Coin Monday, or Riddle Me This: A Planchet One Size Too Small

Heritage Auction Galleries Oct. 26, 2009 Written by John Dale First off, if you haven’t read Noah’s Tuesday post about A Christmas Story, then please do so now. I’ll be waiting… If you left, welcome back! Noah’s Christmas in, er, October post got me thinking about some childhood Christmas television memories of my own, and [...]

Coin Monday at Heritage Auctions: One Coin for One Stamp

Heritage Auction Galleries Oct. 19, 2009 Written by John Dale I don’t buy too many stamps anymore. Most of my bill-paying happens online, and e-mail has largely replaced physical letters (emphasis on largely — greeting cards and thank-you notes are the main exceptions). That said, I do need to buy at least one stamp a [...]

Coin Monday: The Double: Part Two

Heritage Auction Galleries Oct. 12, 2009 Written by John Dale Last week’s Coin Monday was Part One of “The Double,” a two-parter on the unusual and desirable coins appearing in multiples in Heritage’s October Dallas U.S. Coin auction. Today, as promised, it’s on to the 1969-S doubled die cents. (For background on what a doubled [...]

Coin Monday: The Double, Part One

Heritage Auction Galleries Oct. 5, 2009 Written By John Dale At around 2000 lots, the Signature® section of Heritage’s October Dallas U.S. Coin auction is small by division standards. “Small,” though, hardly implies “unimpressive” and there are several coins or varieties in the auction that don’t come up for sale every day. Surprisingly enough, two [...]

Coin Monday: A ‘Fair’ Coin

Heritage Auction Galleries Sept. 28, 2009 Written by John Dale The Texas State Fair started on Friday, Sept. 25, and from my office window, I can just make out the Ferris wheel in Fair Park. It’s a little bit surprising, now that I think about it… somewhere in the area of that Ferris Wheel, a [...]

Coin Monday: One Collection, Seven Spectacular Coins (Part Two)

Heritage Auction Galleries Sept. 21, 2009 Written by John Dale A quick recap: On Friday, I introduced the Little Rock Collection, a small but dynamite Featured Collection in Heritage’s upcoming October Dallas U.S. Coin Auction. I covered the 1871-CC double eagle and the 1892 double eagle, which both qualify as the “good stuff.” Now that [...]

Coin Monday: Songs and Gold

Heritage Auction Galleries Sept. 14, 2009 Written by John Dale It’s as good a day to have a song stuck in my head, and this time, it’s “The Virginia Company” from the turn-off-your-mental-fact-checker-and-enjoy-the-ride Disney film Pocahontas. The Jamestown expedition never found any gold, either in the film or reality, but while eastern Virginia was not [...]

Coin Monday: “Hey, Stella!”

Heritage Auction Galleries Aug. 31, 2009 Posted By John Dale It’s a natural joke, I suppose… Whenever a stella – or four-dollar pattern coin – comes through the cataloging department, a certain fellow will always crack wise, “Hey, Stella!” None of us catalogers will ever be mistaken for Marlon Brando, but I always chuckle when [...]

Coin Monday: All’s Fair in Love and Key Dates

Heritage Auction Galleries Aug. 3, 2009Posted by John Dale As a cataloger, most of the coins I see are like-new, or at worst, mildly worn. There’s a good reason for that: if a coin is expected to sell for a relatively small amount of money, it doesn’t make sense to put it through the entire [...]

Coin Monday: A Portrait of American Liberty

Heritage Auction Galleries July 27, 2009Posted by John Dale From the early Renaissance to the present day, the commemorative medal has been an important part of the Western artistic tradition; of the thousands of medals struck in Europe from the early 1400s through the end of World War I, the best are equal parts art [...]

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