Welcome back to Something About Coins! The world's largest gold coin was sold today. The first article gives some background about why the coin was auctioned, and the second article describes the sale. The other four articles are a mixture of coin collecting news and education. Enjoy!
Bankrupt's 100kg gold coin for sale, TheAustralian.com.au
One of the world's biggest coins is to go to auction today, put on the market by Wolfgang Auer von Welsbach, whose financial ruin was exposed by the same crisis that has made big chunks of gold a hot item among usually conservative Austrian investors. Mr von Welsbach, great-grandson of a 19th-century Austrian industrialist who invented the lighter flint and the gas mantle, founded the investment firm AvW in 1991. On May 4, AvW Group filed for bankruptcy, by which time Mr von Welsbach had been taken into custody... Click for coin article
World’s Biggest Gold Coin Auctioned for $4.02 Million, Businessweek.com
The world’s largest gold coin, a Maple Leaf, sold for 3.27 million euros ($4.02 million) at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna. Gold dealer Oro Direct Sale S.L.U. said it bought the coin, which has a face value of C$1 million ($960,000), to exhibit to clients. The coin, made of pure gold, weighs 100 kilograms (3,215 ounces) and is 53 centimeters (21 inches) in diameter, according to the Dorotheum’s website. The coin is worth 3.23 million euros, based on the metal’s price yesterday. Gold climbed to a record $1,265.30 an ounce on ... Click for coin article
Smart Collecting 101: Avoiding the Churn, RareGoldCoins.com
When talking to collectors, I often find myself giving them advice as to what makes a "good collector." I thought it would be interesting to share some of my thoughts and observations in a series of blogs entitled "Smart Collecting 101." These will run, from time to time, over the next few months. One of the mistakes that many collectors make is allowing themselves to be "churned;" either by their dealer/adviser or by themselves. Churning is an expression that means too much buying and selling from an account (or in this case a collection) by a ... Click for coin article
Southgate Coins Gives Back to Community by Hiring College Students, ExpertClick.com
Coin collecting is a male-dominated hobby. Yet in the field of numismatics (the study and collecting of money and other related items), a gradual trend toward female involvement took root in the United States over the past 30 years. An organization called Women In Numismatics (WIN), founded in 1991, fosters female familiarity with the hobby. For years, the culture at Southgate Coins in Reno, Nevada has been female oriented. The owners, Rusty and Marie Goe, decided early on they could give back to the ... Click for coin article
Prices, Blog.NumismaticNews.net/buzz
Prices are the mother's milk of numismatics. Most collectors faithfully follow the values of their holdings and the coins they hope to buy. They scour price guides such as Coin Market and helpfully point out typos to me when a decimal place is accidentally moved and the like, or when one price guide seems to be significantly different from another on one coin or another. With so much focus on prices, it has always been a wonder to me that some buyers seem to willfully ignore all of the data and experience out there ... Click for coin article
Oregon Trail Half at Fault for Ban, NumisMaster.com
Is there any one of the commemorative half dollars struck before World War II that can be traced as the cause of the government refusal to strike more such coins? If any one of the coins could be blamed over the others, it would probably be the Oregon Trail piece. Severe abuses resulting from loopholes in the authorization act finally culminated in an amendment to the act to shut off further minuscule production, and was a major factor in the ban on further commemoratives. Was the decision in 1804 to stop striking dollars ... Click for coin article
Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!
