STEVEN L. DUCKOR (1945-2025)

Prominent U.S. coin collector Steve Duckor passed earlier this week. Here are excerpts from some previously published profiles - see the complete articles online. First, here's part of a Heritage Intelligent Collector piece by Beth Deisher. -Editor

In the past four decades, Duckor has formed finest-known collections in at least half a dozen series. His Barber half dollar collection – selected to Professional Coin Grading Service's Hall of Fame in 2003 and sold in 2010 – is widely acclaimed as the all-time finest collection of circulation strike Barber halves ever assembled. And his collections of Saint-Gaudens double eagles and $1 gold coins have equally dazzled the collecting world.

“Collect rare and the best quality,” he advises. “If it doesn't come gem, other than the few $1 gold coins that are the finest known, I won't buy it. I'm looking for the very best. Remember my mantra: Buy the very best, stretch to buy it. It means if you can't afford to buy it, buy it anyway.”

Legendary collector John Pittman, Duckor points out, took a second mortgage out on his home to acquire coins at the 1954 sale of the King Farouk collection. “I've done that actually. I've taken a second out on my house, borrowed money from my brother 20 years ago to buy coins. It's worth it,” Duckor says, “if you know what you are doing.”

A native of Indiana, Duckor began collecting coins shortly after his family moved to Miami Beach, Fla., when he was 10 years old. The young Steven collected by series and obtained most of his coins by sorting through change from his father's business. He was 11 when he bought for $8 his first coin – a 1914-D Lincoln cent in “very good” condition. His father thought it was a lot of money for a penny.

Nevertheless, his father (who was not a collector) trusted his son's knowledge, was supportive and encouraged his pursuits. “In 1960,” Duckor says, “my father took me to the local bank in Florida. They let me go through all their rolls of silver dollars. My dad said, ‘You can have only one of each date.' So that's how I started in silver dollars.”

In his early collecting years, Duckor followed the more traditional path of collecting coins by date and mint mark, filling in albums. But his approach to collecting changed dramatically in the early 1970s. “Really, I didn't seriously start collecting until I graduated from medical school in 1971 and came to California,” Duckor says.

Shortly after beginning his internship at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles, he met a coin dealer who was collecting gem coins. “Gem” is not a grade or description of a coin's state of preservation. Rather, it is a term that refers to the top tier of grades, generally Mint State or Proof 67 to 70. In some early series, gem also encompasses the 65 and 66 numeric levels because so few are known to have survived at those grades or beyond.

Greatly influenced by the coin dealer, Duckor began collecting circulation-strike gem Buffalo nickels, Standing Liberty quarters, Walking Liberty half dollars and Morgan dollars. By 1976, he turned his attention to gem 20th century gold coins, primarily quarter eagles, half eagles and double eagles. “That was when gold was about $105 an ounce,” he notes.

It was also a time when coins were bought and sold in small, brown envelopes – before independent third-party grading and encapsulation. He made it a priority to become knowledgeable by reading reference books about the series he was collecting, viewing coin lots in order to understand grading, studying auction catalogs and reading stories in Coin World about collections coming to market.

He looks back at the advent of third-party grading as an important milestone and takes pride in the role his collection played.

“In 1985, I received a call from David Hall,” Duckor remembers. “He asked if he and Gordon Wrubel could look at my 20th century gold collection. He said they had a ‘new idea.'”

Hall and Wrubel met Duckor at his bank to examine the entire collection. “They each graded the coins separately,” Duckor explains. Later they provided him with copies of their grading sheets. He was amazed at how accurately and how close their grades were. He describes that exercise as a “founding experiment,” noting that Hall and Wrubel went on to launch Professional Coin Grading Service in February 1986.

Three years later, PCGS graded and encapsulated his entire 20th century gold collection. Since that time, experts agree that third-party grading has helped propel rare coins into a $5 billion market today.

To read the complete article, see:
Doctor Amazing (https://intelligentcollector.com/doctor-amazing/)

And here's part of a CoinWeek article by Greg Reynolds. -Editor

By 1980, Duckor was not entirely satisfied with the dealer who had been representing him at auction in the 1970s. One morning in October 1982, just prior to the Eliasberg gold sale, Akers and Duckor had breakfast at the same hotel in New York City. Duckor then asked Akers if Akers would represent Duckor at the Bowers & Ruddy auction of Louis Eliasberg's U.S. gold coins. Akers agreed. Akers was the foremost expert in U.S. gold coins. Louis Eliasberg formed the all-time best collection of U.S. coins.

“For nearly thirty years, Dave Akers has been a great teacher. Now that Akers is semi-retired, Todd Imhof has been a trusted dealer for the last seven or eight years,” Duckor reveals. “If I did not meet Dave Akers, I would not have continued collecting coins.”

Although he was spending thousands of dollars annually on coins by the mid 1970s, Dr. Duckor “never thought of coins as an investment. Collecting coins is a hobby. It grew into a passion when I started collecting gold. It turned out to be a tremendous investment. I never had the intention of making money from coins. From the beginning, I bought coins that I liked. I sought to complete sets of the [series] that I like,” Duckor explains.

Doug Winter published this tribute in a blog article Monday. -Editor

I was introduced to Steve Duckor by David Akers, sometime around the time of the Pittman sales (1997-1998). I learned that Steve was working on a very high-quality set of Indian Head eagles and St. Gaudens double eagles. This has never been a market that I've been an active participant in, so I was unable to sell him any coins at that time. However, we became friendly, and Steve made certain to show me his new purchases and to further our relationship.

If you knew Steve at all, you knew that he was a relationships guy. He was humble to a fault and he realized that as well-versed on coins as he might become, he needed a dealer working with him in order to find the great coins he sought.

David Akers always would display his stunning personal collection at shows. I discussed buying them at various times but I thought his prices were too aggressive. But Steve saw an opportunity, and in 2012, he bought around seven or eight of the Akers gold dollars including such amazing coins as a PCGS MS68 1851, a PCGS MS68+ 1856 Slant 5, an incredible PCGS MS68 1863, a PCGS MS68+ 1864, and others. With this purchase, Steve became a gold dollar specialist and I became his go-to dealer.

Steve was a sponge and he quickly learned about his new area of specialization. He had a remarkable eye and people realized that if a coin was worthy of a Duckor pedigree, it was clearly nice enough for their collection. He understood the concept of branding before he even realized that he was consciously doing this with every collection he formed. And he was incredibly versatile as a collector, having also assembled the finest sets of Barber dimes and half dollars ever assembled. I think he would have succeeded on any numismatic project he set out to do, given his sophistication and his level of knowledge.

I began going to see Steve for lunch every few months. We would meet at his bank where he would show me his remarkable gold dollars. Each and every coin he had was CAC approved, and this included an 1865 that I had sold him as a PCGS MS65 but which he had upgraded to MS66. He had also persuaded CAC to approve it.

Steve made more money on a single coin than any other collector I'm aware of. He was the owner of an amazing 1920-S $10 Indian—the finest known example of the rarest date of this design. He bought it 1979 for $85,000, which was a ton of money for this coin at that time; especially for a younger collector with two small kids. I sat with him at the auction in 2007 when he sold this coin. At the time, I told him it could bring $750,000 or maybe even a bit more. I'll never forget the look on his face when it quickly broke the $1 million dollar barrier, not stopping until it realized a record-smashing $1,725,000. We went out for a celebratory dinner that night and he gladly paid.

I think Steve was the greatest collector of his generation. Unlike other collectors of his level, he wasn't operating with an essentially unlimited budget. Steve was a gastroenterologist who was competing against titans of industry, professional sports team owners, and hedge fund managers. Despite their limitless budgets, they lacked the knowledge that Steve cultivated, and they played right into his hands when he sold his coins.

Steve understood the mechanics of the market better than any collector I have ever known. He bought series when they were out of favor, and sold his coins when there were two or more very wealthy collectors who he knew would go head-to-head when Heritage conducted a Duckor sale. He sold his gold dollars at the exact point in time that Bob Simpson and Tom Bender were hungriest for coins, and they set numerous price records in brutal bidding competitions.

After he completed the sale of his gold dollars, Steve moved on to Walking Liberty half dollars and Lincoln Cents; two series he had collected when he was young. He had become friends with Stewart Blay, a New York City sculptor and an accomplished numismatist who had assembled the single greatest set of Lincolns (and Indian Cents) ever. With Stewart's help, Steve assembled a set in less than two years. For anyone other than Steve, this would have been a recipe for disaster. But as I said above, a Duckor pedigree was a force of nature, and the set sold for a profit despite virtually all the coins having come out of recent auction sales.

Steve probably saved my life. In 2013, after I had passed a painful kidney stone, I was sent home from the hospital. I slept much of the next day and when I woke up on the second day, I was burning up. My wife took my temperature and it read 105. She called Steve and told him, and he urged her to get me back to the hospital quickly as I could be potentially extremely sick from possible Sepsis. The emergency doctor agreed, and after a round of antibiotics, my temperature was close to normal.

Steve was a founder of the US Gold Club. He hadn't attended any meetings since before Covid, but his presence was felt at every gathering.

Steve, I learned a lot from you and I will miss you tremendously. You were a great husband and father/grandfather, and a great friend to me and many other dealers.

To read the complete article, see:
Steve Duckor: A Tribute (https://raregoldcoins.com/blog/2025/2/17/steve-duckor-a-tribute)