Ep.16 - Tony Littlejohn on Collecting Standing Liberty Quarters #numismatics #coin #podcast #money
Alright. Welcome back, folks, to the CABG Coins podcast. Before we get started today, I just wanted to throw a little bit of information out there about our viewer viewership. So according to the analytics on YouTube, about 47% of the current viewers of this video today are not subscribed to the channel. It would be a huge help for you to just go ahead and hit that subscribe button below.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Subscribe to the channel, you'll get updates on whenever we release new episodes, and it'll also just kinda really help this podcast kinda get traction and get more of a viewership and grow. I love doing these, but I definitely need your subscription, so please do that, and don't forget, of course, to like this video and and throw a comment below. I'm always really interested to to read your comments. So today, who we have is we have Tony Littlejohn. Tony is very famous in the Numismatic community.
Tony Gryckiewicz:He is well known for being a really serious collector of standing liberty quarters. I guess I could it's kind of a understatement. So Tony holds, I believe, the top, standing liberty quarter set. We'll talk about what exactly that is here in a second, he actually holds a top position in five standing liberty quarter sets on the PCGS registry. And this is a guy that I've had a chance to have a couple conversations with at coin shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:We've been able to get to know one another, It's been nothing but a pleasure, and this guy's a wealth of information. So, Tony, hey, welcome to the CABG Coins podcast. Why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what drew you first into coin collecting and then, you know, standing at Liberty Quarters.
Tony Littlejohn:Alright. Thank you very much, and thank you for the invite to be on the program. I guess if I were to summarize how I got into coins in the early sixties when The United States decided to take silver out of out of our coinage, I was 11 years old, and and I told my mother, we need to take all of our silver coins that we've got and stack them up. As I began to do that, she thought I was out of my mind, but as I began to do that with quarters and 50¢ pieces, with with the remnant of my lunch money, then, I noticed with the quarters, I didn't like Washington quarters, I didn't like Franklin halves. But I like the standing liberty quarters, and I like buffalo nickels.
Tony Littlejohn:And those are the two that were always worn slick.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And
Tony Littlejohn:as I begin to try to I wasn't putting a collection together. I was just hoarding silver. And I said, someday I'm going to buy, see one of these quarters that has a date on it. And I put those all in a little metal box with a little lock on it. And by the time I got to high school, that infatuation had died down and I put them in my closet and I didn't look at that box again for another twenty years.
Tony Littlejohn:And then when I got into my thirties, I married two children. I took a youth group on a trip, on a camping trip to Colorado. And while we were there, I said, well, while we're here, let's go to the to the Denver Mint. And we did a tour of the Dinner Mint. And as we came out, at the end of the tour, you come into their shop, their their coin shop where they're selling proof sets, mint sets.
Tony Littlejohn:I said, wow. These are neat. I remembered when I was collecting as a boy. I had a red book that I checked out of the library, and I saw these proof coins. I said, man, these are shiny, but I didn't know what it meant.
Tony Littlejohn:But and that's the first time I ever saw a proof set was in in the mid eighties when I came back through the Mint store. And and so I said, well, I'll get one for my oldest daughter's birth year, 1981, and another for my second daughter, 1983. Well, of course, they didn't have them then because they'd already sold out, but they said you can get them at a coin shop. So I was living in Midland, Texas at the time out in West Texas. And when I came back to Midland, I went to the coin shop to buy two proof sets, one for each girl.
Tony Littlejohn:And the proprietor there said, do you collect coins? I said, no. I used to accumulate them. I've got a box at home that's got silver dollars and all kind of stuff in it, but I've never really collected. And he's had something called a Dansko album, and it was a typeset.
Tony Littlejohn:I'd never heard the term typeset.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:That's one of every kind. And he opened a book, and he showed it to me. And I saw 2¢ pieces and 3¢ pieces. Said, what the heck is this? Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:And so I bought the album, and I was hooked. I started going through the dealers' jump boxes to fill out my album. And then at some point in time, I started selling coins because I went to one of the coin brokers there. He said there's a and I saw in the newspaper, there's an auction, furniture auction in Odessa, which is a little city next to Midland, and they they're selling coins. And I asked the coin dealer, is it worth to go in there to buy coins?
Tony Littlejohn:He said, no. Those coins are too expensive. And I took it with a grain of salt because I know, hey. This guy wants me to buy coins at his shop, not at this auction. I'll go there and see.
Tony Littlejohn:So I went to the auction, everything went for two or three times what it was worth. So I went back to him the next day and said, did you buy anything? I said, no, I didn't buy a single coin. It was way too expensive. He said, isn't that what I told you?
Tony Littlejohn:I said, it was exactly what you told me. And then I asked him, why don't you sell your coins through the auction? And he said, oh, no. I don't wanna fool with that. I said, well, I think I will.
Tony Littlejohn:So I started buying coins from him and selling at the auction. Tremendous success, like 304100% return on
Tony Gryckiewicz:my Nice.
Tony Littlejohn:Very nice. So I said, man, this would make a neat little business. I was an engineer with Exxon at the time, so I already had a job. I said, just a little side job. This would be fun.
Tony Littlejohn:And it would fund my collection because I was collecting at that time barber halves, putting a barber half set together and my tight set and a buffalo nickel set. And so I began to buy at the three coin shops in the Midland Odessa area and selling at these auctions. I went to the corner newsstand and started buying newspapers for different parts of the state and different parts of the country. So I end up having over a 100 auctioneers I was sending coins to, but the coin shops couldn't supply me. So I started going to coin shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:And when I started going to the coin shows and was buying coins, I would I would carry big boxes to bring stuff back on the airplane. And I said, okay. It's time for me to buy the standing liberty quarter. So I went to one of the dealers, and I was looking through the show. And PCGS was just starting up.
Tony Littlejohn:This was like '85 time frame. And I found a nineteen thirty s standing liberty quarter uncirculated condition. I bought it for $85. And I said, man, this coin, this is beyond my expectations of what I ever thought I would have. And as I begin to buy those kind of coins to fill my everything's still raw, to fill my typeset, I began to wonder, am I grading these right?
Tony Littlejohn:Mhmm. I spent lots of time at ANA's table at the shows learning the grading, how how do you grade and how how I'm grading. And and so I did that. I said, well, the true truth of whether I can grade or not is if I can sell the uncirculated coins. So I went to a famous standing Liberty core dealer out of Florida, and I offered him my $19.30 s quarter.
Tony Littlejohn:And he said, well, what do you want for it, Tony? I said, well, what's it worth? He said, oh, it ought to be at least worth a $100,125 dollars. I said, man, I think my eye is better than that. I think the coin is better than that.
Tony Littlejohn:I said, okay. If I decide to sell it, I'll bring it back. Went to another coin show in in Mississippi or somewhere, and I sold that coin and a buffalo nickel. They were both uncirculated that I paid a $150 for the pair for $450.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Nice.
Tony Littlejohn:Oh, this is a whole new ballgame. I can
Tony Gryckiewicz:buy a
Tony Littlejohn:couple of coins and pay for a coin show. So that's what I started doing. So that's what got me into the mid to late eighties. And then I got out of coins at that time because my girls were bigger in school. I want to spend more time at home.
Tony Littlejohn:Was going to thirty, forty coin shows a year in the And and then when the Internet and and came up and online auctions, Teletrade, and those auctions came up, I got back in again, and I've been in ever since.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. That is quite a journey. You mentioned being an engineer and I remember you mentioning before that was kind of your career profession. Do you think being an engineer by profession, do you think your analytical mindset shaped how you approach building a top tier collection?
Tony Littlejohn:What I think helped me more than anything as I look back in hindsight, when we were children, my dad bought a children's magazine called Humpty Dumpty. And in the Humpty Dumpty magazine, it came once a month, there were these pictorials where you would find the one thing that was different. Yeah. They'd show you six items, find the one that's not like the others, or six items, find the two that are the same. It had lots of that kind of stuff in it because my father was the question man.
Tony Littlejohn:And then we played with my father a game called 20 questions. And in 20 questions, you have 20 questions that I could ask my dad to try to figure out who or what he was thinking about. So all he could answer is yes or no. So I think doing all of that with my dad gave me an ability to focus on details and focus on what's the right question to ask to get to the right answer. And I think that influenced my engineering.
Tony Littlejohn:I think that influenced everything else. I also have a degree in microbiology and biochemistry. So I'm used to looking at small stuff for details. Looking through the microscopes. All it kind of merged in- At the
Tony Gryckiewicz:half times, no.
Tony Littlejohn:The inquiring mind for one thing, the mad scientist for another, and then the engineer on top of that. I think it all just burst together.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Was there like a light bulb moment where you decided to seriously pursue the PCGS registry rather than just starting to collect casually or doing kind of the coin shows and flipping the coins as you're mentioning?
Tony Littlejohn:I'm too competitive. Okay. So when the registry came up, I said, hey, this would be a neat deal. I like the registry as a as a way of of
Tony Gryckiewicz:Structuring, organizing.
Tony Littlejohn:Yeah. My coins. Yep. But then when when you think in terms of registry sets, I the high end registry sets, I kinda started that in about 2016. I said, I'm going to start.
Tony Littlejohn:I I had sets. Probably had twenty, thirty sets by then, but I wasn't trying to build a great registry set. I was just collecting coins of all kinds.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:I had everything, all denominations of US coins, not world coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But I was in
Tony Littlejohn:2016 to do a high grade registry of standing And liberty
Tony Gryckiewicz:so what was the main motivator was basically that sense of competition and wanting the structure and put together or kind of compete. Is that kind of the thing that drove you the most?
Tony Littlejohn:It was that combined with I'd already done complete standing liberty quarter sets. I'd bought them and sold them. Oh, okay. I bought complete I completed barber half sets, I bought them and sold them. And Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:Buffalo nickels, and I bought them and sold them. But my barber set was a v f set. My buffalo nickel set had a mishmash of stuff in it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure.
Tony Littlejohn:I still had my typesets, which had all kinds of grades in it. I had three different typesets of three different grades. One was a one was an uncirculated all in Dansko albums. One was an uncirculated set, so forth and so on. Sure.
Tony Littlejohn:Sure. As I started when the registry came up, I started buying graded coins for Got it. Collecting. I bought graded coins when I put my set together back in the eighties, but I bought the coins and broke them out and put them in a Dansko album.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And I sold
Tony Littlejohn:my standing liberty quarter collection to to Jay Klein out of Florida, and I sold to him straight out of the album. He was saying and and some of those coins, probably half of them, I I had broken out of
Tony Gryckiewicz:Of holders?
Tony Littlejohn:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. But then in 2016, I just kinda said, let's do a great set. And if you're gonna do a high grade set, you've gotta do a certified set or or you don't know for sure what the grades are.
Tony Littlejohn:So that's kinda January 2016 kinda kicked that off
Tony Gryckiewicz:And it
Tony Littlejohn:happened to coincide with when Jay Klein's widow put all of his coins into Heritage Auction. And so I had the opportunity to to to buy coins from his whole inventory at auction prices at that time.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Interesting.
Tony Littlejohn:So I bought a number of coins, most of them to resell, but many of them. One one of which is still in my set. It's a top graded coin. It's still in my set.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So we're gonna get to your your set your collection here in in a moment. I'm pretty excited about that segment. That's gonna be a lot of fun, actually. For those who don't know, PCGS registry collecting or registry collecting in general, PCGS is just, I think, one of the main ones that kinda support this part of the the hobby. Believe CAC is also starting a registry set or if they haven't already.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yep.
Tony Littlejohn:My Collect is another one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:My Collect. Yeah. These are forms for people, collectors, serious collectors to get together and to compete with one another. So, you know, after a while, I mean, just like anything, you know, you start you take up, I don't know, judo lessons or something like that, and kind of, you know, you you get together with people at your local dojo, and you you get that going done with that. You really enjoy that.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You go and do maybe some local kind of competitions, and you start to do well. Eventually, you know, you start want you figure out, wanna know, like, well, how well can I do? How far can I take this? Can I go and compete at a state level? Can I go and compete at a national level?
Tony Gryckiewicz:PCGS registry is kind of that for coins. These guys are basically like the professional athletes of coin collecting. They are trying to compete with one another for the top tier set for a particular series of US coins. I think one of the things that have always appealed to me about about registry set collecting is that there's something liberating about stepping into a coin show with an objective in mind. So you have use anyone stepped into a coin show, it's kind of overwhelming, especially when you're just getting into the hobby.
Tony Gryckiewicz:There's people running around everywhere. There's tables that have all sorts of different coins. There's world coins, US coins, there's banknotes. There's so many different things. You're like, well, where do I start?
Tony Gryckiewicz:How do I get into this? How do what's an entry point here? A lot of people choose Morgan dollars because they're everywhere. They're really easy kinda to to get into. But in my opinion, actually, I think it's there's something kinda liberating about the sense of, like, I wanna step into this coin show today.
Tony Gryckiewicz:If there's gonna be hundreds of dealers, there's gonna be thousands, you know, hundreds of thousands of coins potentially on the floor for me to choose from, I don't have to I don't have to worry about 99% of them. I'm just looking for a really nice nineteen twenty nine s standing liberty core today. I'm trying to find one in a in a very high grade that maybe I potentially can upgrade or whatever to fit my set. I think there's that's a great aspect of this, and that's one of the reasons perhaps that people choose to build sets is so that they can kinda clear out the noise of all the other different aspects of numismatics and just focus in, hone in on one thing and get good at one thing.
Tony Littlejohn:You're exactly right. When I I when I when I got into my set, that did give me a goal when I went to each coin show. Yeah. My objective, my primary objective was to see how do I can I find coins for my set? So I would start on one end, and I would go down every aisle in every dealer's case one by one looking for a coin that would go into my set.
Tony Littlejohn:And that would be the first thing I did for even though I was buying stuff to resell because I still sell a lot of coins, my objective was to find anything that would go into my set. Build coal, so to speak, just like you did in the old Dansko albums.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna put a picture of the old Dansko albums kind of on the screen so people know what we're talking about. Album building is really kind of the foundation or sort of historic foundation of this hobby for so many people. And people still do this today.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Dance albums are really cool. You can build a type set of one example of every US type or every US coin, and you can build this incredible set that, let's say, is all mid stages, all about uncirculated or or whatever. And they're beautiful, beautiful sets. When you're competing for top coins, would you say it's instinct, research, gut feel that makes you pull the trigger? So you're sitting in front of a table, you see a coin that you really like.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You, you know, it's in a it's in a grade that's close to what you might need for your particular series. When you pull the trigger in that, do you think it's a a matter of instinct or are you doing a whole lot of research? Kinda what goes into the to your decision process?
Tony Littlejohn:Mine is probably more instinct. Okay. For example, I talked about 2016 when I was bidding at Heritage. It was I was bidding except for one coin one or two coins. I was bid bidding like a dealer, so I was looking for bargains.
Tony Littlejohn:And if the bargains happen to fill a hole, then fine. If not, then fine. So I would use my bargain coins, fill the holes, and then when I went to the shows, I would be looking for specifics. So I would buy anything at the right price. Any coin at the right price, I would buy.
Tony Littlejohn:But I was buying almost exclusively standing liberty quarters. So I bought it 20 coins out of the auction, the first auction.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, wow.
Tony Littlejohn:And and probably that 20 probably represented five different dates and mint marks.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. What's the rarest or most difficult standing liberty quartet that you've added? What was the story behind acquiring it?
Tony Littlejohn:For me, I thought the hardest coin would be to find, and it actually was was the nineteen twenty seven s.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:So I was and my method for collecting, if there was some structure to it, was to find the hardest coins first. Sure. And I would stumble because I knew I would see plenty of examples of the other coins. So the first coin I bought was a mint state 65 because that's the first coin that became available to me. I bought them all at Heritage Auction at Heritage.
Tony Littlejohn:And then a year or so later, I bought a nineteen twenty seven s in '66. And then lo and behold, Heritage announced in their catalog they described in their catalog, they had a nineteen twenty seven s in '67. They said this is the first '27 s in this grade that we've had offered for sale in nine years. And I'm budget minded when I buy stuff. I'm real cost minded because I know at some point in time, I'm gonna have to liquidate.
Tony Littlejohn:So the price guide on a '27 s at that time and meant state 67, there were only two graded. No. There may have been more at that time, but that was the only one that had been for sale for years. And so the price guide was, like, $20,000, $25,000, and I was real sensitive of going above price guide and all of that. Well, I was the underbidder at $42,000 because
Tony Gryckiewicz:that's what
Tony Littlejohn:that coin was to get. Yeah. And, you know, everybody was, wow. Look at what that coin sold for. And lo and behold, six weeks later, another one came for sale for Heritage.
Tony Littlejohn:And I said, okay. I'm buying this one. I don't care where the price goes. But that's the funny thing about auctions and and buying at auction. It takes two people to drive the price up.
Tony Littlejohn:Yep. And once that other guy was gone with his $42,000 coin, which he then offered to resell, I bought the next coin at $24,000. Yeah. Right? It was and and and that coin ended up upgrading to a 26 to a 67 plus.
Tony Littlejohn:But that was a tough one. The nineteen s and d were tough. Those were the toughest three coins to buy. And if you're looking at full all four heads, almost some of them almost impossible unless you have, you know, multimillionaire pockets.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So you ended up getting your 27 s at the second auction the second time it came up because, I mean, this is what happens is that people see an auction record for one that goes auction. If they have one, like, well, this is the time obviously to, you to bring it to bring it to sell. But as Tony just mentioned, if there's only two people that were competing in that scenario, which you don't know I mean, watching an auction, you don't know how many people are competing for the coin. That's correct. But if there's only two people that are going back and forth and one of them acquires it, now who is that second person gonna compete against when your coin goes up for sale?
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, yeah, it's great. It's great you got a really good good deal on that. You know?
Tony Littlejohn:Good deal on a coin that I was willing to go to $5,060,000 dollars on.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. That's
Tony Littlejohn:it felt like a steal the second time. I knew there was that that okay. There was only one guy bidding against me. Yeah. As after I got above a certain level.
Tony Gryckiewicz:For those people who don't know, what makes standing quarters challenging to collect compared to other US series from your perspective?
Tony Littlejohn:I don't know. You you just don't see a lot of relative to, like, mercury dime. You see, it's standing liberty quarter, mercury dime, walking liberty half all started minning in 1916. Yeah. But you see lots of mercury dimes.
Tony Littlejohn:You see lots of walkers in uncirculated grades. Very nice coins. Mint state 63 and higher, just rack after rack after rack of it in dealers showcases. But standing liberty quarters are not like that. You may go to a dealer.
Tony Littlejohn:He he may only have three coins in uncirculated. Or he he may have 10 coins, and half of them are nineteen seventeens and the other half are nineteen thirties. Yeah. Those in between grades, the twenty six s's, 20 July. 26 is real popular.
Tony Littlejohn:But Yeah. The early days, eighteen d's and s, you just don't see them. They're they're they're just they're hard to find. They're hard to buy.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Remember the remind me of the one that you purchased for me at at Rosemont again. It was a '27 or what was it?
Tony Littlejohn:What was it? A 27D?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Was it a 27D?
Tony Littlejohn:Can't remember what.
Tony Gryckiewicz:No. It was an estimate. It was definitely an estimate because we talked about how estimates typically have that lighter strike or that not strong.
Tony Littlejohn:Yeah. I've been a 26S. They're all I don't have
Tony Gryckiewicz:them here. I don't remember. Off the top of my head. But
Tony Littlejohn:But the reason I bought one from me, it's hard to buy nice ones in higher grades, almost except for the 30. There's lots of them. If it had been a 30, I wouldn't even looked at it. If it had been a 17, I wouldn't even looked at it. Everything else is hard to find.
Tony Littlejohn:Almost all the other grades are hard. 29, 28, they should be easy. 20 eight's one the hardest coins I had to find in high grades. And it's a it's a common date. I I guess there were a lot of them were made according to the the the numbers that you see, but the numbers that you see in in high grades is just very, very low.
Tony Littlejohn:When when I bid on one at the Pogue auction and it went for three, four times, the price guide on it, and it was a 28. And that's not a that's not supposed to be a hard date. I couldn't find another one of that great for another eighteen months. This is a tough coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Something that I'm interested in is understanding a little more about the community that exists around all this registry collecting. Because I don't have a registry set. That's not my particular avenue. It's not what I do. But the community that exists around registry collecting, would you say it's competitive, is it supportive or a little bit of both?
Tony Littlejohn:I think it's mostly supportive.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, wow. That's great.
Tony Littlejohn:I I know a lot of the other guys. I know the guy that's got the registry under mine. Deloitte Hanson came in while I was trying to build this set, and that was a story in itself because he was able to buy sets and not coins. Yeah. Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:I mean, that made it that made it tough because when I went in to compete on the registry, there's the the registry has a historic it has all of the sets listed and who's had the top set for the last however many years. And when I saw the top set, I said, it's possible for me to pass the current top standing Liberty quarter collector. I I can see that potential. But then there was the just having fun set, which was the finest of all time. I said, that set is impossible to beat.
Tony Littlejohn:I mean, you'd have to have his coins to beat to beat his set. It's just Yeah. So high grade, and and every coin is immaculate. And and I never saw myself getting there, but I did see myself challenging the top guy, especially as over time, I realized he's not adding to his set. So he's finished.
Tony Littlejohn:He's got the top set, but he's finished. And he's had the top for the last however many years. But then I get halfway through this process, and another collector comes in and boom, straight to the top. That was that was mister Hanson. I said, who in the world is this?
Tony Littlejohn:So I go to a coin show, and by then, his name is getting around that he's building this this this massive set. He's buying sets. So he buys a whole he buys two or three sets, and that puts him in the top top of the list. So I said, oh, this is different. So then I started strategizing.
Tony Littlejohn:I developed a strategy of how to compete against him, which was kind of sneaky.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Then- I'll be very interested.
Tony Littlejohn:What I did is he passed me. Approaching the top set and he passed me. And then we both passed the guy that had the current find us. So I said, man, the guy's got unlimited money. He's probably got I didn't know him.
Tony Littlejohn:He's probably got people working for him. I better hide my set. So I took my set down where you couldn't see it. I just hid it. It's it's still there, but it's hid hidden.
Tony Littlejohn:And I continued to buy coins from my set, but I did not enter them into my set. But the registry has a function called the what if, and you can put that coin in, and it will show you what your set will do if it had that coin in it. Well, I had the coins, but it wasn't showing it. So it moves down to June 30 or whenever it is the PCGS does the the final for the top set. Then I put all my coins in there, and I pass them at the last minute.
Tony Littlejohn:Boom. So then I got came in the next year with the top current set. So the next year goes by, Deloitte passes me again, and I still and then for another year, I withhold all my coins. And then June 30, I put my coins in, and I pass them a year pass them again. And when I finally met him, I met him during COVID.
Tony Littlejohn:We were at a PCGS members only show. I think we're out in Las Vegas, and I was sitting at at at DLRC's table. And they all knew me, and they knew I had to people knew I had to top set by this.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Of course. Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:And he comes in to do some, DeLoy Hanson, and everybody's masked up. So I I can't tell who he is because he's got a mask. I've got a mask. He says,
Tony Gryckiewicz:yeah. I'm talking
Tony Littlejohn:to Littlejohn. He says, do you collect coins? I said, yes. I I collect standing liberty quarters. He said, oh, do you have a set in the registry?
Tony Littlejohn:I said, yeah. I've got a set in the registry. And that's all I said. And John Brush pulls his coat tail and he says, this is John Q. Little on the registry.
Tony Littlejohn:Wow. What's that mean? So he pulls up the registry and he sees the top set, John Q. Little. He says, oh, you're the one that every year passes my set at the last day.
Tony Littlejohn:I said, yeah. That was that was me. So we laughed about it. I'm going to have to figure out what it's going take to buy your set. And we left it at that.
Tony Littlejohn:I haven't seen him since. It's and then that's what I mean. It's a fun kind of thing. And I've met other guys that have top sets and their complaint is because when you buy a set at auction and it shows up in someone's set, then you know who bought it. And their complaint was every time we bid on a coin, you outbid us.
Tony Littlejohn:Yeah. And and, you know, in a heritage situation. But in a great collection situation where the bidding is timed, everybody does the same thing. Many people do the same thing. I'll say it that way.
Tony Littlejohn:They'll wait till the last ten seconds of the of the auction, and then they'll put their bids in. So you don't know what number you have to put in to buy the coin. And I bought many coins in the last two seconds on Great Collections where the the next guy, if he wanted to bid higher, he couldn't because there's no time left. That's been that's been kind of a complaint I've had with with with Great Collections. Why don't you, someone bids in the last thirty seconds, just extend it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Just extend it.
Tony Littlejohn:To make it more like a real auction. But but that's something
Tony Gryckiewicz:real auction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like eBay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mean, frankly Like, exactly. An item can sit at a certain level for a period of time. In in the last ten seconds, all of sudden, that ten ten x is what the whatever that price was. And you don't know what number you have to put in in order to win. You were you're trying not to pay too much, but at the same time, somebody can just go and nuke the thing and drop in a crazy offer and, you know, they if they put it in get it in in time, then, you know, you're gonna you're gonna lose it.
Tony Littlejohn:So I had a fellow
Tony Gryckiewicz:Good strategy.
Tony Littlejohn:Contact me that was bidding against me on a I think it was an Eisenhower dollar. And he said, I put my bid in, and then you you beat me at the last second. My strategy on bidding in those auctions is I put in the amount that if someone beats me, I don't care. I put my last bid in.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:So on a on a on a quarter that I got beat out of in a in a Simpson sale, it came back up in a great collection sale. And I had bowed out at $40,000, and the guy bought it for 42 or whatever it was next increment. And then he decided that he would sell his collection. And when I bid on Great Collections, instead of waiting till ten seconds left to bid, I waited till thirty seconds left to bid because I did want another I put in my highest bid, and it wasn't enough. I put in on a on a coin that I had just bid $40,000 on and stopped.
Tony Littlejohn:I bid $65,000 on and was immediately outbid. And so with no time left, I put in another bid and and and bought that coin. It was it was the most I was willing to bid for a few minutes, for a few seconds, but then when someone beat me, boom. I I bumped it another $2,030,000 dollars to get it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Just as general rule of thumb, I mean, terms of negotiating, in terms of of buying or investing in anything, just just buying anything, if you don't if you're not willing to walk away, you might find yourself overpaying for whatever.
Tony Littlejohn:You could I probably overpaid for that coin, but I didn't care. It's it's one of the most beautiful coins in my set. Yeah. Yeah. I I bid on a coin at Heritage, last year, and it was a 1919 in Medstate 60 '8.
Tony Littlejohn:And I end up I I looked at that coin at the lot viewing for all of about a second and a half and determined I'm it was a standing liberty court. I said, I'm buying that coin. I don't care what it bids to. And here you in live auction mode, and that coin ended up costing me $50,000 on a and I already had two in a half a grade higher cat that were prettier that I'd only paid $30,000 for. But the coin was so nice that I said no matter what it bids to, I'm buying it.
Tony Littlejohn:And I bought it at at a lower grade.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So I am going to introduce our little fun little segment. We are going to look at your your series here, but we're gonna play a little game. Okay? And what I'm we're gonna do is I've prepared 10 of your standing liberty quarters.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. I have blurred out the dates and the mid marks.
Tony Littlejohn:Oh. And we're
Tony Gryckiewicz:gonna play a game where we're gonna see if you can identify the coins in your series, okay, in your in your collection.
Tony Littlejohn:Okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And you can get a point for the date as well as mint mark, you know, like the what this what the coin is. You get a point for the grade that the coin is. So I'm sure you're gonna nail those if you get what the coin is. And then you're gonna get another point if you can guess the PCGS population for the coin of that grade.
Tony Littlejohn:Wow. Okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So we're gonna pull this up.
Tony Littlejohn:This is gonna be interesting. So
Tony Gryckiewicz:alright. So number one, we I have think here 30
Tony Littlejohn:Mint State 68 PCGS. Nineteen thirty s. No. Nineteen thirty s. Yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Nineteen thirty s. Okay. Mint State 68, you said? Mhmm. Alright.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And what how what is the PCGS population of these?
Tony Littlejohn:Pop one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Alright. So you got 3.3 points. Thought I thought I was gonna have to switch to the second slide. Okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:What do we got here? Oh. This is tougher because this is a blast white. Right? So, you know It's
Tony Littlejohn:blast white, and I've got to see the head because I've got
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'll show you the reverse as well. That's the reverse. Not that there's any major distinguishing marks here. You got a kinda got a little tick right there. But
Tony Littlejohn:So I know it's a type two coin. K. This could be my 27 s and 67 plus.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It is is incorrect. This is the 1919 d, an MS67. Yep. Yep. Alright.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I will I will give you an opportunity. Now you know that, what is the PCGS population for this one?
Tony Littlejohn:1919 d? Yes. Probably a POP three. Two or three.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's pop pop two.
Tony Littlejohn:Pop two.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. That's a tough one because it's Blossway. So we'll move on to this guy. I'm sure it's a little bit easier. It's a beautiful coin.
Tony Littlejohn:This one is a I just bought this one, and I bought three coins at the same time, and I'm mixing up how they looked. So let's see the reverse. Wanna say this is a 26 and 67 plus pop one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You got it. That's three points to the man, Tony Littlejohn. Alright. That's awesome.
Tony Littlejohn:I bought this one at the show. Nice. I haven't owned it but a week.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Okay. Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:That's why that one was and I knew I bought two of them, and both of them were toned.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I I think it's a pretty coin. I mean, it's got gorgeous little Tony here. And and yeah. Where do where is this kind of color come from? Is this album an album color?
Tony Littlejohn:Or I'm not sure on this. I would assume it is. And this I think if I remember how tone how coins tone, it starts with that kinda yellow and golden that works its way in and then the other colors come behind it. I think that's the way Okay. Coins tone if they're in an album.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Nice. Okay. So this one, I'm guessing is
Tony Littlejohn:a type one, mid stage 67 plus full head. That's the coin I paid the big money for.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, yeah. It's gorgeous. I mean, this is amazing.
Tony Littlejohn:The prettiest coin in the set. Population, shoot. There it's a it's a top pop, but there's like a there's a group of them. I don't know what the population is.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. This is a population. Great. Alright. It's five.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This pop five.
Tony Littlejohn:I know it's And
Tony Gryckiewicz:none none higher. Of all of the ones that we're gonna look at, there's only one coin here where there's a coin that's better, but we'll get to get to I love this reverse. I think the reverse I'm not too sure which I like better in terms of the out versus reverse. I I I think the reverse is gorgeous. I really like it.
Tony Littlejohn:Absolutely lovely.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Alright. So two out of three points. Alright. So this one should be easy.
Tony Littlejohn:16. Mint state 67. Pop one. Pop one in non forehead, but if you add the foreheads in, I think it's pop two or three with one fire.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. So this is a 16, folks. So the for those that know something about Saint Liberty quarters, this is the key date. This is the toughest one. I don't
Tony Littlejohn:know if I've ever Let's let's talk about that a minute.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Sure.
Tony Littlejohn:The coin that I thought I was the least worried about obtaining was the 16.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mhmm. Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:It's also there for sale all the time at every auction every time. If if Stacks has an auction, they're gonna have a 16 in it. If Heritage has an auction, they're gonna have a 16 in it. No matter who has the auction, they're gonna have a 16 in it. They're gonna have circulated ones.
Tony Littlejohn:They're gonna have clean ones, and they're gonna have they're gonna have nice ones. So that coin, though the mintage is only 50,000, the reason the mintage is so low on this one isn't that that when they started the coins in 1916, they only minted the coin for two weeks. They they did not get approval till the end of the year because they were going through the process and and back and forth between the designer and the mint and the mint personnel because this was the first one and they were concerned about whether they could strike the coin hard enough. This coin has the has the little m at the bottom right of the coin for McNeil. He's the designer.
Tony Littlejohn:Yeah. And McNeil never approved this version of the coin. Interesting. The reason the 16 is different than the 17 is that the 16 was a early design of McNeil's. They went ahead and minted it without his approval because they had a new mint director.
Tony Littlejohn:He's trying to get it out at the end of the year, so they minted it two weeks in December. Once they minted it, they held the coins. They did not distribute them in 1916. In January, they distributed the coins, announced that they had released the 1916 coins, and Herman McNeil found out that the coin had been minted through the newspaper. Oh, wow.
Tony Littlejohn:Said, this is not even the coin we were talking about, but it's got my initial on it. So he went back to the mint director and said, hey, we need to make some changes. They said, well, we're starting to mint the seventeenth now. That's gonna have to be quick. So they put just a few changes that down at her foot where the gown on the left hand side, the 16 is different than the 17.
Tony Littlejohn:Up at the top, if you look at her head, Herman McNeal says her head very top, he says her head looks like it's holding up the rim. You see where the rivets are going around the top? There's not one top of her head. So they moved her down, they squeezed her down. So the 17 has the ribbits going all the way around.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:They could not get all of his changes in and start the 17 because they were in January before they even released this. So they had a 17 release, and then they had a 17 type two release, which covered her chest with chain mail and did a lot of the things that McNeil
Tony Gryckiewicz:really want
Tony Littlejohn:to do. Well, you mentioned also Okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Wasn't there something with the cell right here?
Tony Littlejohn:Yes. What happened there, there was a pattern that the mint director was given before the sixteens were minted, the last pattern. And it had another olive branch which crossed the l. There was instead of just that one leaf, there was a whole another branch that crossed the l. And Von Engel Engel Engel something was the mint director and he took a metal instrument and scratched that leaf out and sent that pattern, that example coin back to the field, back to the foreman, mint foreman and said, mint this coin.
Tony Littlejohn:And that's why he only had two weeks to mint. I actually own the pattern that he scratched that leaf.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Which is the coolest thing. I mean, just the story that comes along with this is the coolest
Tony Littlejohn:It's amazing the politics of the situation. And you had a engraver or designer of the previous coin, Charles Barber was still in office when they were changing his coin. So he had all kinds of things to say. So he had all kinds of back and forth between Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, I mean, barber's coins were fairly plain and I think that was one of the reasons why they call for the redesign of the- They were
Tony Littlejohn:plain and they had run their cycle, which was from 1892, I think, to 1917. And that's the that's the the time gap that congress had in before you could change coins. That's why they changed all of Barber's coins The quarter and then they ran a competition between three artists to design the coins. So two the the same artist designed the dime and the walker, and then McNeil got to design for the quarter.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Isn't there something that has to do with the authentication of this where you can't because a lot of these sixteens are gonna be where the the date is just gone. You know, the date's not gonna be visible because it's kind of on a raised pedestal, so it's sometimes hard to authenticate a 16. Isn't there something to do with these the this design right here?
Tony Littlejohn:No. It's the it's the bottom of her skirt. The the the 17 you can tell a 16 from a 17, and that on the 16 is rounded, on the 17 is flat at the bottom. And then the ribbon above her head is different on the 17. You got extra
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is the 17. Yeah. The 17. And you have
Tony Littlejohn:the you have the the shape down there, the sixteen's a little different.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, this is a very tough coin. And they're they're expensive. I mean, these are expensive coins.
Tony Littlejohn:I don't think I've
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Own. I don't think I've ever owned one of these actually even in any grade. Even as a coin dealer that likes to carry key dates whenever I get a chance to. If any of you out there, you know, wanna sell me one, feel free to please email me at Tony@CabbageCoins.com.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Anyways, I had not actually owned one of these before, believe it or not. So but, anyways, gorgeous coin.
Tony Littlejohn:Gorgeous coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Alright. So let's move on to number number six. This is a beautiful
Tony Littlejohn:one. Oh, it's a type two coin. Let's see the reverse.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Reverse.
Tony Littlejohn:Man, I have so many duplicates. I'm looking at the I'm trying to tell by the luster. My guess, just if I were grading this coin, is this a 67 plus.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You're correct about that.
Tony Littlejohn:And if it's a 60 '7 plus or one of the key dates, it's probably gonna have a population of one or two.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Which one is it gonna be? Which one? Which
Tony Littlejohn:one is this? Let me kinda go through '17, '18, not a '18, not a '19, not a '20, not a '21, Twenty three s or twenty four s. I'm a say twenty four s.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So close. It's the twenty three s.
Tony Littlejohn:Yes. Yes. I knew a '23 or '24.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. So the twenty three s and '67 plus, what is what would you guess be on the PCGS population for this?
Tony Littlejohn:Twenty three s and '67 plus could be a top hop. Could be a sole. It is
Tony Gryckiewicz:a top hop. There it is. But how many is it soul top pop, or is it shared with how many others?
Tony Littlejohn:I'm gonna say it's the only one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Nope. There's two. There's two.
Tony Littlejohn:Okay. Two of them. So That's the number that changes all the time. You know? What?
Tony Littlejohn:That's the number that changes all the time.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh yeah. This was as of this morning
Tony Littlejohn:getting You coffee and then asked me two weeks ago on my 26s. I've got two 26s that have been in 67. They'd have been a Top Pop, and there's three of them.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And Oh, okay.
Tony Littlejohn:Wrong answer.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That's a six Well, you know, and and just to be really clear, I'm only counting the PCGS population. I'm not counting all the grading services too.
Tony Littlejohn:Right. I'm I'm talking about PCGS. Because one is two top pop coins have come out in the last two weeks. I'll say it that way.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. So we have now this one here, and this is color.
Tony Littlejohn:$19.20 and 67 plus. That's a Simpson coin. And there's now
Tony Gryckiewicz:So so what's your what's your answer on this?
Tony Littlejohn:I'm saying that's a 19 is that the Simpson coin? The 1920? 1920. Look at the head. Look at the orange.
Tony Littlejohn:It could be a twenty four s. Gosh. I've got two coins that look like that. Where is the rainbow on the Simpson coin? I think the rainbow's on the other side.
Tony Littlejohn:So I'm a say that's a twenty four s.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is a twenty four s. I'm glad you got it.
Tony Littlejohn:The Simpson coin has got the same little rainbow like that on a 1920, but it's on the other side of the coin. It's on the trust side. It's it's almost it's like a mirror of the toning.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And you said the grade was?
Tony Littlejohn:The grade of this one is six seven plus.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. And population? One. And pop one. Okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You got it all right. Three points. Three points. Okay. Let's move on to number eight.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is very characteristic. This has gotta be
Tony Littlejohn:I just bought it. This is a '66 s and 67 plus pop two.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That is incorrect. This is a 1918 and '67 Yeah. This is the 1918.
Tony Littlejohn:That's my 1918? One second here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Let's
Tony Littlejohn:Let me write. That's not a coin I look at very often.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'm just gonna go and look real briefly, make sure I didn't make a mistake. I checked it out this morning. I was almost absolutely positive, but $19.18 67 plus. Yeah. That's the that's your coin here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:$19.18 67 plus. You said you you were thinking it was a 26 s.
Tony Littlejohn:You know why I don't recognize this one as much? Because the one I have in '67, I like more. And it's the one Oh. Seven. The one in 60 got color off the charts.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, okay. It's
Tony Littlejohn:So I don't pay any attention to this one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. The '26 s the '26 s looks very, very similar. Mhmm. I I the this one's got a little bit more color overall. But
Tony Littlejohn:It's got more color overall. That's why was saying the '26 s, though, doesn't have the color coming into the center. More of the periphery. Correct. Yeah, I would've never you could've given me 10 guesses and I wouldn't have guessed the 18.
Tony Gryckiewicz:All right. But now that you know that it's 1918, can you still get the grade and the population?
Tony Littlejohn:Oh. Oh, the grade is, seven plus.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Grade's seven plus.
Tony Littlejohn:The, population at that grade, that could be a pop one coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. It's a pop one.
Tony Littlejohn:It's a Pop
Tony Gryckiewicz:one coin, and there's none finer. The number
Tony Littlejohn:It it falls off my radar.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, really? Okay.
Tony Littlejohn:It's pretty.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But John didn't like it at at CAC.
Tony Littlejohn:John didn't like it. He's gonna get another chance at it at some point.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. So this one is one of my favorites. I love the strike. I mean, the strike is gorgeous. But so what are we looking at here?
Tony Littlejohn:This could be my my infamous. I've got three of them. Nineteen thirty and 67 plus full head. That's what I
Tony Gryckiewicz:would Is that your final final answer?
Tony Littlejohn:Yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. You are correct. It is a nineteen thirty, 67 plus full head.
Tony Littlejohn:Because I already had two 19 thirties and 67 plus full head, but none of them were cat, but this one is.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So now this is gonna be the the golden question here is is how many of these
Tony Littlejohn:How many of them?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Are there in this There
Tony Littlejohn:are a bunch of
Tony Gryckiewicz:them. Yep.
Tony Littlejohn:I'm gonna say seven or eight.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So there's 10 currently tied for this particular grade. And this is the only one where there's one, I guess, probably an eight or is my This
Tony Littlejohn:one has an eight. Yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:All right.
Tony Littlejohn:And the reason this one, it took me years to buy one because of the of the cost that they were going for at auction. They were going for 15 to 20,000. And because of the population, I just thought that was too much money for that coin. So I was able to purchase this one with a CAC sticker for, like, $12,000 on great collections. But I just didn't wanna put the money, so I waited and waited and waited and waited until I could find my price.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Great coin. It's a really great coin.
Tony Littlejohn:But it's a beautiful coin. I was glad to have Alright.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So our final here is gonna be this guy.
Tony Littlejohn:The twenty nine s. I just got this upgraded last year. Twenty nine s and '68 plus pop one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Pop one.
Tony Littlejohn:Years ago. This was a twenty nine s and 68 CAC pop one. And when it sold out a great collections maybe six years ago, it was a 66 in a Rattler with a gold CAC sticker. And the dealer bought it, upgraded it twice to 68 with a CAC sticker. I tried to buy it from him directly.
Tony Littlejohn:He put it in Heritage Auction and I bought it out of Heritage as a eight. And then I got it into an eight plus last year or two years ago.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. So total here, what we're looking at is, I believe it is 22 points out of 30. So good job, mister Lodrojon. Not too bad. I'm gonna aspiring to have other collectors on, and we can do the same kind of a game and and
Tony Littlejohn:This is a
Tony Gryckiewicz:this a
Tony Littlejohn:good game. This is a good game. I like it. I like it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This this Care leaderboard.
Tony Littlejohn:My my love for the coins. What you'll find, I think, is that I am more likely to get right the coins I really like and the other coins that I don't I don't pay much attention to.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So I have a couple other questions then for you before we wrap up. I'm gonna go ahead and stop the the screen share. Okay. So you're also starting to collect Susan B Anthony dollars, which is a totally different series.
Tony Gryckiewicz:What grabs your interest of the Susan B Anthony Dollar?
Tony Littlejohn:Let let let me tell you about the Susan Bs. I have a Susan B set, and I have an Eisenhower set. Probably when the registry when I first got into the registry, those were the two denominations that I collected. They were so I wasn't trying to make a top collection. They were so cheap in in in in the moderate grades, like 66 for the Eisenhower's and kinda 66 plus 60 seven's for the Susan B's Then I could put it together a complete set pretty inexpensively, so that's what I did.
Tony Littlejohn:And I sat on those sets for years and waited on the Susan B's for some of the higher grades to come out. I stayed tied for third for years because you could not be first place if you did not have the first place guy's coins. So at some point in time, the guy that had first sold three of his top coins on great collections. I bought all three. Everybody slept through them.
Tony Littlejohn:I bought them relatively inexpensively, and it took me to the top set. And Okay. So over time, I've actually upgraded one coin in that set, and then I bought the other coins as they became available, for the Susan B's. I like the set. I don't pay a lot of attention to it.
Tony Littlejohn:There's another coin that's gonna be available here in a few weeks because a friend of mine got an upgrade that would upgrade that set. It's very hard to upgrade. Very hard to find a hard high high graded coins. Most of the top pops are are solo. They're only one of them.
Tony Littlejohn:And so it's a very, very difficult coin to upgrade or to. But there's gotta be coins out there because there's rolls and rolls of sets. I've got rolls of Susan B. Anthony's that I've never sent in. I've got books, Susan B.
Tony Littlejohn:Anthony's and Eisenhower's that I cherry picked when my daughters were children just because they were very, very nice. They're they're stuck in my attic somewhere. I've never even found the box that they're in. Oh, okay. So so those were sets that I built because they were very inexpensive.
Tony Littlejohn:Those were my first forays, really, into the registry competition. And I was like number nine or number 10 or something like that. And I'm so but now for Susan B's, finding those three coins catapulted me into into number one in that set. But, boy, because I had I've got three sixty eights. 60 eights are almost nonexistent except for the the latter years, the '99 kinda reproductions, I call them.
Tony Littlejohn:But those coins are just they're tough, tough, tough. And then what I've what I've been doing recently, when I say that the last two or three years, I like the Everyman set. The Everyman set.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You explain a little bit about what that is?
Tony Littlejohn:Everyman set is the top circulated coin set. So the top grade in an everyman's set is an AU 58 plus. Those things are almost nonexistent. So people that follow me on Instagram, I'm t l underscore coins. Yep.
Tony Littlejohn:I I I kinda brag on those everyman coins because those things it's hard to get a plus on a AU 58. You there's lots of AU 50 eights, but not lots of AU 58 pluses.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That is really tough to do. That's like really threading the needle. I mean, trying to hit the bullseye where you're not gonna edge yourself into the mid state category. That's correct. But you're also not gonna just land in an AU58.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, you're trying to get an AU58 plus. That's pretty tough to do.
Tony Littlejohn:The problem is that in my perception, and I hear it from other collectors, that most of the AU 58 pluses are in that state 61, 62, 63 holders. So no one was gonna downgrade them. And so the AU 50 eights are kind of everyday average AE 50 eights. And so they don't upgrade unless you find one. Every now and then, you'll find one that's just spectacular.
Tony Littlejohn:And and I have had the upgrades, but they're hard to they're hard to find. Hard to buy. Hard to find. Very expensive. They they generally sell for a 6 $64.65 money.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. It's interesting. I I've been noticing your your Instagram posts lately, and they're of these 58 pluses. And I'm like, this is interesting content. This is this is not the content I, you know, would have ex kind of expected to see in Instagram.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Someone really show show showing off their 58 plus, but now it makes sense. Now it totally makes sense about why. It's actually really, really tough grade.
Tony Littlejohn:A mint state $67.68 coin with light friction. That's a AU 50 8 plus. Now instead of $30,000 is 3 or $400, 500. So you can get the same luster, same color, the same quality for for less than a tenth of the price.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. And that's a great lesson and a great point Yeah. For anyone out
Tony Littlejohn:The same rarity.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yep. You know, if you don't care about numerical grades, you don't care about having a mint 66 example. There's a lot of really nice nice coins that have a just a little bit of friction. Mhmm. Ever so slight bit of a, you know, rub friction, a little bit of circulation that dumped them into the $80.58 category.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You gotta CAC stick around those. And now all of a sudden you got a fantastic great coin at like a fraction of the cost of a 66 or 67 or whatever it is. I think it's a really important point there.
Tony Littlejohn:I'll tell you a story. I had a show it to you. Don't know if you can see it on the screen, but this is a Yeah. A coin $19.00
Tony Gryckiewicz:4, right?
Tony Littlejohn:$19.00 4 piece.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yes. I saw it on Instagram.
Tony Littlejohn:Yep. I picked this coin. A dealer had rolls and rolls of Liberty $20 double legal. And he was promised that if he got them graded and delivered at the fun show, I think it was fun, Yeah. That some one person was gonna buy them all.
Tony Littlejohn:The person that was gonna buy them never showed up. So he had hundreds of coins for sale, and I went through hundreds and hundreds of coins just to pick this one coin out. It was a a u 58. I said, this coin is spectacular compared to the 60 twos, the 60 threes. It wasn't like any other coin in his group.
Tony Littlejohn:And about a month month or so ago, I I took some of the gold coins I had just to raise some money to US coins. I sell some of this gold, and that coin was in there. And when I showed them that coin, it wasn't capped. It hadn't been upgraded. And the first thing they said is don't sell us this coin.
Tony Littlejohn:I said, oh, why you say I didn't mean for that one to be in there anyway, but I had it put it in there. I said, why you say? They said, this coin is magnificent. I said, yeah. No.
Tony Littlejohn:That's not a coin I bought to sell you. That's a coin I'm sending to be upgraded and then to CAC. And it upgraded to first pass through and CAC immediately.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It is
Tony Littlejohn:that nice of a I need to take
Tony Gryckiewicz:a look at this coin.
Tony Littlejohn:Of a $20 Liberty compared to the because gold is so soft and it gets marked so easily that all of the the the the the double eagles are all marked up, and this one doesn't hardly have any marks on it. And it got it has all of its original luster and everything. And it was it was a no brain buy for me. He said, you don't want any more coins than that? I said, nope.
Tony Littlejohn:I don't collect gold. I'm not I'm not stocking it. I just want this one coin. It's it's just it's unlike any other one that I've ever seen. And I had already had one in 58 plus, and I still want this one because this one's way better than the one I have.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. And this is I mean, this is a very difficult, very impressive level of collecting. I mean, it's really up there. I mean, I I I gotta say because you're you're not just trying to get the best coin. You're not just go walking around trying to find the best coin or not just going to an auction and and bang paying big money to get a 67 or 67 plus or or whatever.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You're trying to really, like, hit a bull's eye, really thread a needle between the 50 eights, a circulated coin and an uncirculated coin, and you get the very best circulated coin you can that can't qualify for a mid state grade. Mhmm. I mean, it's a level of difficulty, honestly. I I don't know if there's anything harder than this. You know, some people like to collect those low balls, like the the like the poor one examples, and get those with a CAC sticker for just being a perfectly nice complete, you know, there's no problems at all to the coin, and that's that's tough to do.
Tony Gryckiewicz:What I'm
Tony Littlejohn:looking for in the AU58s is a a MedState 65 with some light rub. 65 or higher. I think this coin is higher than a 65 in its original state.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well what I imagine is you might be able to find a lot of these in CAC graded AU58s.
Tony Littlejohn:Possibly. Because
Tony Gryckiewicz:they're pretty strict on that. Yeah.
Tony Littlejohn:I have had some PCGS coins upgrade to 58 plus when I cross them to CACG.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Just because they are very strict about if the coin has any rub, you know, just not being in a mid state grade. So you might be able to to to to find some of those there. So just last couple of questions I have for you, and we'll we'll completely wrap. So for collectors listening to this who dream of building a number one registry set, what is the single most important lesson that you'd share?
Tony Littlejohn:Be diligent and look everywhere. Look at lots of coins. You have to look at lots and lots of coins. And then every now and then, and and and kinda let dealers know what you're looking for and not necessarily why. One of the comments I got back when the dealers found out who John Q.
Tony Littlejohn:Little was is that, wow, we may not have sold you that coin at that same price if we knew you had the top set. You know, it was it was kinda embarrassing to say, but they they said it that that, yeah, we probably would have charged you more had we known that you had the top set because they know that it takes a lot of money in some cases like a standing liberty quarter set to try to build a top set. Out of there are seven, I think, Mint State 68 plus standing liberty quarters. Well, I own five of them. So there's only two outside of my set.
Tony Littlejohn:But I say that at the same time that three of those I've made. So so you you really buy the I say buy the best coin. That's that's that's that's always been my motif. So that's why you see me looking at the AE 58 plus because that's the best that's the best circulated coin you can buy. And even on the uncirculated coin, buy the coins that's that's pleasing to you because if you get ready to resell, if you love them, it's probably gonna be pleasing to someone else.
Tony Littlejohn:It doesn't mean they'll pay what you pay. But, you know, I just buy to satisfy myself.
Tony Gryckiewicz:How can people if anyone has questions, if somebody's an aspiring staying at Liberty Quarter Collector or they just really wanna touch base with you, what's the easiest way to get in touch with you?
Tony Littlejohn:The way most people do is through Instagram. I'm at t l underscore coins, c o I n s. And I'm on there often more than email and more than phone. But, if they contact me on there and they need to talk to me in person, I'll they can I'll give them my phone number.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Awesome. Well, hey, Tony. Thank you so much for doing this. It's been a pleasure.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You are a wealth of information and just getting your perspective in all these years of collecting and and building the top registry set, five top registry sets, and a bunch of others that you've enjoyed collecting. Thank you so much again for doing this and for sharing your wisdom with us, And I hope to have you on again sometime, you know, in I the
Tony Littlejohn:appreciate the invite. It's been a pleasure and as always nice talking coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:All right. Take care.
Tony Littlejohn:See Thanks, man. Bye.
