The United States Mint has offered an annual proof set in most years since 1936, and for long stretches of that run the contents were predictable enough that a collector could order one sight unseen. The set that goes on sale Tuesday, October 6 at noon Eastern is not predictable. Two of its coins carry […]
Canada’s Silver Maple Leaf had a quiet debut. The Royal Canadian Mint struck a little over a million of them in 1988, a modest run for a coin that would end up second only to the American Silver Eagle among the world’s silver bullion issues. Silver was cheap that year, retail interest was thin, and […]
Most people do not decide to become collectors. A cigar box turns up in a parent’s closet, or a cashier hands back a quarter with a worn eagle on the reverse, and a question arrives on its own: is this worth anything, and what am I supposed to do with it? That is a better […]
Ask most Americans when they last spent a fifty-cent piece and you will get a blank look. The half dollar is still legal tender, still struck by the U.S. Mint, and still the largest coin the country makes for circulation. It simply stopped turning up in pockets sometime in the mid-1960s and never really came […]
Plenty of buyers will spend an afternoon shaving half a point off a coin’s premium, then hand over several times that much at checkout without a second thought. In most of the country that second number is zero, because most states decided years ago that taxing money by the ounce made little sense. In a […]
A gold bar looks like the simplest object a person can buy. One rectangle of metal, a weight, a purity, done. Then you actually go shopping and notice the bars do not all look alike. Some are mirror bright with crisp corners and a refiner’s logo pressed cleanly into the face. Others are matte and […]
Sort through a coffee can of old half dollars and you may be holding three different coins wearing the same face. The 1964 Kennedy is 90 percent silver. Anything dated 1971 or later is copper and nickel with no silver in it at all. Between those two sits a six year run that gets overlooked […]
Half dollars stopped being pocket change a long time ago. The Mint issued none for general circulation between 2002 and 2020, striking them only for collectors, and the Federal Reserve did not begin ordering them again until 2021. Plenty of people under fifty have never received one from a cashier. That is what makes September […]
Almost everything written about precious metals is written for buyers. The other side of the counter gets a fraction of the attention, which is odd, because nearly every holding is sold eventually: by the person who built it, by a spouse, or by an adult child working through a safe deposit box on a deadline. […]
Pull a handful of change out of your pocket this month and look at the dates. If a dime, a quarter, or a half dollar reads “1776 ~ 2026” instead of a single year, you are holding a piece of the broadest circulating redesign the U.S. Mint has attempted since the Bicentennial. Nearly every denomination […]
