Coin Collectors News

Country Music Legend Larry Gatlin Goes For The Gold On New 1st National Reserve Website

Dec 3, 2020 | Announcements

(Beaumont, Texas) December 2, 2020 — Legendary country and gospel music singer and songwriter Larry Gatlin talks about owning gold in a video on the redesigned website of precious metals and rare coins dealership 1st National Reserve (www.1stNationalReserve.com) of Beaumont, Texas.

In the brief, entertaining video, Texas native and 1st National Reserve customer Gatlin explains he should have followed the recommendations of financial advisors to purchase gold when it was about $300 an ounce in 1979 after the success of his #1 hit song, “All The Gold In California.”

Instead, he explained in September, “I bought horses and cows and cars and guitars and a lot of other stuff. I mean, a lot of other stuff. Now, gold is over $1,900 an ounce while the horses are dead, the cows are dead, the cars won’t run and the guitars are, well, just guitars. The bad news: I didn’t buy gold. The good news: now I own gold and I’m going to buy more from the experts at 1st National Reserve,” he states.

In addition to the video, the new website provides up-to-date listings about the company’s current precious metals and numismatic offerings for online shopping as well as useful information about the enjoyment of coin collecting.

“We’re committed to increasing transparency and clarity in our offerings while remaining at the forefront of the evolving collectible coin marketplace. We feel confident that our new website will be a powerful tool to showcase our distinctive gold and silver bullion and rare coin offerings, and help interested parties make informed decisions when choosing to buy numismatic and precious metals products,” explains Ryan Verde, 1st National Reserve’s Manager.

“Our site’s information on coin buying, coin grading and other numismatic subjects is substantial. We pride ourselves on providing a large amount of informative, award-winning content relative to the coin and bullion market to help prospective collectors learn more about the hobby of coin collecting,” adds Verde.

For additional information, visit www.1stNationalReserve.com or call 800-321-8700.

About 1st National Reserve:

For more than 30 years, 1st National Reserve has diligently provided superlative service, insightful analysis and comprehensive consultation to a national client base of rare coin investors and collectors. 1st National Reserve is a Better Business Bureau accredited company, a Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) authorized dealer and member of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA).

About Larry Gatlin:

The close family harmonies of Larry, Steve & Rudy: The Gatlin Brothers have given the trio a signature sound that led to country classics like “All the Gold in California” and “Houston (Means I’m One Day Closer to You).” The brothers won a GRAMMY® for their 1976 breakthrough hit, “Broken Lady,” and reached #1 with several other songs soon thereafter. Along with five career nominations for the ACM Vocal Group, the Gatlin Brothers picked up three 1979 trophies: Single of the Year (“All the Gold in California”), Album of the Year (Straight Ahead) and Male Vocalist of the Year for Larry Gatlin. The brothers were also nominated for multiple CMA Awards including Vocal Group of the Year, Single of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year. Larry Gatlin has written songs recorded by Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Dottie West, Roy Orbison, Barry Gibb and countless gospel artists including the Gaither Vocal Band, the Booth Brothers, the Isaacs and many more. Larry was formally inducted into the prestigious Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in the fall of 2019.

For more information on Larry Gatlin, visit www.gatlinbrothers.com or follow him on social media: Facebook (www.facebook.com/GatlinBrothers),Twitter (https://twitter.com/LarryGatlin) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/larrygatlin).

The Royal Mint Launch Tooth Fairy Set

Nov 26, 2020 | Announcements

Tooth Fairy My Lost Tooth Celebration Set pouch and coin

The Royal Mint has launched a new coin set to celebrate the tradition of the Tooth Fairy.

The ‘My Lost Tooth’ Celebration Set contains a 2021 dated, definitive 50p Brilliant Uncirculated coin, to be placed under the pillow of a child losing his or her first tooth. The 50p coin will be held in a pouch within a 2-piece box with:

Bedtime instructions for mum, dad or guardian
A calling card for the bedside table with a letter from the tooth fairy

The set retails at £15.

Clare MacLennan, Divisional Director for Commemorative Coin and The Royal Mint Experience, comments: “As the original maker of coins, The Royal Mint has been producing coins for over 1,100 years and they are synonymous with so many of our day to day traditions including the ritual of placing one under a child’s pillow.

“Alongside the My Lost Tooth Set, The Royal Mint will also be hosting a collection of fun, engaging content on their popular online kid’s hub, further cementing The Royal Mint as a brand pivotal to celebrations and milestones such as losing a first tooth.”

The Royal Mint also teamed up with Owlet Press will publish a series of children’s books bringing the story of the Tooth Fairy to life and revealing her long-standing collaboration with the original coin maker, supplying the coins that are left under pillows every night.

For more information about The Royal Mint, visit royalmint.com.

: Tooth Fairy My Lost Tooth Celebration Set Presentation Card

: Tooth Fairy My Lost Tooth Celebration Set carton and slip case open

: Tooth Fairy My Lost Tooth Celebration Set carton and slip case

: Tooth Fairy My Lost Tooth Celebration Set carton coin pouch booklet and calling card

Royal Mint and Disney Launch New Piglet Coin in time for Christmas

Nov 24, 2020 | Announcements

The Royal Mint, in collaboration with Disney, has released the third coin in its new Winnie the Pooh and Friends series, depicting the popular character of Piglet.

The Piglet 50p is the third coin in the series which celebrates the iconic work of British author A. A Milne. It follows 50 pence pieces featuring Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, released earlier this autumn.

The beautifully designed coin features Winnie the Pooh’s best friend Piglet pictured with a dandelion, in an original illustration by E. H. Shepard reflecting the delicate nature of the well-loved character.

Clare Maclennan, Director of Commemorative Coin for The Royal Mint, said: “We are so excited to launch the third coin in our popular Winnie the Pooh and Friends series, celebrating A. A Milne’s classic character Piglet. The intricate design is inspired by the original watercolour drawings, and will make a special edition to any Christmas stocking.

“Collecting coins remains a popular hobby in the UK, and we see a lot of demand for our ranges celebrating children’s characters, especially at Christmas”

To view the collection, visit royalmint.com/winniethepooh.

: Piglet 2020 UK 50p Brilliant Unicrculated Coin reverse – UK20PGBT

: Piglet 2020 UK 50p Brilliant Unicrculated Coin reverse Pad Printed

: Piglet 2020 UK 50p Gold Proof Coin reverse

Piglet 2020 UK 50p Specifications
Coin title	Piglet 2020 UK 50p Brilliant Uncirculated Coin	Piglet 2020 UK 50p Brilliant Uncirculated Coin (coloured)	Piglet 2020 UK 50p Silver Proof Coin	Piglet 2020 UK 50p Gold Proof Coin
Denomination	50p	50p	50p	50p
Issuing Authority	UK	UK	UK	UK
Alloy	Cupro-Nickel	Cupro-Nickel	925 Ag Sterling Silver	916.7 Au – Red Gold
Weight	8.00g	8.00g	8.00g	15.50g
Diameter	27.30mm	27.30mm	27.30mm	27.30mm
Obverse Designer	Jody Clark
Reverse Designer	The Walt Disney Company
Quality	Brilliant Uncirculated	Brilliant Uncirculated	Proof	Proof
Additional Features	–	Coloured	Coloured	–
Limited Edition Presentation	Unlimited	45,000	18,000	525
RRP	£10	£20	£67.50	£1,125

A Message from United States Mint Director David J. Ryder

Nov 18, 2020 | Announcements, U.S. Mint

Dear Mint Customers,

I want to take this opportunity to speak to you about the Mint’s approach to our numismatic program.

First off, the United States Mint is unique in that we are an agency of the Federal Government, and also a retail sales organization. The goal of our numismatic program is to serve the American people by producing coins and medals that tell America’s story, are desirable to our customers, and generate net earnings. Net earnings not required for Mint operations are transferred to the United States Treasury general fund and ultimately benefit you, the taxpayer.

During my tenure as Mint Director, I have challenged my staff to come up with new and creative products to energize, excite, and expand the collector community. My team has met this objective on many occasions, most recently with our products honoring the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and our collaboration with the Royal Mint commemorating the 400th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic journey of the Mayflower.

As we look to provide the market with innovative and interesting products, we engage in market research and solicit feedback from the numismatic community. Our forecasting team examines historical performance and gleans insights on current customer interests and also assesses any new product’s overall potential. When we develop mintage limits for our numismatic products, we use our best efforts to come up with what we think are mintages that will satisfy customer demand and ultimately sell out. Contrary to the belief of some, we’re not happy when a product sells out immediately —that means that we underestimated demand and disappointed many customers. On the other hand, we don’t want to set mintages so high that we’re left with unsold inventory, which results in additional expense when we recycle the coins and medals and dispose of the packaging. Finding the right number is part art and part science. Most of the time I think we’re successful, but in the case of the World War II 75th Anniversary products we clearly underestimated demand.

As many of you are aware, a slowdown of the Mint’s online sales website caused frustration for many of our loyal customers, who were unable to purchase their desired product. One contributing factor is that there were 390,000 users attempting to access the website during one time frame, which is more than triple the capacity we had planned for. I can also tell you that our solutions to prevent automated purchases by “bots” also put an immense strain on our website and can lead to unintended issues for other legitimate purchasers. The overwhelming demand for these products outpaced our website capacity in ways that we are still trying to better understand and remedy. That said, more than 75 percent of 75th Anniversary End of World War II products were purchased by the Mint’s registered customers. I have asked my team to do a thorough analysis of what went wrong, and, by balancing capacity versus cost, come up with long-term, lasting solutions that will provide our customers with a vastly improved buying experience.

Also, we have different sets of customers purchasing our products, including individual collectors and dealers. We do not provide preferential treatment to any of our customers, be they individual collectors or professional coin dealers, and we have measures in place, both automated and manual, to ensure that household order limits are adhered to. We have seen an increase of activity by another sector of customers—buying groups who offer to pay a premium to individuals who purchase our high-demand products. This sector is one of the reasons you are seeing high prices for our products on the secondary market. The Mint has no control over what individuals do with their numismatic products once they are purchased. Some customers choose to add these coins and medals to their collections, while others choose to sell them for a profit.

In summary, I and my team are working to change the way the Mint has done business in the past. We endeavor to produce numismatic products that our customers will value. Along the way, we’ve made mistakes, and are doing our absolute best to learn from those mistakes. I thank you for your loyalty as a Mint customer, and look forward to your continued presence with us as we continue our journey of celebrating America through our numismatic products.

Sincerely,
Dave

All Do Well in Holabird’s 5-Day ‘Spooktacular’ Auction

Nov 18, 2020 | Auctions, News

More than 3,600 lots in a wide array of collecting categories crossed the auction block, online via several platforms and live at the gallery in Reno, Nevada. The sale had a 75% sell-through.

RENO, Nev. — A rare Wells Fargo and Company stock certificate from 1870 sold for $2,875, a 1960s-era 25-cent Jennings slot machine from the famous Nevada Club Casino brought $2,625, and a $1,000 Federal Reserve note from 1934 realized $2,500 at Holabird Western Americana Collections’ 5-day “Spooktacular Sale” held Oct. 29-Nov. 2, online and live at the Reno gallery.

More than 3,600 lots in a wide array of collecting categories crossed the auction block over the course of the five days. “We had a 75 percent sell-through. It would have topped 80 percent had it not been for the art category,” said Fred Holabird, president and owner of Holabird Western Americana Collections. “The auction attracted a registered bidder audience of more than 5,000 people who placed over 50,000 bids, representing over 750 separate buyers. It was a great sale.”

Following are highlights from the auction. Online bidding was facilitated by iCollector.com, LiveAuctioneers.com, Invaluable.com and Auctionzip.com. Telephone and absentee bids were also accepted and were a big part of the sale. All prices quoted include the buyer’s premium.

Day 1, October 29th, was filled with 679 lots of art, Native Americana, textiles, foreign and general collectibles, collector spoons, jewelry, scales, advertising items and signs, furnishings and 3-D items, music, theater, sports, tobacciana, saloon, cowboy, comic books, books and magazines, antiquarian books, bottle, marbles and gaming. It was a veritable collector’s paradise.

The star lot of Day 1 was the classic 1960s 25-cent slot machine from the Nevada Club Casino, a must-have for collectors of Lake Tahoe items. The machine featured the classic Jennings Indian Head in brass. Also sold was a heavy turquoise and silver-twisted wire and stamped bracelet, featuring a beautiful oval turquoise stone from the Royston mining district in Nevada ($1,220). “One of our specialties is silver-turquoise jewelry, and this sale was loaded,” Mr. Holabird said.

: Heavy turquoise and silver-twisted wire and stamped bracelet, featuring a beautiful oval turquoise stone from the Royston mining district in Nevada ($1,220).

: 1960s-era 25-cent Jennings slot machine from the famous Nevada Club Casino, a must-have for collectors of Lake Tahoe items, featuring the classic Jennings Indian Head in brass ($2,625).

Other Day 1 superstars included a glazed China marble, a little over an inch in diameter, in the King’s Rose pattern, which went for $1,000, as part of a large vintage marbles collection; and a group of six Navajo (Arizona) cuffs, five of them stamped and one stamped and hammer embossed with eagle and swastika designs ($1,000).

Day 2, October 30th, was even more packed than Day 1, with a staggering 762 lots of firefighting memorabilia, fraternal organizations items, badges (which also came up for bid on Day 5), numismatics, bullion, ingots, coins and currency, dies and hobbs, ephemera and exonumia, medals, so-called dollars (named because they are shaped like silver dollar coins) and tokens.

The $1,000 note from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (Series of 1934-A) was a Day 2 notable. It was in VF-to-EF condition and featured a portrait of President Grover Cleveland. Also offered was a coin hoard of 90 percent silver U.S. coins with a face value of $220: Mercury dimes, Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters and Walking Liberty half-dollars. It made $3,782.

An extremely rare 5-cent token from the post exchange at Camp Yosemite in California, round and 24 millimeters in diameter, knocked down for $2,000; while a token from the Herman & Wright Saloon in Gillett, Colorado, 28 mm, changed hands for $1,187.

: $1,000 note from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (Series of 1934-A), in VF-to-EF condition, Fr. 2212-L, featuring a portrait of President Grover Cleveland ($2,500).

: Extremely rare 5-cent token from the post exchange at Camp Yosemite in California, round and 24 millimeters in diameter ($2,000).

: Token from the Herman & Wright Saloon in Gillett, Colo. (“Good for One 12 ½ Cent Drink”), 28 millimeters ($1,187).

A group of three badges from the city of San Francisco Fire Department, circa 1933, including Fireman Badge No. 1567 and Fire Line Pass 2280, earned $1,125. Also, a scarce stereo view of the Carson City (Nev.) Mint, with (presumably) the employees standing in front, hammered for $732. The Carson City Mint produced gold and silver U.S. coins, on and off, from 1870-1893.

: Group of three badges from the city of San Francisco Fire Department, circa 1933, including Fireman Badge No. 1567 and Fire Line Pass 2280 ($1,125).

Day 3, on Halloween, had 685 ‘spooktacular’ lots of collectibles in a wide variety of categories: transportation, stocks and bonds, minerals and mining, tools, firearms, political memorabilia, World’s Fair items and militaria. Firearms sales were subject to state and federal regulations.

The 1870 Wells Fargo and Company (N.Y.) stock certificate was the top lot of Day 3. It was certificate #312, issued for 100 shares to H.W. Perkins and signed by the company president, treasurer and secretary. Also, a stock certificate from 1879 for the Metallic Consolidated Gold & Silver Mining Company (Lake District, near Mammoth Lake, Calif.) for 95 shares made $1,125.

A crystallized gold specimen from the Monarch Mine in Comstock, Nevada, circa 1989 or 1990, weighing 12.8 grams, the finest crystallized specimen to come out of that mine, sold for $1,830. Also, a set of nine original 19th century touchstone needles used by jewelers as a way to test gold by making a streak on a streak plate and comparing it to the streak on the needles, reached $812.

: Rare Wells Fargo and Company (N.Y.) stock certificate from 1870, certificate #312, issued for 100 shares to H.W. Perkins, signed by the company president, treasurer and secretary ($2,875).

: Company stock specimen from the 1920s for the Owl Drug Company, boasting four owl vignettes on the corners, number 662, with officers’ names hole-punched ($625).

: Crystallized gold specimen from the Monarch Mine in Comstock, Nevada, circa 1989 or 1990, weighing 12.8 grams, the finest crystallized specimen to come out of that mine ($1,830).

A flintlock blunderbuss pistol, caliber unknown and with no proof marks shown, possibly made in Spain, Portugal or India in the 1800s and likely for display purposes, hit the mark for $1,750. Also, a company stock specimen from the 1920s for the Owl Drug Company, boasting four owl vignettes on the corners, number 662, with officers’ names hole-punched, commanded $625.

Day 4, November 1st, contained 712 lots of general Americana (geographically sorted, from Arizona to Wyoming), maps, photographs, philatelic, Wells Fargo and bargains and specials.

On Day 4, a collection of over 300 tokens from military camps in Vietnam, made by SEGA for use in slot machines, pinball machines and jukeboxes during the Vietnam War years (1962-1971) brought $1,687; while a group of about 19 Halloween cards, with artwork by John Winsch, one of the finest artists of the early postcard period that ran from circa 1905-1910, finished at $1,562.

Day 5, November 2nd, featured Part 2 of bargains and dealer specials, art, Native Americana, firearms and weaponry, badges, foreign collectibles, textiles, furnishings and 3-D collectibles, general Americana ephemera and collectibles, Hollywood and theater, music, cowboy / saloon / tobacco, bottles, gaming, jewelry, general Americana (geographically sorted), political, sports, postcards, Wells Fargo, World’s Fairs, military, mining, stocks and bonds and transportation.

: Group of about 19 Halloween cards, with artwork by John Winsch, one of the finest artists of the early postcard period, circa 1905-1010 ($1,562).

Sold on Day 5 was a collection of 1920s boxer postcards from the Exhibit Blue Series. The cards, encased and in good condition, included greats like heavyweight boxer Jack Sharkey, featherweight Archie Bell, middleweight Dave Rosenberg and bantamweight Bud Taylor. `

Holabird’s gallery is located at 3555 Airway Drive in Reno. Anyone owning a collection that might fit into an upcoming Holabird Western Americana Collections auction is encouraged to get in touch. The firm travels extensively throughout the United States, to evaluate and pick up collections. The company has agents all over America and will travel to inspect most collections.

Holabird Western Americana Collections is always in the hunt for new and major collections to bring to market. It prides itself as being a major source for selling Americana at the best prices obtainable, having sold more than any other similar company in the past decade alone. The firm will have its entire sales database online soon, at no cost – nearly 200,00 lots sold since 2014.

To consign a single piece or a collection, you may call Fred Holabird at 775-851-1859 or 844-492-2766; or, you can send an e-mail to fredholabird@gmail.com. To learn more about Holabird Western Americana Collections, visit www.holabirdamericana.com. Updates are posted often.