Although authorized as a U.S. branch mint in the 1860s, the Denver Mint operated as an assay office for its first four decades until coins were finally minted there in 1906. Liberty double eagles were only produced at the Colorado facility in 1906 and 1907, with a total production for both years of less than 1.5 million pieces. These coins are quite elusive in top grades. The one offered here features satiny looking luster and a lovely overall appearance. The PCGS population is just 24 with 3 higher, two of the latter being MS66+ examples. Listed at $18,200 in the CDN CPG and $18,000 in the PCGS price guide.
Offered at $16,675 delivered
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Finest known 1653 Gold Crown, and possibly for any date of this rare denomination and type
Of the highest quality, an attractive and lustrous example, sure to please the most discriminating of collector or dealer – a coin of this rarity and condition does not surface very often – call or email to reserve it today.
Offered at $19,850 delivered
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In 1853, the weight of the quarter dollar was reduced from 6.68 gm to 6.22 gm, and the reduction was noted on the coins by the addition of arrows on each side of the date and a burst of rays in the reverse fields around the eagle. The rays were removed for 1854 coinage, but the arrows remained at the date until 1856. The With Arrows, No Rays type was coined at Philadelphia and New Orleans in 1854 and 1855, and at San Francisco in 1855. The 1854 Philadelphia issue is the most plentiful of these, coming from a mintage of more than 12.3 million coins. Nonetheless, Gem examples are scarce, and finer pieces are rarely offered. We expect to receive multiple orders for this coin, based on our asking price. So don’t say we didn’t warn you to hurry up and buy it! Listed at $13,500 in the PCGS price guide.
Offered at $6,850 delivered
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Roger Burdette estimates a total of 9,500 pieces survive from a mintage of more than 2.1 million 1910-S double eagles. About 70-75% of those were repatriated from foreign holdings. Such coins would be an unlikely source for an example of this quality, given the rigors of transit and storage. This particular example offers lovely color and atypically clean surfaces, as well as a very nice overall appearance. The PCGS population currently stands at just 6 with 13 higher. Listed at $12,500 in the PCGS price guide.
Offered at $8,250 delivered
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Due to its generous mintage and the subsequent exportation and repatriation of many examples, today, the 1895 double eagle is a common date up to the lower reaches of Mint State, generally MS62-MS63 or so, at best. Examples in Choice or Gem condition, such as the one offered here, are extremely elusive, however. PCGS has recognized a mere seven MS65’s with a single MS65+ graded higher. Just two of those PCGS 65’s have sold at auction, the last one being more than three years ago. Listed at $20,000 in both the PCGS price guide and Trends.
Offered at $18,000 delivered
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This San Francisco issue is a significant condition rarity in the Liberty Head series. Although more than 2.1 million pieces were minted, fewer than three dozen pieces are certified in Gem condition. As a final-year issue in the Liberty Head series, it is possible the San Francisco Mint turned its attentions elsewhere and used little care in releasing the freshly minted coins into commerce or storage. Most survivors are heavily bag-marked. Luckily, there are a few exceptions and this coin is one of them. It is one of nineteen so graded by NGC, with none higher. Listed at $21,800 in the CDN CPG, $21,000 in the NGC price guide and $23,500 in Trends.
Offered at $17,435 delivered
We do business the old fashioned way, we speak with you.
Treasury prices rose Monday, pushing yields lower, as protests in Hong Kong underlined geopolitical worries that have weighed on risk assets.
How are Treasurys doing?
The 10-year Treasury note yield TMUBMUSD10Y, -5.68% tumbled 9.1 basis points to 1.640%, its lowest level since October 2016, while the two-year note yield TMUBMUSD02Y, -2.98% was down 5.1 basis points to 1.578%. The 30-year bond yield TMUBMUSD30Y, -5.61% retreated 11.1 basis points to 2.130%, its lowest level since July 2016. The longer-dated maturity remains only three basis points away from its all-time low.
Debt prices move in the opposite direction of yields.
What’s driving Treasurys?
Demand for safe assets like Treasurys continued to pull global government bond yields lower as investors juggled simmering trade tensions between the U.S. and China, U.K.’s grind toward a no-deal Brexit, and the steady drip of anemic global economic data. The worsening growth backdrop has, in turn, raised expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut rates again in September, following a quarter-point cut in July.
Thousands of protesters rushed into Hong Kong International Airport on Monday, prompting the airport authority to cancel all outbound flights. The protests added to the litany of factors that have bruised investor confidence in recent weeks.
U.S. stocks logged their second straight decline as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.48% recorded a 1.5% loss. Asian equities, however, showed a more mixed picture. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HSI, -0.44% ended lower even as China’s Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +1.45% posted gains.
What did market participants say?
“There’s no real evidence out against bonds right now,” said Kathryn Kaminski, a portfolio manager at AlphaSimplex, in an interview with MarketWatch. “There’s been a huge flight to safety across many asset classes since last week,” she said.
“You might as well thrown out the fundamentals for the time being, because as long as the globe is this unsettled, money will likely continue to pour into dollar-denominated assets like Treasuries. It almost doesn’t matter whether the data is strong or weak, that earnings continue to surprise to the upside, or that things are probably better than they seem,” wrote Kevin Giddis, head of fixed income at Raymond James.
The next recession will likely begin in 2020, according to the result of a recent panel of more than 100 real-estate economists polled by real-estate site ZillowZ, +0.43%. Half of those surveyed said the next recession will start in 2020, with nearly one in five identifying the third quarter as the likely beginning. Another 35% of experts think the current expansion will end in 2021.
The U.S. housing market is already heading into a potential correction.—Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s director of economic research
“Housing slowdowns have been a major component, if not catalyst, for economic recessions in the past, but that won’t be the case the next time around, primarily because housing will have worked out its kinks ahead of time,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s director of economic research, said.
“Housing markets across the country are already heading into a potential correction a solid year before the overall economy is expected to experience the same,” he added. “The current housing slowdown is in some ways a return to balance that will help increase the resiliency of the housing market when the next recession does arrive.”
Read MarketWatch’s Moneyist advice column on the etiquette and ethics of your financial affairs and, this week: ‘My children’s stepmother won’t return family heirlooms and gifts they gave their late father — how can we get them back?’
Morgan Stanley’s MS, -2.75% chief U.S. economist, Ellen Zentner, recently said there’s a 20% chance of recession in the year ahead. “For now, the path to the bear case of a U.S. recession is still narrow, but not unrealistic,” she said. And that was before the latest drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA, -1.48% and S&P 500 SPX, -1.22% as U.S.-China trade fight intensifies.
However, Zentner added, “If trade tensions escalate further, our economists see the direct impact of tariffs interacting with the indirect effects of tighter financial conditions and other spill-overs, potentially leading consumers to retrench.”
The escalation in trade and tariff tensions appears to have shaken consumers’ confidence.
Some Americans have already been feeling uneasy. The escalation in trade and tariff tensions appears to have shaken consumers’ confidence in recent months. Consumer confidence fell to a two-year low in June of 124.3 before rebounding to 135.7, the highest level since November, according to the Conference Board. The latest stock-market drop, if prolonged, could flatten that bounce.
Many people are living with wildly fluctuating income, a recent report from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System said. “Volatile income and low savings can turn common experiences — such as waiting a few days for a bank deposit to be available — into a problem.”
Despite unemployment hitting a 49-year low, plus low interest rates and inflation, people are feeling skittish. “A major trade war between the U.S. and China represents our greatest economic risk,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist of the Controller’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Despite unemployment hitting a 49-year low, people are feeling skittish.
All of these worries are taking their toll. 78% of adults are losing sleep over work, relationships, retirement and other worries, according to a study released Thursday by personal-finance site Bankrate.com. Over half (56%) of Americans are lying awake at night worrying about money.
So what’s preventing people getting enough shut eye? They’re tossing and turning over retirement (24%), health care and/or insurance bills (22%), the ability to pay credit-card debt (18%), mortgage/rent payments (18%), educational expenses (11% versus 26%) and stock-market volatility (5%). The site polled over 2,500 people.
The good news: A higher number of U.S. adults (62%) were losing sleep over money three years ago, and more people were lying awake over retirement (39%), health care and/or insurance bills (29%), mortgage/rent payments (26%), educational expenses (11%) and stock-market volatility (5%). But are sleepless Americans stuck between a rock (the last recession) and a hard place (the longest economic expansion in U.S. history)?
Millions of American believe it can’t last for much longer and fear a downturn is coming: 40% of people in a separate poll by that site say they feel the next recession has already begun or will begin within the next 12 months. These worries, however, are divided along political lines. Democratic Americans are almost twice as likely as Republican Americans to believe it’s already begun.
Jesse Colombo, analyst at Clarity Financial, cautioned readers of his Real Investment Advice column not to underestimate the severity of the next recession. “Virtually everyone is underestimating the tremendous economic risks that have built up globally during the past decade of extremely stimulative monetary policies,” he wrote.
Other signs that people are feeling under pressure and losing sleep. They’re working longer hours to keep up. Nearly half — 45% — of U.S. workers require a side hustle to make ends meet, and even middle-aged workers are feeling the pinch. This includes 48% of millennials, 39% of Generation Xers and 28% baby boomers.
The good news: More people were losing sleep over money three years ago.
The expected benefits of a strong economy has not helped everyone keep up with their daily expenses. Wage growth showed signs of an upswing earlier this year, but disappointed in May. Wages increased just 3.1% on the year in May, not including inflation, slowing from 3.2% the previous month.
But there are global issues that may be far more troubling. After a decade-long economic expansion and stock market growth, some economists say it’s only a matter of time before there’s another downturn. Oxford Economics, a U.K.-based forecasting firm, predicts that fallout from the next recession could trigger a 30% drop in the S&P 500 SPX, -1.22%.
According to the New York Fed’s yield curve-based recession probability model, there is a 27% probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months. “The last time that recession odds were the same as they are now was in early 2007, which was shortly before the Great Recession officially started in December 2007,” Colombo added.
‘Everyone should be terrified of the coming recession.’—Jesse Colombo, analyst at Clarity Financial
However, he sees a 64% likelihood of a recession within the next year. “The New York Fed’s recession probability model has underestimated the probability of recessions in the past three decades because it is skewed by the anomalous recessions of the early 1980s,” he added. The New York Fed’s model is based on the Treasury yield curve, which is based on U.S. interest rates.
And, Colombo adds, that model was skewed by a then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s “unusually aggressive interest rate hikes that were meant to ‘break the back of inflation.’ Looking at the New York Fed’s recession probability model data after 1985 gives more accurate estimates of recession probabilities in the past three decades, he said.
He has a long list of “new bubbles” that people should be losing sleep over. They include global debt, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the art market, U.S. stocks, U.S. household wealth, corporate debt, leveraged loans, U.S. student loans (currently topping $1.5 trillion), U.S. auto loans, tech startups, global skyscraper construction, U.S. commercial real estate “and U.S. housing once again.”
“I believe that the coming recession is likely to be caused by — and will contribute to — the bursting of those bubbles,” he said. In other words, Colombo argues that Americans have plenty of reasons to lie awake at night wondering when America’s decade-long expansion will finally come to an end. “Everyone should be terrified of the coming recession,” he added.
The 1907 Wire Rim Indian eagle is avidly collected by series specialists and pattern collectors alike as the only available issue that shows Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ original design for the ten dollar gold piece. It is listed as Judd-1901 in the current pattern reference, but most numismatists now believe these coins should be considered business strikes. Initially, 542 examples of the design were struck, but only 472 specimens were ever distributed. The remaining 70 coins were melted after 1915. The design exemplifies the style of Saint-Gaudens, sculpted in high relief, with concave fields that slope up directly into the edge of the coin. As compared to our images, the coin is much lighter, brighter and more appealing in hand. Listed at $84,500 in the PCGS price guide.
Offered at $75,950 delivered
We do business the old fashioned way, we speak with you.
Proof High Reliefs are one of the most divisive issues in U.S. numismatics. Generally opinion falls into either the “yes” or “no” categories with little uncertainty or middle ground allowed by either side. PCGS is in the “no” camp as they do not certify proof High Reliefs, and NGC is in the “yes” camp. Among the determinants for proofs, according to NGC, is a “distinctive texture and satiny luster” according to Scott Schechter, but more specifically it was the use of the collar that was used to strike the Edge 3 Ultra High Reliefs in March-April 1907 and again on December 31 of that year. We believe that a scratch in the left obverse field accounts for the less-than-choice grade and makes this coin more affordable than it otherwise would be. In hand, when tilted slightly under a light, it is lighter than seen in our images. Listed at $24,600 in the NGC price guide.
Offered at $23,000 delivered
We do business the old fashioned way, we speak with you.
Price is based on payment via ACH, Bank Wire Transfer or Personal Check. Major Credit Cards Accepted, add 3.5% Offer subject to availability.
