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 Replies: 13 / Views: 8,452 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
982 Posts |
I was looking for a nice AU 1859 Indian Head cent for my Dansco 7070 Type Set album and ended up buying one on ebay, slabbed by NGC. At first I ignored the label indicating it was from the "Maumee Valley Collection," but now I'm hesitant to crack it out of the plastic if the pedigree is significant. I tried googling the "Maumee Valley Collection," but only found additional coins for sale with the special label. I finally saw the name Maumee, Ohio, associated with convicted coin scammer Thomas Noe, and began wondering whether these coins were part of the investment portfolio that Noe had to surrender. Even if that's the case, I'm not sure if this pedigree adds any value to the coin itself. Anyone have any knowledge of this "Maumee Valley Collection" before I crack the case open? Here's a Coin Community link to the Thomas Noe story: http://goccf.com/t/3875And here's the seller's images of the coin, in case you're curious:   |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3479 Posts |
Maumee Valley is in the Toledo Ohio area. I was just up there recently. It was probably a private collection worth over 100k. Depending on the auction house, large collections of raw coins with significant value are submitted to tpgs at bulk rates and get their own designation. I see it happen maybe 4 times a year. The last one was a heritage auction of Carlyle Luer's collection. Not sure what the exact $ requirements auction houses need to justify a pedigree.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3479 Posts |
Just read the article you linked to. Cool story but this is in a newer NGC holder. It's probably just a coincidence.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
982 Posts |
Thanks, Mike, I hadn't thought of that. I checked out some of the Maumee Valley Collection coins on the Heritage site and they are also in the newer NGC slabs.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3479 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
992 Posts |
The coin is an AU 50, go ahead and crack it out if you want to. I can't see much added value from the provenance absent a MS coin of scarcity.
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CCF Advertiser
United States
1533 Posts |
Unless the collection is large enough to get a headliner in the auction catalog, it may be very hard to find it after the fact. Obviously the Pogue collection and the Reiver collection are not hard to find, but if its just some family that named their collection when somebody died and put it up at Heritage or Stacks, it may be lost to history. I have a Teich Family Collection coin, a 3 c nickel proof. I crossed it from PCGS to NGC and got a cameo upgrade on it, but I kept the provenance on the new NGC holder, because why not? Once you lose it, its gone and it may mean something to someone.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4233 Posts |
It seems odd to me that this collection is named for a geographical place and not a person or institution. I suppose if they were trying to hide any connection to "Coingate" they would have not attributed the coins to anything. It's also interesting that this Noe character invested in NGC. Quote:
The indictment calls for the forfeit of Mr. Noe's business Vintage Coins and Collectibles and the sale of his shares in Numismatic Guaranty Corp. if convicted. All I could find on the disposition of collectibles from the scandal is that it took 5 years, which put it into 2011. I suppose someone could have picked up a bunch of these coins raw and only recently submitted them for grading. I wonder if a pedigree associated with this scandal would increase value or detract from it? There are 242 items with this pedigree on Heritage and they all sold within the past month - March 20 and April 10, 2018. Perhaps we'll never know who or what this "Maumee Valley Collection" is. |
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CCF Advertiser
United States
1533 Posts |
There are other examples of named places. That lawyer, Robert Shippee, that wrote the type coin book "Pleasure and Profit" named his collection after a lake by where he lived, the Waccabuc Collection. It sold by Stacks in 2007 and is still #4 in the PCGS registry for type.
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Valued Member
New Zealand
148 Posts |
Two of the coins I acquired this week via Heritage are from the "Maumee Valley Collection". I didn't really think about it until I saw this thread. It's actually kind of a strange thing to do - adding an obscure collection name to the slab label. I struggle to see the point...
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3479 Posts |
Quote:
It's actually kind of a strange thing to do - adding an obscure collection name to the slab label. I struggle to see the point... I've seen many coins with obscure pedigrees. There was one recently that was called something like 'A lady's Collection'. I have a Seated dollar from the Palos Verdes Collection. Funny story but trying to figure out what it is was or who it came from, I called a coin shop in Palos Verdes CA. Ended up talking to the shop owner who had no idea and never heard of the collection. But he was so long winded that 25 minutes later, I had to make up an excuse just to get him off the phone. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4233 Posts |
So it looks like there are a lot of examples of pedigrees with place names. I also struggle to see the point. Other than inspiring the "this must be important" reaction from a buyer.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
655 Posts |
I saw some of those labeled coins at auction. They didn't look like anything special, even included cleaned coins. So, this collection is not like a hand-picked one of rarities or especially beautiful coins. Wouldn't surprise me if they were sold under some sort of court arrangement to recompense Ohio in that Noe case.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4233 Posts |
Yes ron6788, I noticed that on Heritage, 17 of first 40 coins in search result are Details, the majority of the remainder AU or less, and only 8 of 242 sold for more than $400. Kind of an odd "collection" for something touting a pedigree. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this was a dump of some Noe stuff.
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Replies: 13 / Views: 8,452 |
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Posted 04/11/2018 9:00 pm
