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A TALE OF TRAVELING COIN BUYERS
Traveling coin buyers are still out beating the bushes for deals. Here's a story from Newport News, VA.
-Editor
The couple walked into a small room at the Hilton Garden Inn this week, carrying one old coin that ended up being worth thousands of dollars. Josh Cunningham of the Illinois-based International Coin Collectors Association, said on Tuesday, the second day of the association's six-day stay in Newport News this week, two couples brought in extremely rare coins. The collectors association is buying old coins, to later make a profit by selling to private collectors. The association travels all over the United States searching for old coins. The first rare coin was a 1652 Pine Tree Shilling, which was probably among the first coins to be minted in the colonies, in Massachusetts, according to the Legendary Coins and Currency web site. "They had no clue that it was that valuable," Cunningham said of the couple that brought in the Pine Tree Shilling. "I had never seen one that was real. I had seen lots of fake ones." The shilling is worth $6,000 or more, Cunningham said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, another couple showed up at the Hilton Garden Inn with a 1785 "bar copper" that was minted in the newly-formed United States. The "bars" on the tails side of the coin represent the 13 states. That coin is worth about $1,000, Cunningham said.
Umm, those look like copies to me. So I sent a note with that subject line and a link to the article to Tom DeLorey, knowing that with his years of experience as an authenticator and dealer he would set me straight if I'm wrong.
-Editor
Tom writes: Definitely cast replicas. Shouldn't fool anybody, including a traveling road show buyer. Think it could be a shill story set up by the buyers for local publicity?
I'd been prepared to write about how it isn't so hard to tell that these are copies, and how easy it is for coin buyers to educate themselves at national shows and auctions, where there are scads of originals available for observation. But I think Tom's right to smell a rat here.
One can't make money as an itinerant coin buyer paying thousands of dollars for replicas worth a fraction of that. Has this story turned up in other markets around the country?
-Editor
To read the complete article, see: Rare coins being bought, sold in Newport News (www.dailypress.com/news/newport-news/dp-nws-nn-old-coins-20120201,0,2046603.story) THE BOOK BAZARRESTILL TIME TO SUBMIT YOUR BIDS ON A WIDEVARIETY OF NUMISMATIC TREASURES IN OUR AUCTION SALE DAVID SKLOW - FINE NUMISMATIC BOOKS www.finenumismaticbooks.com Mail Bid Sale No. 15 Closes FEBRUARY 11, 2012 Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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