push the price of silver up to those prices again." Not to mention when they put up a bar graph of silver prices comparing then to "now" (only 2 bars), they use the Sept. 2014 for "now," which was $20 some dollars an ounce, again misleading the viewers to think they are more valuable.

Next, the TV show: Pawn Stars. Whenever they get a non-graded coin on the show, Rick keeps saying how he will need to send it in to a TPG and there are 70 grades in addition to plus grades, so according to him, there are 140 possible grades the coin can come back as. He makes it sound as if it's a total gamble to send a coin to the TPG, with no predictability whatsoever which grade he may get. In fact (and yes, I counted) there are 43 grades including plus grades. Now on to Rick's coin "expert." Besides his employee, he also calls in a director from NGC...except, he is the director of NGC Ancients, and Rick calls him in for all kinds of coins, no matter what kind. I get he may be able to talk somewhat about other coins but I don't think he can be considered an "expert" on the other coins, which are usually US coins.


OK, rant over. It felt good to write all that and get it off my chest. But I'm still likehow ignorant and/or manipulative some people can be.

Sitting here running through the channels and came across The Coin Collector on HSN. They have 1 Pound of Silver Bars with the Morgan dollar on them for the ridiculously low price of $399.99. What a bargain. They also need $10.95 for S&H.