Ep.13 - The Market for $100,000+ COINS w/John McGrath #numismatics #coin #podcast #rarecoins
Alright, folks. Welcome back to the CABG coins podcast. I'm really excited about this episode today. I have one of my my friends, one of the contacts I've made in this industry. It's really kind of been an exciting experience beating, John McGrath out of, Charleston Rare coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I think, John, I think I met well, I talked to you on the phone for the first time. I remember I was heading I was doing a road trip down to the fun show. I was passing through Charleston, South Carolina, and I think I saw, like, a coin on eBay, I and was like, this is a fantastic coin. Oh, they happen to be in Charleston. This is really kind of alongside my road trip.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So why don't I try to stop in and get a chance to talk? I don't think we our schedules kind of worked out and matched up, but we chatted for the first time. And then that's why I found your website and I was like, this guy's got incredible, amazing coins, like huge coins, like huge, huge coins. And we've been talking for a while about doing a podcast episode. So very excited to have you on, John.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Charleston Rare Coins and what got you into being a coin dealer and kind of just wherever you want to about your background here.
John McGrath:Sure. Sure. Well, again, we are we are in Charleston. We're we're recording from Charleston, South Carolina on Broad Street. This is actually a home office.
John McGrath:It's a historic home. You should come visit at some point in time. And this is Oliver in the background. He's my coin assistant. He's not the best grader in the world, but he does help me.
John McGrath:And how we came to be is like a lot of us. I was a coin collector, and I was your local coin hustler in the neighborhood, and was trading, I remember, nine and ten years old, and I was buying and selling coins. And it's funny, you and were talking just before the podcast for a second, and that is I'm not sure you're able to see it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I can see it from here.
John McGrath:Is a 1955 Ben Franklin that I bought for $5 from it's my first dealer purchase. And I actually got this graded. I wouldn't I didn't think I was gonna ever grade this, but I finally got it graded this year. And I keep it when I travel, I have my first coin that I bought from a dealer. And not like a lot of people, my grandmother owned a fruit and vegetable stand, and then they had a bar.
John McGrath:And this is in the 1940s. And so they gave me, when I was young, Mercury Dimes and the Morgan dollars. And every birthday, every holiday, that's what they gave me. And I'm the one in the family that really gravitated towards this, and that's what I started collecting. I've I've been in business since I was very young.
John McGrath:I think most people know, I'm the CEO of a family office. I started with Taco Bell years ago. I still own a lot of Taco Bells here in the Southeast and real estate. And I finally fired myself from those businesses, and I'm doing what I love now. And it is I'm spending most of the time in the coin business.
John McGrath:So I'm basically a kid again. And Hunter Hicks, I got the pleasure of working with Hunter, and and Hunter is is is working with us now, and we got a couple other great people.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, just folks out there, you know, we're about to get into some crazy coins. We have got some amazing stuff to show everybody. This is all stuff that's in John's inventory today.
Tony Gryckiewicz:These are all coins that you could go on to Charles River coins and actually purchase. We're gonna talk through a lot of them. But before we do that, I got my little, like, shotgun question here for you. So if someone walked into your office today with a checkbook and said, find me the best $500,000 coin in America, what would you show them and why? Easy.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's
John McGrath:the dismay. Okay. The half diz. The continental dollar, unfortunately, which was a myth that was our first coin, has now been shown basically to be a German token. And you should read a little bit more about David McCarthy, who works at Kagan's, who's one of the finest neumatists that I know, did a lot of that background research.
John McGrath:And the coin I would recommend to sell that's very expensive would be if you have one. Those I'd be X ing out of. But I believe that these have the most upside, and these are I think if you're going to spend a half million dollars, this would be your next million dollar coin, would be my guess.
Tony Gryckiewicz:My understanding is that the story behind this stuff is that I think Thomas Jefferson, I think it was Thomas Jefferson, that he donated a lot of silver, like his own silverware from his estate to the mitt to be melted down in order to make these coins. And it's called a half disme or half diem, depending on how you want to pronounce it.
John McGrath:Yep. Diem is
Tony Gryckiewicz:French. And
John McGrath:we enunciated disme.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So and and basically, this coin became this is like a halftime. So this was worth 5¢, and this was one of the very first earliest circulating coins that we use. And, you know, there's kind of I I think it's it's arguable to say that almost every one of these probably was handled by Thomas Jefferson at the time that they were made, possibly. And, today, are extremely rare, extremely exceptionally rare. So this is a 1792 half Diem or half Disney, and this is an MS64.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And we could just show everybody what the reverse looks like here. By the way, let me go back to the obverse. This, you might look at this and think like somebody's having a really bad hair day and is standing in front of like a huge gust of wind. This is actually Lady Liberty,
John McGrath:right? It is. And in fact, what you would think of it where you're pointing like in the hair that is wear. It's just
Tony Gryckiewicz:a striking shoe.
John McGrath:They do believe that these were hand hammered. And so originally, this coin and the vast majority of them were graded AU. Mean, they thought they were circulated. And what they realized, think after a certain population said, Oh, wait a minute. They are uncirculated, and a lot of the AUs became MSs.
John McGrath:And so it was a very interesting story. And again, whether it was Thomas Jefferson's actual silver, I think they actually say he brought down $75 worth of silver. And again, and then had to have been made and put in his hands and he distributed them. And then they did find out that if through it was one of the early acts of Congress to have these made. And they were used.
John McGrath:I think it was basically America's first coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. United States Of America. And we got the representation here of the Eagle. And I believe the front of it here, something of liberty and industry par liberty limitus paribus of it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Who knows? I'm just making stuff up right now. So moving on to this one then. So this is, we got, we have about nine coins to show everybody and I have them basically ordered by, you know, historical date or date kind of order. So moving it to the $17.95, 50¢ MS63.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is again, Lady Liberty. This one is also referred to as a flowing hair design. I don't know if I would call this flowing hair as much as, I don't know, bad hair
John McGrath:I'm not Bad
Tony Gryckiewicz:hair sure day. With Yeah, bad hair day and kind of receding hairline a little bit too, or not so much, I guess. But anyways, don't have
John McGrath:I like it. I the look. I like the look of the half doll and the dollar, and some people don't like it. Okay. But I also love the small eagles, most people don't.
John McGrath:I call this the turkey, yeah, the kind Well, the turkey one is a little bit below the necks, a little too curved on this. I prefer I think we might look at on this like a 1796, they changed it a little bit. And so the small eagles, I do prefer over large eagles. I And love the coin. I love I'd I'd love an untouched an untouched original surface, which is which is difficult to Yeah.
John McGrath:Which is difficult to find.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Well, this one definitely has a lot of originality to it. There's no doubt about that.
John McGrath:It was probably clean, but we're talking about it's been clean more than a 100 years ago.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. This- We And rarely see any kind of
John McGrath:signs of that. And this is where in this level of coin, a grader is so important. Because I don't care, I've been looking at this stuff for fifty years. If you don't have at least three sets of eyes, for example, this started out, this was an NGC coin. And it was an NGC 6.2 that we sent.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, wow.
John McGrath:Wow. And so now, obviously, not only did it cross, but upgraded. So that's not me that searched this out. That was when you have a great grader and have a great set of eyes, people need and like me, when I'm collecting for my own collection, what we want is certainty, grade certainty. And you don't want The worst thing early on, some of the coins that I thought were rare that I picked up maybe thirty years ago and I thought looked good, you go in and you send in the Albanese and it comes back and says, sorry, there's tooling on the back, which I see.
John McGrath:It takes years and years learn this. It's fine to make an can make an error on a $200 coin, but when you're dealing with a $200 $500,000 coin, I've seen some painful errors. I've seen very wealthy people in something in great holders where things get missed. It should and ends up being a details coin, and people paid a quarter million dollars for, you know, for something that ends up in, you know, details holder.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I do wanna ask you or I just wanna make it make a point about this. So right here, if you zoom in, it looks like there's a little bit of a little bit of a rim ding we would call this, but when it comes to, you know, this, I don't know, on a Morgan dollar, an 81 S Morgan dollar where there's so many of them, that might be enough to say that this coin has a little bit of, you could call it damage. On a 17.95 half dollar, this is what we would call market acceptable, basically. So there's ever so slight, a little bit of an effect of it being, I don't know, banging around in a bag of coins or dropped in capacity has got a little bit of smoothness right there, but that, especially on a coin of such historical importance, overall, it's obviously, you know, it's a nice mint state, you know, choice quality coin here for the stated grade. This is what we would call this to be completely fully, you know, market acceptable.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I like the coin, I like this coin quite a bit. Moving on to another, you know, 1700s coin that you have right now in your inventory. This is a CAC graded coin. You you could talk a little bit about what your opinions are of that grading service. You just mentioned a lot of, you know, PCGS plus a CAC sticker, but I know myself, I've got like a couple of my best coins are CAC graded coins that I have.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I got an 89, eighty fifty three CAC that I think is one of the most gorgeous coins that I own right now. And that's a CAC graded holder. What's your thoughts about the grading service and the quality of the product that they're turning out?
John McGrath:Think first of all, this is my favorite coin right now. And was lucky enough that I bought this directly from John Albany's. This is my private collection. It's not for sale. Oh.
John McGrath:And it is completely original. It's what we consider a discovery coin. And I think I sent you a text of some of the history on it. It was on their website. And again, we're going to do a little bit more research on it, but we do believe that this was a presentation coin that went through a governor and a signer of the declaration actually presented this.
John McGrath:And I hope to write a little article about it. But again, you can see the originality of Yes. The quality of the strike. Of this. And your original question is about CACG.
John McGrath:I'm seeing the finest coins coming out of CACG. And for grade certainty, I'm finding some of the best quality coins coming out of CACG right now. Have full, tremendous confidence. You remember three guys are looking at we visited. I was up I took a large group of coins, Hunter and I, Hicks.
John McGrath:We flew up to Virginia, and I actually went in. They were kind enough to we went through their operation. Yeah. Wow. And looked at all the grading room.
John McGrath:And Albany's was in there grading with two other guys. So when you're talking about grade certainty and you have three of some of the best graders in the world, and basically they're doing consensus. Call it a three thumbs up. Now you know you're going to and I would call it conservatively grading. Sure.
John McGrath:Sure.
Tony Gryckiewicz:They're very conservatively grading. Yeah.
John McGrath:And I'm very comfortable. And this week this week for the first time, I sent raw coins into them for, you know, for for the first week. Think a lot the only the only the only thing that customers, the registry customers, guys who are collecting on registry, and are like, I want all of my everything in a PCGS or OG PCGS or PCGS. Right. I don't personally do that myself, but I get it.
John McGrath:And so some people don't like the CACG holders and it doesn't fit. I think over time that's going to resolve itself.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think that the encapsulation of your answer and the huge testament to this grading service is just when I asked you about this coin, your first response was, this is actually my personal coin. This is for my personal collection. This is not for sale. So you have a dealer here with a huge, huge inventory of some of the most amazing coins that I've ever seen.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And the coin that he's keeping for himself is actually in a CAC graded holder. So I think it tells you a little bit about the quality or what we think about the grading service. I personally love what they're doing. I love the certainty that I have in being able to hold one of the coins and saying that this is a premium example of a 62 plus that I have right here. It's in this great kind of airtight holder that is impossible to crack out.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So the one thing is, of course, the registry. And once the registry on CAC's website really gets going, I
John McGrath:think you're gonna see coins in these holders carry a considerable premium in the market. I do. I agree. I completely concur with you. And even though it's not for sale, everyone can see these.
John McGrath:At every show, I go ahead and carry maybe a dozen of my personal coins, which are tremendous coins. And if you happen to be in Chicago, I'll have this with me. And I believe these things are meant to be in a safe. You want other pneumatists of people to enjoy and You take a look at the
Tony Gryckiewicz:mean not in a safety deposit box or someplace where you Yes. Can't access Yeah. That's what you mean.
John McGrath:That's correct. And it is a hassle. Believe me, part of what is an issue is moving this type of As you know, you move this type of material, we're using Brink's and Melka, and we have to have with us at time. And I'm lucky enough not to I don't really worry about yeah. I don't have to really worry about that.
John McGrath:And we do have a security guard at every show. Yeah. It's worth Post it up. Yep. I tell you what, Tony.
John McGrath:You see people that are just so excited to see a coin that is exceptionally rare. And I'll let and, you know, if anyone wants to handle the the Disney or you know, I have sitting here the $17.76 CC, a couple of these coins. I think our next one is the best of two. It is like, this is This is one of two. It's top pop.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And
John McGrath:if you want to hold Amazing History, that's what I get a kick out of. You have a 15 year old young pneumatist or these guys, you're able pull it out and let them, you know, practice grade and and look at it. I do wanna move on here to the $17.96 dollar. So this is a I think you told me this is tied for finest known. Is that right?
John McGrath:Yeah. I think I think it's one or two.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Yep. Tied for there's one other. This is a $17.96 dollar, bus dollar and we got the small eagle. This time, I think the strike is really good on the small eagle.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Right. It's the full, it's got the full beak and the little, I don't know what they call that on the beak of the eagle, that little hole right there. My brother knows.
John McGrath:And then the adjustment marks, and you can explain a lot of adjustment what's marks are very common to these coins. Then also, think on the earlier coin, they also put the dates on, I think, number separately. So you'll see slight nuances. Like a lot of times, you'll see this nine looks a little high to me. And so that's just adds the uniqueness of these early 1700s these early coins from the late 1700s.
John McGrath:Excuse me.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. So, yeah, I'm gonna I'll take a moment here to explain a couple things about this coin because I think this is a great educational opportunity. So one we have, this is actually on the holder referred to as a small date, large letters. And what that's referring to is for one, the date of the coin is actually small characters, smaller characters compared to another set of characters used for a different die where the date was slightly larger, ever so larger. And I'm going to flash a picture of that up on the screen here so you guys can see what the large, you know, variety would look like.
Tony Gryckiewicz:The other thing then is that the fact that we have large letters. So as you can see, United States Of America, this motto here is actually really quite large. Like the letters, the font of United States Of America is actually quite large. There's also, I believe, a small letters variety of this where another die was used that had slightly smaller characters or smaller kind of font, basically. And the last thing I wanna mention is about these adjustment marks because somebody new to this might look at this and say, okay, well, this coin looks like it has some kind of, like, scratches or cleaning or something.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That's not what that is whatsoever. This is actually a marks that are in the planchet. So in the raw disc metal that was used to stamp the coin, they would measure basically the weight of the planchet. And if the weight was a little bit too heavy, they would scrape off metal from that in order to bring the weight down to the appropriate level. So what you're seeing here are kind of like filing marks as they file down the planchet to the right, a perfect amount of metal, and then they stamp the coin because unlike our coins today, which mostly just kind of have a symbolic kind of purpose, you know, they're made of clad, they don't have any precious metal contents, the value of these coins were purely based upon the amount of the metal and the purity of the metal that was in the coin, the purity of the silver that was in the coin, and the amount of silver that you would trade.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So
John McGrath:And these are rare than than the ninety fives. There's there's only I'm gonna cheat and look at the seventy seventy nine thousand of them, and there's only four mint states known. And this is what's great now. I have this unbelievable coin, but I can tell you that for it took I think my first $17.96 dollar, I may have been I was 22. And I bought it may have been a 10.
John McGrath:And I've traded up all this time the coin I just sold at Heritage because I bought this, it was a AU58, a beautiful 58. I actually know who bought it. And I sold it because, again, I purchased this last year. And so that's what we do in collecting is it's the ability to move up. So I don't care how young you are, and and I I remember all the guys I talked to, I can't I'll never be able to do that.
John McGrath:Oh, absolutely. You you will be. It takes a lot of time. And and again, just keep, you know, keep upgrading keep upgrading your coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I got started, I looked at a whole red book. I saw every coin that was above a thousand dollars.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And I just said to myself, like, oh, that's never gonna be realistic. I'm not gonna buy a thousand dollar coins. But now today, obviously, it's a whole completely different story. But yeah, I love the strike on this coin. I think it's, that's one of the best qualities I think of this coin is actually the quality of the strike.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, how well struck this coin was on a screw press, both sides absolutely just really gorgeous. And that might also be because the way the planchet maybe was a little bit, you know, was maybe not a little bit heavy. They would have brought it down, but yeah, I thought, I think it's a fantastic one. So the, this is the same design. We got a lot of color here, but this is a a dime.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So this is a 10¢ $18.00 $3.10 cents. This is MS sixty four CAC. This thing cannot be cheap.
John McGrath:No. It's it's not. It's it's well above above 300,000. Woah. Okay.
John McGrath:And this is the only mint state coin known in in this in in the eighteen o three. So it's far you said select of some coins, and I put this in because, you know, there's there's not the the next I'm I'm looking at it right now, again, cheating. There's a 64, and then there are only NGCs, and there are only a couple AUs down. So that's how rare it is. It's from the Barefoot original collection.
John McGrath:And it's just an astonishing coin. And you don't know the real story behind it. It's like, well, this shouldn't exist. And those coins that should not exist, they all went into circulation. And the only thing you can know is maybe somebody from the Mint or the Mint director or a politician that had access to the first coins, actually, this was set aside and sat for one hundred and fifty years.
John McGrath:And that's the only explanation of why something like this would exist.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Develop this incredible color to it. I do want to bring attention to, the die breaks, which are really interesting. So this is going to be a later state of the die that was used to make the coins after applying so much pressure to the same set of dyes with, you know, press after press after press, eventually the dye start to crack. And that's what we see then in the actual coins that were made as you start seeing evidence of those, those die breaks, which is really cool. I love how this one kind of goes through the number zero here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That's actually pretty awesome. I love this Eagle. It's very well struck again. I mean, there's a little bit of lightness here around the stars, which is pretty typical. But like you said, I'm guessing that you're probably gonna have somebody call you from, you know, after this video, if this video gets out or when it gets out, somebody who's a collector here of dimes that needs this for a registry set, this is gonna be up their alley.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, this is gonna take their registry set to the moon. So that's, that's awesome. So this is really cool. I know there's a lot of people that are gonna get excited about this because I'm not too The right term is territorial gold or it's pioneer gold or it's early gold. Think all three work.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is from an early mint that produced gold coins before we had enough gold that would circulate, especially within the West. Now this is called the Wasmolitor or Wasmolitor, I guess. And there's all these guys right now, I know that are watching this, that are from the, like, the the the 33 group that are just like shaking their heads. They're like, you loser, you don't know this stuff. But anyway, I just know it's happening right now.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But anyways, John, I'll let you introduce this coin if you want.
John McGrath:Again, very rare, the the small head wasp. And I can't take credit for running this coin down or or CACT. I loved it. I bought it straight from Doug Winter. Oh, wow.
John McGrath:And Doug was the one that found the coin, had it, eventually had it CACT. And I actually fell in love with it, and I bought it from Doug at a show. So Doug is a person that I defer to. I call him on some of this. I think McCarthy is probably the guy, and then Doug Winter also next, and a bunch of this early goat.
John McGrath:I am not an expert, Tony, in territorials. It's not something that I did when I was young. I dealt, and I deal on a lot of libs. This is something that I just thought as a collector was very cool. And again, it is impossible.
John McGrath:If you want, it's almost impossible to find these cact in AU. And that's why, you know, I picked up, yeah, I I picked up the coin. Again, you don't see them in this quality. And you can point out too, it's a very normal you talk about we talk about these early coins. If you looked over, you know, on the rim there, it's it's very typical to see, a lot of dings, nicks in your rim.
John McGrath:These were used. Circulated They heavily. And so they are what they are. And this is actually a great and you think about this was not a US Mint coin. So the quality is not what you expect.
John McGrath:And again, brought it up because I thought it a very neat coin. People may want to see it. But again, not necessarily what I specialize in, but what you carry as a high end dealer.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. So much of this stuff, as you guys can see, I mean, where it says where you might normally you'd be used to seeing United States of America here in the legend on the coin. We since said see San Francisco, California. So this was made by an assayer or by an office that was producing basically gold coins that would be able to be used for trade before there was enough actual gold coinage from the United States Mints to supply the economy out in the Old West. And so, so much of this stuff has been melted down over the years.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's extremely rare. It's almost a, it's a numismatic miracle that this stuff even still, you know, exists today. And Wasp Molitor and Company is the name here on the headband. They obviously mimicked or copied like the $20 Double Eagle from that was produced by the US Mint, basically saying like, you know, this is another version of it, or this is a privately made version of the same size and and weight coin.
John McGrath:Did they do ingots? You're you're a big ingot guy. Do you and you and you and you collect those, which I don't. Did they also do ingots?
Tony Gryckiewicz:This particular asshair, I would imagine they did, but I have never seen some off the top of my head. Again, right now there's like 13 guys scoffing under their breath that I don't know this. But yeah, I I don't know. I I don't know. It's a good good question.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'm a big San Francisco mint, you know, acid bar guy, and this early, early stuff, the 1,800 stuff, it it's big money is what it comes down to. So I I it's stuff that I haven't really dabbled in just yet.
John McGrath:But I think it's a good point too, Tony, that you cannot be an expert in everything. Right? And It's a slow process. Yeah. You know, I've been looking at, you know, e libs, for fifty some years, and I'm very comfortable in grading them.
John McGrath:I've looked at hundreds of thousands. But these I have not. So the point is we'll rely on experts ourselves heavily, the guys that really are if somebody brings me something, a lot of times I send over to Doug or somebody that I know is an expert in it. So we our all wheelhouses we work in. I just know if I run across a rare silver ingot or something gold, I'm gonna bring it over to you because that's not something that I have a All background
Tony Gryckiewicz:right. So now we're gonna kinda go very, very different, completely so on the other side of spectrum in some ways. This is a US Mint product. This is a Carson City half dollar, $18.73 Carson City half dollar. This coin is a PCGS MS 67.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Is this MS or is this this is yeah. This is MS 8.
John McGrath:No. Yeah. This this is Mint State, and it is it's top hop. It's the it's the finest Yeah. It's it's the finest coin.
John McGrath:And again, something that shouldn't exist. There's one in 'sixty six, one in 'sixty five, and so it's a very rare
Tony Gryckiewicz:error. So yeah, this coin was made, it was set aside, it did not circulate, I mean, at all. I can honestly, I think, say that, and the coin just got booming luster. You can just see it here in this picture, whenever you see like these streaks here of light, this is a good sign that this coin has just got incredible luster. I love to see this coin in in Rosemont if you have it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I would just love to see it in person.
John McGrath:Yeah. Think this thing is It'll it'll it'll be there. And just it's again, coins shouldn't exist. And again, from Carson City, you know, outside, one the really rare ones, I think probably second favorite, Carson City, outside the 76cc, which I have one of the finest examples of. We have it here right now, and we'll also have that 76cc in, also in Chicago.
John McGrath:Okay. And why do we have to go all the way out to Rosemont? Can we can we can I complain about the drive? Why aren't we Downtown Chicago?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, well, I mean, so there's just there's a there's a great convention center right there, and it is got some awesome restaurants right near convention center. There is a great security because the hotel connects to the convention center. So like I'm staying at the Hyatt Regency, you can just walk across. It's actually a really, really great place. Rosemont, yeah, they host this at the Donald Stephenson or Donald Stephens Convention Center.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is usually where the World's Fair of Money is often, but thankfully, I was actually super psyched about how the Oklahoma City Show wound up. I thought it was a great show. But typically, that show is up in, you know, is up in Rosemont. So.
John McGrath:Yeah. Oklahoma City turned out to be a great dealer show. It was a little I think was a little difficult to get to for some individuals, but I enjoyed it. I had a great show there. And I have not been to Oklahoma City in about twenty five years.
John McGrath:Yeah. Because I'm a Texas guy, and we tried to you know, I went to the University of Texas. So I tried to stay out of Oklahoma City. We get beat up there back in the day.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Got it. Got it. Well, I had a really good time and I thought the food was amazing. We have a conversation I had with Kenny about this, Kenny Duncan Junior, and that was it was a fantastic venue, I thought. So so this coin, I remember you sending me a text message about this coin like a long while ago.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is an expensive, expensive coin. This is really rare, right? This is a AU55 CAC $5.18 75. Did you come across this coin? How did you get this?
John McGrath:This is a private sale. Came through back channels. Okay. You know, specialty gold guys. Again, $18.75 dollars 5 lib and $18.75 dollars 10 lib, holy grail of gold.
John McGrath:There were only 200 of these made. Believe that this is second finest known. I think is the only CACT There's version of this a $5.08 somewhere, and this is a CACT 55. Again, second finest known. I think there's only eight AUs known total.
John McGrath:But it is, again, this is one of those coins that I knew about when I was 15 years old, this and the $10. And this is you know what you said before? I don't think I'll ever own one. I never thought I'd own one of this. And unless I'm wrong, I think the 58 is in a museum, and this is the finest one in private hands right now.
John McGrath:I could be wrong. Maybe there's some guy out there I know with the 58 going, oh, wait a minute. And they'll correct me soon. But probably again, one of my favorite coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So basically, this is a coin where you said there's only 200 made or 300, did you say?
John McGrath:200 originally. 200 originally struck.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And then we know about the estimate survival is how many total?
John McGrath:That's a very good question. Okay. And I wish what I don't like to do is I've heard four different numbers, but let's just use the term handful. Okay. Handful.
John McGrath:Because I just know myself right now, and I don't know how to solve it. But when we are doing crossovers and even report it, I'm not seeing these great I'm not seeing them come down off of when I go back and look at the records, I'm still seeing those coins sitting on the records that I cross.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. You are supposed to send in your labels after you've been submitting multiple times for the same coin. You're supposed to send those back over to PCGS so they can reduce the number through an accurate level of population, but it is one of the complicating factors, you know, in this business and with the population reports. So,
John McGrath:that's super cool. And part of what I'm trying to do is determine, you know, for my own investing purposes, this is part of what I'm looking at, trying to determine what will be the next next million dollar coin. What coin that's 100,000 now will be 300,000. I'm trying to get those populations accurate. And conversely, other thing could happen, populations could grow out of nowhere.
John McGrath:The South American coins that have been coming out, the gold, the Fairmount collection that I think everyone knows about that Stacks has been handling. Those have drastically changed the populations of certain years, and New Orleans coins, those I think there's some new information coming out. I think Doug Winter is trying to update and has done I think if you look on his site, he's done a couple articles about what's been most affected on double eagles.
Tony Gryckiewicz:For Fairmont,
John McGrath:for example. Yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Where all
John McGrath:of a sudden the population was four and now it's 10 in an AU 15. So, are coins that came out of South America and Yeah. You know, appeared and and have and now entered our population.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Because, you know, United States, there you know, all of our gold coins that we collect today, they were once circulating coins. And sometimes a lot of these coins have gone into other countries. There was a period of time I would explain to people, you know, why is there gold coins in Europe? Why can you find so many gold coins, U.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Gold coins around the globe? There was a period of time that we had an arrangement called the Bretton Woods system and the Bretton Woods system, United States dollar was the only currency that was convertible directly to gold, but every other currency that was part of the system like the French Frank or the Italian lira, they were all convertible into dollars and they were all pegged to the US dollar. So when Americans would go and spend US dollars overseas, other banks, other central banks could present the US dollars back to The United States and get gold for them. So we paid out a lot of gold and because of that, a lot of U. Coins, a lot of The U.
Tony Gryckiewicz:S. Gold coins still exist in other countries. But yeah, there was a huge amount of coins, huge hoard of them that came out of South America that later then became known as the Fairmont Collection. And we saw these come to market for a number of years. And a lot of the population system really rare stuff kind of changed as a result of the entrance of that Fairmont.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But I do want to ask you though, even at these high price points, where do you still see genuine value opportunities that collectors might be overlooking?
John McGrath:I think some of the most undervalued goings, and I'm collecting myself, I would say your I think $10 libs are maybe some of the most undervalued goinks out there when you look at a population and rarity versus affordability. If you take I'll give you some examples. Take a look at your 1968, 'sixty nine, 'seventy one, 'seventy three. Of course, your '75 is impossible to get. But 77, these are years where there's less than a thousand coins made.
John McGrath:Sometimes it's 800. If you're looking for let's go down to like a 2,003 thousand coin. If you go and look at your population report, and you can get a year where maybe they had 3,000 coins made, and they might only know of a 100 coins in the in the entire population left, and they're very affordable, that's where I think you're going to be, you know, know, get an upside. And if you're gonna look at my safe right now, I think, for example, your $18.77 some of these coins are $20.30000 are your next $100,000 coin. It's just when you have a population, when you only have like eight eight Us known and one or two Mint states, there's no way that coin is going down and drastically undervalued because it doesn't make sense.
John McGrath:And so that's what I'm doing for an investment standpoint. And again, I'm a finance guy. And from just a scarcity standpoint, when you take a look at that, I think that's where whether you're looking to invest $3,000 or 50,000, that's where I think some tremendous upside is on some of your scarcer gold.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Before we get into the last couple of questions, I know I just wanted to touch on this coin real quick. So this is, $18.76. This is a Carson City. This is a 20¢ piece. We don't see a whole lot of 20¢ pieces.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is an area that is consistently, they usually consistently bring strong values. The 20¢ piece only existed in our economy for a very short period of time. And off the top of my head, actually don't know the history on why or the time period, but it's a very short series of coins. This is Carson City. This is a 64 plus.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is a pretty monster coin, isn't it? Yeah.
John McGrath:It's a million dollar coin. And basically, I think the population I think there's only eight known. And the story behind this one, Tony, is I think they were supposed to have made if I'm right, it maybe was because was small amount made. And then there was a note not to release these and destroy them. And so they were remelted down, and so just a handful got out.
John McGrath:Gotcha. And this is one of those, it's top 1 100 coin. Again, to me, I call them holy grail coins. Yeah. And so it's interesting about this particular coin.
John McGrath:This coin was originally a 64. My grader, myself, everyone else believes it's a 65 or better. And so we'll see where this ends up, type of holder. It's still in process. I think there's a couple of coins better.
John McGrath:There's a $6.06, which may have a little bit better detail, but there are two six fives above this. And I think when we look at the $2.06 fives, this has better detail. Yeah. Your argument against this coin is it's a little darker. For and I actually this is a whole a whole not we could have a whole nother conversation about darker coins to me are getting a bad rap and getting undergraded because the pursuit of these lighter coins is really causing people it's created this whole it really causes people to start to mess with the coin and the originality.
John McGrath:Yeah. And so I think we're undergrading darker coins, and that's creating more people to, again, mess with the Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Which is a real yeah. That's not good. That's a shame for sure. This is I mean, when it comes to really rare coins that are high grade, this is actually how a silver coin should look given the age. And it yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It does have this cloudiness here that is not the the best eye appeal. It's probably not if I wanted one example for for a typeset, I may not choose this coin. But given the significance of the the coin and the the rarity at this particular grade, I I don't see anything you know, I like the coin overall. I will say that darker coins are harder to grade. I mean, they sometimes maybe be under graded because just in general, finding the imperfections that are in the field that might limit this coin are harder to do on a darker, darkly toned coin overall.
Tony Gryckiewicz:The other thing that's super interesting is the doubling here.
John McGrath:The doubling is, isn't it?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Extreme doubling. Yeah. That's a
John McGrath:very cool I've never been a big fan of these coins because there's something go up to her face. Yeah. There's just something that's always disturbed me about that. You know?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, yeah. She looks like she she is a character on a Star Trek series. Like, this is not a really attractive. Yeah. Now, we go back to, you know, we go back to Lady Liberty here on the twenty seventh, I said, this is an attractive Lady Liberty.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yes. This is yeah. She's she's got a lot she's got a lot
John McGrath:going I didn't. On And what I didn't know is that they had apparently had push up bras in '96, 1796.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Was so I I think this whole time, how can I joke a little bit about this coin?
John McGrath:This is a very impressive the
Tony Gryckiewicz:the the Hoover made this die, you know, was a thirsty individual. Anyways, we'll we'll move on. Move back
John McGrath:to It the may have been a more puritan design.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm hoping my mother's not watching up until this point. We'll see here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:She does watch all my episodes. See.
John McGrath:Yeah. I I actually love that coin. That the the 76 76cc has a I found it has a purplish hue to it, and I'm more attracted to originality. And I guess there's been such a chase for luster.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure. Sure.
John McGrath:And ask a grader, ask your professional graders how much that they can add or delete due to luster on a coin, and you'll get some different answers. Very interesting. And so that's where we get into subjectivity on how much luster will add or detract from a coin. And I'm of the school where we may over credit luster. And I vote for more originality.
John McGrath:It'll be interesting how we'll handle AI. Grading eventually is gonna go to a raw AI score. But how do you teach from somebody who's built a software company before, how are we going to teach AI? How are going to program what is luster? How much weighted average margin of reflectivity are you going to use in there?
John McGrath:And I think we're going to end up, Tony, I would suggest that we're going to have a raw AI score that can objectively give you this is a 6.5. And I think we're still going to need human graders, and we'll give you a subjective score. I'm not gonna live forever. John's not gonna be around forever. What happens after CACs tickering?
John McGrath:What happens in the next couple years? And it's not just a it's not a question of if it's gonna happen. It's a question of when and who will do it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of mixed on this particular question. It's one of these things where, yes, we we can apply, we might be able to get to the point where we can apply AI to coin grading, but then the question is, well, why are we doing it? Are we doing it in order to be able to process coins quicker?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Are we doing it to be able to get to some more level of certainty about whatever the, the, the stated grade is about it? I think that will immediately take a little bit of the fun out of this hobby, which is the upgrade aspect. It is the subjectivity aspect to it. And, know, it's one of these things that as a society, we will have to wrestle with the question about how many things should we actually apply this technology to, as opposed to just, you know, can we do things, you know, can robots, you know, I don't know, make pizza or whatever. I'm sure that we'll get to the point where they can, but you know, isn't there some joy of, of actually, you know, making a great pizza pie and serving it to people?
Tony Gryckiewicz:You know, like humans will have to come to, you know, they'll have to think about that one and figure out whether it really makes sense and it's really worth it. So I don't know. I'm kind of open on the subject. I'm excited to see where we're gonna go with it, but I think it's a little too soon for me to predict exactly how it's gonna affect everything. Yeah, I know there's a lot
John McGrath:of young, there's some young guys out there working on it now. I think it will eventually bring more certainty to it. And think about this. We can get off the 70 scale, go to something more like a 100 scale that you're used to. Can also go to decimals.
John McGrath:And if you think about I don't think it'll take the excitement out because now I'm actually collecting, thinking of this is gonna be graded by AI. No matter what is no matter how this coin is graded, this is an upper echelon of this grade. And so that's how I'm thinking about it because it's gonna come sooner than you and I probably think. And then think about how many more coins now if you're on a 100 scale and now it's point one two three. What are you gonna do?
John McGrath:We're gonna have to go we're gonna get everything regraded. It's honestly a great business model. And then Sure. And then if you could if you if you make it analogous to, like I remember guys saying, well, Apple's made a phone that's too good now. There's no reason why people are going to change.
John McGrath:Well, by the time they perfect version AI one grading, guess what? They're gonna come up with version two. And by the you know, probably by the time I'm 80 years old, I'll be sending in coins again for that version, you know, four point zero AI. Yeah. And so, you know, I think there'll always be that arbitrage.
John McGrath:There'll always be that hunt going on. So Yeah. It'll be it'll be interesting. Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I think this is gonna be a great topic for we'll get a couple other big brain people onto a a show. We'll do like a panel interview, we'll talk about a question like this one. I think it's a super interesting one pick apart. I would actually would love to know what you guys think out there. If you're watching this far, you got the comments below.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I always look forward to reading the comments for every one of these episodes. Tell us what you think about, you know, the future with AI and the application of AI to the coin business, how it's going to affect things. John, this has been great. I do wanna give you an opportunity. How can people contact you?
Tony Gryckiewicz:How can they reach out to you? Where can they find you, today, and Charleston Rare Coin?
John McGrath:Yeah. Charlestonrarecoins.com. See, it's, you know, online, and you can leave us an email on there and a note. Leave leave leave your phone number. We got a a a great young grader, Hunter Hicks.
John McGrath:He's he's he'll be at the show also. Reach out to him. And I would like to you know, we should have about your panel. I'd love to we should get John. Yeah.
John McGrath:Albany's would be great to have on that on that panel. One of the principals of PCGS would be interesting to have. I'd be glad to reach out to those guys. Maybe you know? And also somebody from the auction houses, like somebody from Heritage or Kendrella over at over at Stacks.
John McGrath:We we'll you know, we'll we should put that together and Yeah. See what they what what they have to say.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. I think I think you're gonna be much better suited to probably make those introductions. At this point, they, they, they don't know me from the person selling them the hotdogs at the, at the convention center. So, you know, I think you're going to be, it would be awesome to, to help me out with that, but I'm excited about, you know, doing something like that for sure.
Tony Gryckiewicz:To have John in the program would be amazing. I mean, there's so many great questions I could I I I could have him He
John McGrath:he he yeah. You know, the no. John is John's just a great guy. His down earth has has been Yeah. He's been he's been very kind to me.
John McGrath:He heard about doing a five zero one. So one of my great goals is to do a museum for South Carolina numismatics currency. I've got a large South Carolina currency collection and important coins, numismatics to Charleston, and he found that out. And he sent down a very rare plate that they and gave me a a plate where they would print currency from South Carolina. So John's been incredibly kind to me.
John McGrath:That's great. I play him in chess daily. So real, real, really sharp guy, and we're lucky we're lucky to have him in in in in his misfatics. Absolutely. You're doing a great job at this.
John McGrath:And guys like you who, you know, you have a you have a real job.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Not anymore. This is my this is my career.
John McGrath:You you've gotten the whole thing? You you went ahead? Yeah. You went ahead and made the jump? If you did you say did you do that on another podcast?
John McGrath:Did you actually did you announce that?
Tony Gryckiewicz:I don't think so. I don't think I've mentioned it yet. This is probably the first time that I've actually said that that, you know, I'm I'm doing coins full time. I've been doing it part time for like the last four years. So it's but yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah.
John McGrath:So And you were very and you had very technical you're very sharp. You're a very sharp guy. You were was that engineering background?
Tony Gryckiewicz:No. A lot of so many different things that I've done, but no. My last job was in data strategy and data science. So a lot of modeling and working with companies trying to solve operational problems using numbers and modeling and all of that type of, you know, fun stuff. So, but the pull to NuisMatics has just been so great and so much more and I apply that stuff, the methodologies and the techniques and so forth, I apply that to building my business now.
Tony Gryckiewicz:No, that's
John McGrath:actually great to hear and we need more individuals like you that focus on the numismatic side. And I think it's been a very tough business. Think when I look at the last fifty years, I'm very thrilled to hear stories like yours because a lot of the mom and pop stores, where I bought this coin from, it ended up unfortunately, these places ended up having to buy scrap gold and silver and then do other things to make a living. And that takes away from some of the history and numismatics just to stay in business. And you don't have a lot of towns used to have your comic book coin store, and we've kinda lost that.
John McGrath:But it's great to see a bunch of very sharp young individuals into and I know you're not that I know you're 40. To me, you're And younger than I think you know, really sharp individuals coming in and a lot of 20 year olds that run around the convention center. Yep. You know, for example, Hunter went was was going to, you know, Stanford, and he's finishing right now over in Virginia. Yep.
John McGrath:And he's, you know, he's young, pneumatist, and just has a passion for it. And it's it's great it's great to see.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, hey, man. Thank you so much, John. This has been great. I appreciate you doing this podcast for sure. I will see you in Rosemont.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Hopefully, we get a chance to do some dinner together or something like that. That would be wonderful. And I look forward to seeing your whole crew again. So Yeah. No.
John McGrath:I really I appreciate what you're doing here on the podcast and provide some information, and you're much better doing this than I would be. This is not my I'd I'd rather
Tony Gryckiewicz:You're great.
John McGrath:I'd rather hang out here and and look study my little coins here and crack some coins and, you know, do you know, some nonsense.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So well, you were a great guest. Thank you so much for bringing those great awesome coins. So alright, man. I will talk to you later.
John McGrath:Take care.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And I'll see you. Alright. See you.
