(Dallas, Texas) - Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas, Texas held the official auctions of the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Collectible Expo on May 31 – June 3, 2006. With over 7,800 bidders participating, the U.S. Coin auctions reported $13,552,202 in overall sales, while the World Coin auctions realized $4,456,277. A related Online Session, held on Monday, June 5, 2006, brought $978,658, bringing the overall total to $18,987,137, although after-auction sales are still ongoing.

“In a year filled with spectacular results, this auction was no exception,” said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage. “This is the hottest coin market in decades, with record price after record price being set at auction. Sellers are seeing fabulous returns on their investments, while buyers are being treated to fresh coins entering the marketplace after being held in private collections for decades. It’s a great time to be a numismatist, and the market seems to increase with every successive offering.”

“The great success of this auction makes us look forward even more to our upcoming Dallas event,” said Rohan, “to be held July 17 – 20 in our world headquarters at 3500 Maple Avenue, Dallas, Texas, 75219. In that auction, we’ll be offering a marvelous array of US coinage. Our next World Coin offering will be September 13-16, 2006, also at Long Beach. We anticipate equally strong results in both of those venues, where we look forward to even more record-breaking results.”

Highlights of the Long Beach Auctions included:

U.S. COINS

1907 $10 No Periods MS68 PCGS REALIZED: $161,000.

1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal MS65 NGC REALIZED: $115,000.

1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Round MS65 NGC REALIZED: $109,250.

1892 $20 PR65 Cameo NGC REALIZED: $97,750.

1892-S $1 MS64 PCGS REALIZED: $97,750.

1912 $20 PR67 NGC REALIZED: $86,250.

1795 $10 13 Leaves AU58 NGC REALIZED: $83,375.

1890-CC $10 MS64 PCGS REALIZED: $80,500.

1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal MS63 NGC REALIZED: $78,200.

1908-D $5 MS65 PCGS REALIZED: $74,750.

WORLD COINS

[Russia] Nicholas I. 1-¹⁄₂ Family Rouble 1835 REALIZED: $161,000.

[Uruguay] Republic 1870 Four-piece Pattern gold Set REALIZED: $97,750.

[Russia] Nicholas I. 1-¹⁄₂ Family Rouble 1836 REALIZED: $74,750.

[Australia] George V Four-piece 1916M Specimen Set in the Original Case REALIZED: $69,000.

[Russia] Alexander III. Rouble 1892 REALIZED: $63,250.

[Russia] Nicholas I. gold Marriage Medal 1841 REALIZED: $57,500.

[Russia] Nicholas I. 1-¹⁄₂ Family Rouble 1836 REALIZED: $51,750.

[Korea] Kuang Mu gold 10 Won year 10 (1906) REALIZED: $41,400.

[China] Empire. Hu-Poo Tael in Gold Year 29 (1903) REALIZED: $37,375.

[Russia] Alexander II. Rouble 1859 REALIZED: $34,500.

Businesses typically launch with the help of some start-up money. Chris Seuntjens’ business sprung from a single coin.

As a child growing up in the western Iowa town of Mapleton, Seuntjens found a 1919-S Lincoln cent. That penny sparked an interest in coin collecting that eventually led Seuntjens to turn his hobby into a job. In 1980, Seuntjens opened a coin shop in Ankeny. He’s moved his business to a number of different Des Moines-area locations under various names.

Customers now know Seuntjens’ Merle Hay Road store as Christopher’s Fine Jewelry and Rare Coins. Jewelry is half the business. But coins are Seuntjens’ first love.

Q. What made you decide to pursue this as a business rather than just as a hobby?

A. Having it become a business is kind of an extension of your love of coins and wanting to be involved in them more.

Q. What is it about coins that you love?

A. The history of coins is the neatest thing. Almost every coin that has been made by the U.S. government, there’s a historical reason why they have that design and why they change designs. That’s probably the biggest thing, the historical aspect.

Q. Are you a history buff?

A. No, not really.

Q. How are sales of coins these days?

A. The coin market is actually very good right now. The price of gold and silver are up. That’s spurred a lot of activity in our business. Usually, when precious metals are up, the coin market feeds off of that as well.

Q. How is the collectibles market affected by the economy?

A. The less faith people have in the economy, the more they’re apt to put money into collectibles and hard assets such as gold and silver and coins. A lot of people buy them as a hedge against inflation. It’s something they can have that will always have value no matter what happens. It’s a good foundation for any portfolio.

Q. So people are pursuing this as an investment, not as collectibles?

A. Well, both. Some people buy them just as an investment. Some people buy them as a collectible. Some people buy both. Some people are collectors, but obviously when they’re buying coins they want to buy something that will hold its value or increase its value down the road.

Q. Can you tell when customers come in the store whether they’re collectors or investors?

A. A lot of our customers are regular customers. We know who they are and what they like. We have customers that are looking for specific things and they give us want lists. We try to find those items for them.

Q. How do you acquire them?

A. We go to trade shows and (buy) through other acquaintances in the business.

Q. How has the Internet changed the collectibles business? Has it affected you?

A. It has affected us, but I think mostly in a positive manner. It’s basically made for a broader coin market. There’s more people interested in coins. While a lot of people shop on the Internet for coins, it has also created a stronger market because there’s more demand for coins. I think it’s helped the coin market.

Q. Will you sell coins on the Internet?

A. The problem is every coin is unique so it’s not like you can buy 50 of every coin that are exactly the same and list them for sale. Every time you put a coin on the Internet, once that coin sells, it’s done. You have to take it off and put a new item on. So it’s a real high-maintenance thing.

Q. Do you sell international coins?

A. No, we don’t. Just U.S. coins. It’s a whole different market and it’s not near as big a market as U.S. coins. We’d rather just specialize in one type of thing.

(via desmoinesregister.com)

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn writes about getting rid of the 1 cent piece (he calls it a penny, but the US Mint has never minted a coin officially called a penny).

In any case, here’s an excerpt from his thoughts on the matter. He makes a good point and I don’t have a strong opinion either way. Perhaps it would make things simpler, but at the same time, it would reduce the number of coins we as collectors have access to, unless they add a $2.50 coin or something along those lines.

Recent news stories tell us that:

New figures from the U.S. Mint that show the skyrocketing prices of the two metals used to make the penny – zinc and copper – have pushed the cost of making the coin across the 1-cent threshold for the first time, to 1.23 cents.

In Congress, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R.-Arizona) has announced that he plans to reintroduce legislation to eliminate the penny in the coming weeks.

I argued years ago – back when a penny was worth 1.44 cents in today’s terms – that it was time to retire the pesky little trinket and round all prices up or down to the nearest nickel.

In fact, speaking of nickels, today’s nickel has the same purchasing power that a penny had in 1971, and we did fine without having a smaller denomination.

(The U.S. got rid of the half penny in 1857 when it was deemed too nugatory to be worthy of carrying about; a rough estimate of its purchasing power then in current terms is 11 cents.)

Yeah, yeah. Pennies figure into many old sayings and cliches.

Yeah, yeah, getting rid of them will be getting rid of a cherished bit of Americana that we all grew up with.

But they have become nostalgic artifacts we can no longer afford.

Are you with me? Shall we retire the penny?

Last I checked, the poll was at 64.3% (914 people) in favor, 35.7% (507) against.

This is no penny-ante endeavor.

Dominating the living room of Marcelo Bezos’ home is nearly a ton of copper slowly taking shape as a massive pyramid of pennies – some 300,000 of them.

Stacked by hand. One coin at a time. More than 200 hours of work.

When he finishes, possibly next week, Bezos will have a pyramid 30 inches square by 30 inches high, with a tower of pennies atop it extending almost 6 feet high. He’s aiming to break the Guinness Book of Records feat for coin-stacking while increasing awareness of colorectal cancer, which a family member suffers from.

“I haven’t really told anybody about this,” Bezos confides. “I don’t want anybody to start thinking, `This guy’s cracked.‘”

The 40-year-old University of Miami facilities administrator began stacking his pennies in early January. He works at night, hunched on a stool over the mound of money, after his wife, Elizabeth, has put their children, Marcelo, 3, and Samantha, 1, to bed.

Not even the neighbors in Bezos’ gated Miramar community are aware a longstanding record’s being challenged behind his closed blinds. “They just see this white glow late into the night,” he says.

The project has consumed the hundreds of thousands of pennies Bezos had collected since his parents brought him from Cuba in 1969, pennies he religiously recorded in logs and stored in five-gallon jugs. Too poor to collect more valuable coins, Bezos hoarded the pennies generous relatives became accustomed to handing him. He also studied the Guinness books, and dreamed of breaking the coin-stacking record.

When Bezos turned 40 last year, and his family member’s illness worsened, he decided it was time to make his Guinness dream work toward colorectal cancer awareness. Guinness officials have assigned Bezos a claim identification number and category – tallest coin column – for his project.

Collection depleted, Bezos goes to the bank to buy pennies in bulk. “I got a couple of stares,” he says.

He’s also not above stooping for a random coin: “I am one of those guys that picks up a penny off the street.”

Penny by penny, Bezos expects to break the previous record of a pyramid built in 1981 with 71,825 pennies. The publicity, he hopes, will focus interest on colorectal cancer, which causes about 56,000 deaths in the United States each year.

The project is painstaking, yet therapeutic. “I play my music, have a glass of wine, and meditate,” Bezos says. “It does take some concentration to make sure you don’t knock the damn thing down.”

Which almost happened.

“I sort of stuck my knee into it a couple of times and knocked off 50 or 70 coins,” he recalls. “I used every expletive I could find.”

Miraculously, his two toddlers have done no damage. “Originally we thought the kids would be an issue, but they know not to touch it,” Elizabeth Bezos says.

Bezos worked out an equation approximating the number of pennies needed for the completed pyramid (287,820), its weight (1,969 pounds), and cost ($2,878.20). What he hasn’t worked out is how to translate the cents into dollars for colorectal awareness and research.

He may auction off stacks of coins, or set shiny ones into the pyramid’s side to spell out messages like “Get Screened for Colorectal.” Maybe he’ll take the pyramid, now resting on a heavy-duty wheeled platform, on tour.

“I haven’t completed the whole vision yet,” he says. “I’m still coming up with different methods in trying to generate fund raising for the charity.”

The Colorectal Cancer Network, based in Kensington, Md., endorses Bezos’ effort. “Something like this penny pyramid is truly cool. People will remember that as opposed to all the advertisements,” says organization director Priscilla Savary.

Whatever becomes of the copper structure, Elizabeth Bezos says her husband’s time was well spent. “I’d rather him do that than ride a motorcycle for his mid-life crisis.”

(287,820 pennies were used in the 1981 Guinness record penny pyramid)

(via Sun-Sentinel)

WATERVILLE – A man trying to cash in old coins at a bank Tuesday turned out to be a burglar with a long criminal history who had just broken into homes on Roosevelt and Barnet avenues, according to police.

Ian Morgan Colson, 24, a transient whose last known address was in Florida, was arrested Tuesday after a teller at Key Bank on Kennedy Memorial Drive became suspicious about his bags and small boxes of coins and called police at about 2 p.m.

“It was a large amount of coins and a lot of the coins were very old, dating back 150 years,” Deputy police Chief Joseph P. Massey said Wednesday. And Colson was trying to cash them at face value, he said. The bank personnel thought this was unusual.”

The man also did not have a vehicle in the bank parking lot, adding to their suspicions, he said. Sgt. Daniel Ames was in the area, went to the bank and questioned the man, who initially said a friend gave him the coins, Massey said.

“When Ames pressed who the friend was and where and when he got the coins, he said, ‘I really got them from my grandmother in Florida after she passed away recently,’” Massey said.

Ames knew something was amiss. He learned that Colson was staying at a nearby hotel on Kennedy Memorial Drive and another officer went there and spoke with a woman from Sidney who was in Colson’s room, Massey said. The officer noticed coin wrappers strewn around on the floor, he said.

The woman was vague about what she was doing there and about her relationship to Colson, but ultimately identified him as her boyfriend, he said. Police got a search warrant and found a wallet and documents in the room with addresses of homeowners on Roosevelt and Barnet avenues, he said. Roosevelt Avenue is off Upper Main Street; Barnet is off Cool Street, near Kennedy Memorial Drive.

Officers went to those houses and the homeowners were not there, but the officers noticed the doors were kicked in, Massey said.

The burglaries had taken place in broad daylight.

He said Colson ultimately admitted to burglarizing some homes and stealing some items, and that he chose the homes randomly.

He was arrested and charged with two counts of burglary and taken to Kennebec County Jail in Augusta, where bail was set at $10,000 cash.

Massey did not immediately know the value of the stolen coins.

Colson has an extensive criminal record in Florida, including convictions for armed robbery, felony burglary and dealing in stolen property, Massey said. He also was convicted in Florida of cocaine and marijuana possession, trespassing, and resisting an officer, he said.

“We have not charged the female with anything at this time, but the investigation continues and there’s a possibility of others being charged,” Massey said.

Massey and police Chief John E. Morris said police did quick work on the case.

“It’s always such a thrill to solve a burglary, arrest a burglar and recover stolen property even before the burglary is reported to us,” Morris said.

He said that at one point during the hotel room search, a cell phone rang and the woman asked the officer what the noise was and he said it was a cell phone and answered it but the caller hung up. It was then that the officer saw one of the homeowner’s names on the back of the phone.

Massey credited bank employees for helping to solve the case.

He said he has been training credit union and bank workers about robberies and what to look for and when to call police.

“Fortunately, this particular teller was sharp, realized something was suspicious, called us and we were able to get there at a moment’s notice,” he said.

Morris said police checked pawn slips and learned Colson has over the last two weeks pawned an air compressor, a ring with 10 diamond chips in it, electronic games and other items.

“We’re certainly interested to know if anybody is missing anything that matches that description,” he said. “Thank goodness some of these criminals aren’t too bright. Cashing those historical coins at face value at a bank is going to arouse suspicion and this character most likely would have continued to commit crimes in the city. We’re glad he’s in jail.”

Colson is scheduled to appear in Waterville District Court on the burglaries July 25. A jail spokesman said early Wednesday evening that he was still incarcerated there.

(via Morning Sentinel)