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Seven Commemorative Coins You Should Own Even If You Hate Commems
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Apr 9, 2020
Think commemorative coins are for suckers? In many cases, you may be right. But there are great coins from the long-slighted series that should be in your collection and at today's prices, you'd be a sucker not to consider picking a few of them up. CoinWeek Editor Charles Morgan dishes on his favorites.
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[Music]
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hey everybody this is coin week editor of Charles Morgan how are you doing it's
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Thursday another week of the cuff pocalypse is wrapping up for all of you
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guys suck at home hope you're safe hope your families are safe your friends and loved ones hope you're keeping in touch
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with everybody and for those of you who do not have the good fortune to extricate yourself from a situation or
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out there serving people helping people being there for people who need you
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thank you I'm Charles Morgan in the other of coin week and all the past few weeks we've
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been on the air streaming live bringing you new information about coin collecting and trying to keep you
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motivated to continue this great hobby and as we continue I have quite a few
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interesting coins to talk about today I decided that I would I would do a stream
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on the 7 coins from the classic
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commemorative series that you should consider even if you think commemorative
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coins are overrated overpriced even now if there are historically low levels for
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the modern coin market period uh even if the idea of putting a set of 50 or 100
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40 plus coins together design cup of tea there are coins in the series that rise
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to a level of such importance but I think it's not an over statement to say these works of
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numismatic art represents some of the best that American design and should be in your collection I will go into detail
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today and discuss these coins and and big in myself here in the screen and and
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I will I will share with you my thoughts based on years of research and hands-on
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experience looking at these coins and I hope that from the stream you will be motivated to go out there and contact
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some of your favorite dealers dealers like cleanly sponsors LNC coins they
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carry a deep collection or selection of certified coins from eg C and P suggest including
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mini coins from tech org legend numismatics and legend rare coin auctions which puts on great hand
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curated collections of coins that their expert cataloguers and market
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participants judge to be among the best coins from their own customers
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collections and select consignments or take advantage of the time to look at
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the upcoming auctions from stacks bowers or heritage auctions all these great Queen week partners and more I have a
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collection selection of classic commemorative coins that you should be
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more than able to get any of the coins on our list today some of the coins on our lists are very affordable I would
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say and some of the coins are not but all of these have a unique place in the
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current hobby and we will share them with you one at a time starting with our
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first coin here and this coin is the 1921 Antietam 2x2 half-dollar the coin
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was designed by one of my favorite US sculptors of coins and medals Laura
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garden Frazer the wife of James Earle
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Fraser who did the Washington James Earle Fraser to the buffalo nickel
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my apologies mr. Flannagan so Laura
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garden Fraser did a number of great commemorative coin designs I think this is one of her best it's very balanced
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coin design features a William Wyatt been the first governor of Alabama and
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Thomas II Kilby who is alive at the time the coin was struck which is a big no-no
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he was the governor of Alabama at the time the 22 stars you see in the obverse
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to the right and the left of the Q gated bus portraiture represent the fact that
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Alabama was the 22nd state admitted into the union now what differentiates the
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Alabama two-by-two in the regular Alabama and which makes the to buy too much scare sir is the the fact that the
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2x2 was stamped on the coin on the obverse to the right of the busts and
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you can see that in the illustration that we have posted six thousand and six of these were struck I think six were
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made for assay and this was done pretty much at the behest of James Earle Fraser
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who sort of told the Centennial committee that the Missouri two-by-four
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which had a low mintage was very popular and so of course you know the committee's want to sell these coins
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they usually the thing that's going price sold for dollar double-faced and then they use the funds help fund the
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centennial celebrations or at least recover some of the costs a lot of times it didn't work they didn't have enough
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people to buy them but in this case it did so collectors have long wanted this
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two by two now the interesting thing about this coin about 7.9 percent of the
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total mintage of 6006 is certified right now in grades Jim or better I presume I
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say Ms sixty-five is the long long-held benchmark for Jim although I think our
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grading standards have sort of softened over time over the past 30 years I think a ms 65 coin today might have been you
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know four so about thirty years ago but okay I'm gonna keep that standard or so
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Steve five so if you had 7.9 percent of that minute is certified in 65 or better
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what is the typical grade well the typical grade is going to be between a three and a five and that's based on NGC
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and PCGS population reports and that does include crossovers and resubmissions and so when you look at
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the price points based on what I've seen these these trade hands quite regularly
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and you will see the price point for about $300 for an MS 63 that's about 800
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for 65 and you know of course certain types of toning and CAC certification
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and very high I appeal may bring more but this is your range so I think if you're a collector and you just want an
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example just get a coin within these parameters and you'll be okay
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I consider the MS 65 grade though around 800 dollars to be a buying opportunity grade and if you look at what P Q ms-64
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is traded for they were trained for about 900 dollars in the 1990s
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so at PQ 64's from a decade or two ago or today 65 s then you see this coin has
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probably shaved off about $100 in that time period and I think that that
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represents the possibility that if the coin has any action in the future you are not buying at an inflated price
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moving on to our the second coin I selected that is the 1937 Antietam
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half-dollar there gonna be a few coins folks there there's basically a four
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coin set of Civil War classic commemoratives that's often put together and that will be the Antietam the
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Lincoln the grant and the Gettysburg we're gonna have three of those four on
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our list and I'll explain why in a second once you see all of them in
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totality you'll understand I think so the Antietam coin was designed by
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William Marx Simpson the Washington Historical Society of Hagerstown
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Maryland a bead for this coin to be produced they were holding a big exhibition to
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celebrate the Antietam and a Virgo I guess the anniversary was a little bit
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past but to celebrate Antietam and the area and that their Civil War history
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and they lobbied Democratic senator Miller titans of Maryland to draft the
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bill who and he did so the legislation was authorized they sold these coins for a dollar sixty-five and they would sell
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you any quantity you wanted at that price and and as far as the historical
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legacy of Antietam is one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War which was fought to a draw more or less but
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when you're the Confederacy and you have a much smaller army a draw is not good enough that's akin to being down several
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armies at risk and you know you you go attack the more powerful forces and you
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Whittle them down but neither but you don't gain any territory and at the end you're left with fewer armies and that's
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kind of what happened to to the to the Confederate side as a result of Antietam
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and of course that halts their northern advance I love the motifs here you have General
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George McClellan and robert e lee and jew gate on the obverse and the reverse
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has that amazing scenery from the battlefield site itself the bridge were
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a major battle took place I just love the way this looks it's full of its full of sort of
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character it feels the weight of history the relief is sufficiently high enough
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that the motif does not appear flat and I think that this is when you are a
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modern coin designer tasked with drawing or representing history on a coin I
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think you should use the canvas of the coin and the features of striking and
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relief to bring out a representation that makes you feel like you can imagine
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being there and too much of modern coin design I think is flat and your typical
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grade here then antonyms can go from 64 to 65 there are there are quantity of 66
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s this is a coin that I think overall had a more or less limited upside when
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the series was at its peak because most of these coins came nice and that that
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is indicative of the price point you see here this five to six hundred dollars I have it really doesn't matter you can
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you can you can get a a nice one in either grade around that that price point they get a little bit more
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expensive at six and then to get a peek you super-nice antietam one that
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differentiates itself from the rest of the series you got to go up to 67 these
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look great with color there's a lot of nice toners these you can see somewhat
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tab toning and there's a lot of really rich red tone examples of red green
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yellow so if you're if you're in the high end there are antonyms out there
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for you as far as the certifcate certified population and Jim again I was
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telling you that most of these come nights well that's an fact that there are five thousand seven hundred and
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forty two grading instances reported by PCGS NGC and grades 65 and above that
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represents thirty-one point eight percent of the total mintage that's something that you want to keep in mind
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the coin of course was designed by William March Simpson I think he did a fantastic job on the Antietam let's move
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on another coin that I love in hand this is the 1935 Connecticut tercentenary
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half-dollar which features a beautiful design and very high relief for the time
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this is a coin where the the beautiful Charter Oak and you see that excuse me
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that opening this is a very stylized representation that oak tree the real treat doesn't look very much
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like it's much more scraggly but this was a this was represented as a one thousand year old tree and of course it
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is no longer with us it was felled by lightning an August 21 1856 so the tree
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was long gone by the time this clean was produced and the tree is famous due to a
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caper that occurred in 1587 when Joseph wodsworth hid the Kings Charter
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authorizing the Connecticut collie he hid in that cavity on the oak tree so it
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would not be seized by the governor Edmund Andros and Andros intended to
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seize the Charter and fold all these New England colonies into one Dominion under his control that he never got away with
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it there was a very rare map proof of this coin that was that exists that was in
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John Arsenic the chief engravers estate came to market a few decades ago I think
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it was first discovered in 1960 or first auction 1962 the distribution of the
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Connecticut half-dollar is believed 25,000 and 18 pieces it's neither the
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rarest or the you know most scarce and condition of the classic commemoratives
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but it is a coin with tremendous character and it is a coin you will love to hold and look at and it's a great
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piece of American colonial history and that is why I love it and I recommend it
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and that two to three hundred dollars folks that is a great price point even if you're not going to get into the
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whole commemorative series it's a cool coin you're going to fill that dance go 70 70 and e4 classic commemorative
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half-dollars why not make this one of them moving on let's go to 1936
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Gettysburg the second of my civil war trifecta of the three of the four coins
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from that Civil War set that I recommend you pick up I love the Gettysburg half-dollar I love
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the dish look at that way the inscription United States of America
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blue and gray reunion is elevated but then carved out is the Confederate and Union soldier
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again heads in jew gate this time facing right left on the reverse similar the
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shield banners of the Union and the Confederate government's with the faces
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and the double-headed axe of the center and this is just balanced bold beautiful
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historic makes you want to be there in fact I used to live in Gettysburg and
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this coin is so evocative the coin was struck to honor the blue and gray
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reunion this marked the 75th anniversary of the battle it was such an important
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gallery as last time Confederate soldiers and Union soldiers really got to be together and massed
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this time they weren't shooting at each other but came together in the bonds of brotherhood President Franklin Roosevelt
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showed up to dedicate the eternal flame eternal light peace memorial which you
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can go visit it's right off of Route 30 as you leave Gettysburg to go towards Chambersburg Pennsylvania and there's a
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nice park there and that in fact that the entire town is a park essentially so
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the sculptor was Frank Vitter of pencil Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and I think he did a great job on this
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and then our interestingly you wouldn't know it by looking at neighbor he's an Italian born sculptor his actual
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birthday was francesco fabio Vettori and he lived from 1888 to 1968 and he
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has a great statue of Columbus it's 50 foot statue that's in Pittsburgh you can
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go visit that there's a money maker store called marker fair he also did the Statue of Honus Wagner which is outside
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of PNC Park in Pittsburgh that that's at she's actually been at every Pirates baseball field since it was originally
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installed at Forbes Field during the ders life and the grades of m/s 65 and
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up you see the Gettysburg coin has seventeen percent of its total mintage
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certified never better the typical grades going to be ms-64 ems 65 with a typical price of 450 to 600
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dollars a piece I think that if you look
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at the buying opportunity for an investor I think the great to look at this 67 not the plus but the 67 and
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definitely not the 8 right now you have 216 67 is graded at both services and if
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you double the amount mmm yes about double the amount of what existed 15 years ago so I don't see that I don't
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see the numbers doubling again without some significant grade inflation and a painstaking search for a nice MS
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67 in my opinion will real well yield to you a point as future-proof so I think
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coins that just eke out the greatest 67 will bring about fifteen hundred dollars and to get a super nice one you're
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probably in the two thousand dollar range I would recommend you go to a dealer who can who can identify a PQ
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coin and source one for you I wouldn't just go out in the market get the first thing that comes along your great
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gettysburg coins will be have this like watery luster to them you want to avoid
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ring ticks or marks on the faces of the
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of the soldiers and I chose this coin it's actually a pretty nice coin but I
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chose this one because on the Confederate soldier on the jaw you can see a typical tick and I wanted you to
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be aware of it you can't really hide those ticks or dings on the reverse on the shields they just they're just
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really apparent and remember many of these commemorative coins they were probably swear they were probably struck
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they were probably what we would say 67 or 68 based on their striking standards
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at the time the care that was taken to ship them many of these got you know
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dinged or marked up before they were sold to the public but then when they were sold to the general public they had
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a different standard for care so that's why you don't see 69s and seventies of
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these coins you see 64 is five and six so that's a that's a great coin I really
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love it and again the dish folks that dishes everything when you want to look at coin design coins need that nice dish
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that's what brings out the detail and I wish we would get back to dish poins and not flat coins like we make now but
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that's just my um that's just my very angry diatribe about that moving on
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another great coin and this is the third of the four III leave the Lincoln out of the four because I don't really think
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it's an essential coin I think that we we have plenty of Lincoln to go around with the Lincoln Cent everything I would
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like to see other things though represented in my collection if I had to narrow the list down and so I picked
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this one this is the 1922 grant with star like the Alabama to buy to the Missouri to buy for the grant with star
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is the rare variety purposely purposeful rarity made by the organizers in order
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to sell something special this has a star above grants name on the obverse of
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the coin this is another great lure garden Fraser point which to me you
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could take the obverse which I'm glad to see grant on a coin to be frank you can think that offers they just couldn't
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completely discount it and my mind my imagination when I think of this coin I think in that very lovely cabin seen on
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the reverse which represents Grant's birthplace I love that I just think it's
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so beautiful there according to Anthony swaiiow Tech one of the mister come in
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one of the key researchers a commemorative coins he he believes that there are two dye varieties of the
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reverse of this coin there's the standard one and then one that has polish features at some of the details
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in the tree line canopy above the cottage are white marker I guess
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polished off and also the but there is no as far as I can tell big cherry
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pickers die premium for one over the other the star is the leading thing you
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will look for the typical grade of the grant with SAR is lower than you would
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expect based on the other grades we've seen this one is 63 and 64 and your typical
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price point is going to be between 1500 and 1800 dollars the sculpt of grant is
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based on a Matthew Brady photograph by the way when you look at the gym population there's 254 at PCGS 300
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before at NGC combined that represents 13% of the total mintage in gym and that
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again includes resubmissions and crossovers so the actual number is probably a little lower here's a protip
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something that you may want to take into account I don't know if it holds true
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anymore but historically NGC or PCGS graded these coins roughly the same up
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so I think the grades are right 66 are higher I'm not suggesting that one's
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company was right no one was wrong they just had a different approach to it so
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because of that approach to the PCGS coins historically above 66 we're
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bringing significantly more money in the market my advice is this if you know the
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coin you are the great equalizer you can bind great accurately graded NGC coins
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and six seven and eight and to vouch for that you can see a number of those
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points with CAC stickers so John a venes who is a one of the biggest market
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makers in the industry believes that they're accurately graded technically graded strong for the great it's good
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enough for me and it's good enough for most of the market so I would say buy a cat coin with nice eye appeal or know
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the coins pretty well yourself and then it doesn't matter there's no need in this market to pay a significant premium
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for branding of one service over the other just know your coin and buy at a
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price level that is appropriate for what the coin is that's my advice to you there but yeah I love this I grant with
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Starr again four thousand two hundred fifty six with makes it the law I think the lowest mintage
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of the silver commemoratives 67 thousand four hundred five regular grants and of
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course this coin gets really interesting when you get into the gold which I did
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not include in our video today but I do have some gold coins for you in fact I
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have two two must-haves if you can afford them the first one is the 1915 s
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pan packed gold $2 50 cent coin this is the first San Francisco mint
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commemorative in the series it is a beautiful coin that is executed designed
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by Charles barber on the obverse though I believe is underrated and George T
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Morgan on the Reavers on the obverse you feech that you see Columbia she's a stride of mythical hippocampus and she
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is holding aloft in her right hand a caduceus of course this represents the
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construction of the Panama Canal which is the the the canal that connected the
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east coast of the United States to the Pacific coast the United States through
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maritime travel the hippocampus this mythical sea creature you know in
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essence represents all of the economic benefit that canal would bring to the
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American people into the world and then on the reverse you see that elegant
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signpost EEP Laura soon and with the eagle on it looking towards the west again this is a canal being a monument
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to American industry innovation and struggle and hardship that caduceus of
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course I think represents all the medical challenges with the malaria outbreak and that many people died in
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the construction of the Panama Canal is a very difficult you would say
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boondoggle but ultimately every it yielded one of the most significant
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man-made water features in the world so the distribution at this point was
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relatively low six thousand seven hundred forty nine pieces and your typical grade is going to be ms-64 2ms
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66 now I picked this piece this piece is one of the nicest ones again images many of these images are
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courtesy of PCGS and we thank them for allowing us to use their images but if
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you look at the head of a Columbia you see it is not very well defined this is about as good as they come and when you
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consider a year later 1916 we have the Standing Liberty quarter which also has issues with how defined the head is of
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course you have Augustus saint-gaudens twenty dollar Liberty coin another head on coin which is very difficult to get a
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lot of good detail on the head heads are very difficult to find fully struck and I would say that it's something to keep
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in mind when you're buying a piece most of them are very rounded it like much in detail at all but the detail typically
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is quite nice on the Eagle and on the scales in the hippocampus usually a pretty well struck but this is about as
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good as they come in the typical grades of ms-64 2ms 66 you're looking at a four
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thousand to four thousand five hundred dollar coin and much much more when you
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get higher into the grading spectrum there are eleven hundred ninety five pieces at ms 65 plus 1 both grading
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services certified that represents 36% of the mintage it is said that some of
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these coins made it in the circulation but I have yet to see XF 40 or 45 I
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think those would be really neat to see if you're a lowball collector of course
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Farren zhurba is connected to this coin he was a he was a very interesting
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figure in american numismatics a giant figure in American Numismatic sin the first half of the century and he of
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course was one of the biggest promoters the industry had until B max mail came and and sort of out zhurba to him but
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anyway serba was you know part of the commemoration of the pan pact you led
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the coin and metals program there and this is one of four or five coins I
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guess you have a the fifty dollar octagonal and round the 250 gold the
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dollar gold and the half so these were the coins that Zuri had
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worked to get struck to sell at the 5th
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of the 1915 Exposition last coin in the list is a coin is aspirational and not
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everybody's gonna be able to swing this coin but if you could only have one
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six-figure coin in your collection I would say this 1915 s pan tackled $50
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round would be the one I would buy I was beautiful designed executed by Robert Aitken a distribution of only 483 pieces
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and the typical grade is ms 62 to 64 I've have it on good authority that many
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of these 1915 s pan packs have been messed with over time and I don't know
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if the 62 to 64 represents that grading of them or if some of them just will not
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grade anymore due to the way their services have been messed with this is a
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beautiful example of it of course you have Athena on the obverse she's wearing
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her headgear and she has Zeus's Aegis over there over her shoulder you see
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again nice beaded border where where her
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design is a feature inside nine states of america $50 on the obverse
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panama-pacific exposition in San Francisco the reverse and the owl Athena's al there were some pinecones
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and just a really great motif of one of the most beautiful American coins ever
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struck if not the most beautiful in my opinion and as a coin that is quite rare
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and again the typical woman's gonna be between 62 and 64 and you're looking at
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$65,000 to $115,000 and this is on the low end folks because these things go
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for around quarter of a million dollars once you start getting into the conditionally rare ones the best of the
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best but you can't have you can't have that can't have them all so if if this
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coin or another is something that maybe is out of you're out of you're out of your league right
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now there are coins on this list that you definitely can't pick up should pick up and you will love if you do pick up
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so that does it there's my list my seven coins from the classic commemorative
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series I just can't get enough of every time I see one or haul one especially a nice one I always get a good feeling of
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of admiration for just where American metallic art was at the beginning of
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this century I'm gonna do this again seven modern commemorative coins that
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you should pick up if you ain't commemoratives you think I can do anything I come up with seven really good ones for my 1886 on I don't know
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I've been looking I'm hoping I can come up with a list I have collected many of them but again when you get to the
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modern series you're looking at coins that have a low basal value because the
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very high mintage numbers but we have Believe It or Not a much longer period
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and Morse is a longer sustained period of coin production for the modern series in the classic series and that wasn't
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always the case so I'll look at coins from 1982 with the George Washington
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half-dollar all the way up to the present to see if I come up with seven coins that I think maybe maybe are
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worthy of your attention I'll be back tomorrow with some price analysis that
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were working on me and humor to working on and this is some graphs and
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historical grasp provided us by our friend Russ Augustine at a new capital management their firm keeps very
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detailed records of generic coin prices for the past several decades and we're
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going to see how they've been performing and to see if there's any insights you can draw from that on Saturday we'll
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have a new podcast we have one on Wednesday with Peter hug from KidCo definitely check that out don't miss
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that because we go to quite a bit of detail about where the gold market is so why it's behaving the way it's behaving and why some dealers spot prices are
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well above the or by prices are much higher than spot price we explain who is
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making money and all the different levels of distribution but I'm with we'll have a new podcast a numismatic
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sort of a topic with Bill Ekberg Rafi AC where we talked about where the United
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States Mint sourced its copper plant shits for half cents and cents and the
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late 18th century to the 19th century and how the transportation of these copper planets may or may not have
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affected the quality of the coins that were struck with them so we'll go into that we bill and I have recorded that
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interview it's a great insightful interview I'm editing at the moment and I'll have that for you on Saturday so
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for coin week I'm editor Charles Morgan I'm glad you stopped by today I hope you have a great rest of the afternoon and
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we'll be back with more great content about coin collecting from coin week take care of buddy and happy collecting