That much change could be a guru of joy for a lucky coin collector. But you may want to watch this CBS news video first! Okay, not so much joy - at least for the typical coin collector. The 500 pounds of coins are all foreign!

Every year New York City has been bidding their entire stockpile off foreign parking meter coins off because they find it economically unfeasible to sort and exchange them all. That makes sense since they receive pretty much every denomination from every continent in the world.

Why are foreign coins in U.S. parking meters? Although they’ve become smarter in recent years, the meters will still gladly guzzle a non U.S. coin or two… or three… or four… or…

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It’s been nearly a month since CoinNews.net first discussed, as I initially described, “The Million Dollar Wonder Coins”. They were made by the Royal Canadian Mint and each coin:

• Weighs in at 220 pounds
• Contains 99.99 percent pure 24-karate gold (worth over $2 million)
• Has a Canadian face value of $1 million (~$940K US)
• And is pizza-sized, as described by the seller

A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc., an Irvine company purchased three of the “coins” from the Royal Canadian Mint.

Get ready to pull out your checkbook! It was just announced that its sister company, Teletrade, Inc., (www.teletrade.com) will auction one of coins through the launch of their TeletradeDirect® service, starting July 30th.

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Wowzers! If only one could time-travel back to 1894 and grab a few more of those Barber Dimes! I guess that would be a problem though, since by all accounts only 24 were made.

Okay, you could get OTHER 1894 Barber Dimes as there were plenty minted for circulation. But these special 24 were Proof dimes and the only ones made at the San Francisco Mint. And now, apparantly, only 9 of them are known to still exist with the finest specimen just passing hands.

John Feigenbaum, President of David Lawrence Rare Coins (DLRC, agent for Buyer) and Mitchell J. Spivack (wondercoins.com; agent for seller), jointly announced on 7/27 the completion of DLRC’s purchase of the 1894-S Barber Dime for their buyer, who wished to remain anonymous. Congrats to all involved!

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I was up late channel surfing one night when I happened to come upon the very beginning of one of those TV coin shows. The host was quickly previewing several of the coins that would be discussed during the show. I must admit, my annoyance swelled up just as quickly!

The preview prices were much higher than I would have expected. I almost immediately changed channels. But instead, I hit the record button and committed myself to watching it later. I was curious – just not that curious at the time. Well, I finally took the time to watch it… My reactions?

I was dismayed, yet impressed. I was shocked, yet interested. The dismay and shock came mostly from pricing. There were clearly too many instances where you could purchase similar coins elsewhere and spend much, much less.

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You’ll find tons of stories on the Internet describing cool coin finds in every day pocket change. For many, it can be the starting point of a new hobby and for existing collectors, it can be one of the most memorable experiences ever.

Interesting, just today on a coin forum and earlier this week on an early morning show there was talk about the expanding use of automated coin machines in banks and convenience stores. What you do is pour your change into the machine and in seconds it’ll sort and count everything for you. Perhaps one of the most popular is by Coinstar.

A selling point for the machines, outside of the fun of dumping the coins, is their convenience in saving you from the hassles and lost time of counting, rolling and cashing all your loose change. A downside is that there’s a fee for the service of nearly 10% unless you flip your change into certain Gift Cards or eCertificates.

Whatever you do, before dumping or rolling your change, take a good look at what you have! You never know if there’s a cool coin just waiting for a place in your collection.

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CoinNews.net has added yet another area and beta tool to the site that we’re currently calling, “The Silver Coin Valuator”.  In a nutshell, the Silver Coin Valuator is a simple and fast calculator for finding the value of silver content within coins. You simply enter two things:

1. The type of silver coin you want checked
2. The amount of those coins you have

From there, the Silver Coin Valuator takes over. It takes the current silver spot price and immediately displays the resulting silver content value. If you like, you can even change the silver spot price to check where your coins will go with an increase or decrease in silver prices.

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The coinage from the Royal Canadian Mint is among the most unique in the world. A classic example is their new release of a $30 silver coin with a colorful photographic hologram on its reverse that shows Niagara Falls. And it’s a panoramic view, no less.

Granted, it’s a collector coin with a limited production of only 15,000 coins. Yet still, there’s some innovative thinking in style happening behind the scenes in the Canadian Mint that you don’t see from the U.S. Mint or, for that matter, is currently allowed by Congress.

This new coin isn’t the Canadian Mint’s first holographic offering. In browsing their coins, it looks like it’s only a small sampling of what must be some serious technical achievements in coin creation and production. They’re standing out from the crowd.

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What better to talk about than another treasure find? The other day more news on the $500M sunken coin treasure popped up and now a huge hoard of Viking treasure is getting all the attention!

This one you can really appreciate. A father and son were walking their metal detectors along a farm field in northern England when they got a “hit”. After some digging, they discovered a pot of gold. Almost literally!

Apparently the find is the largest of its kind within England for the last 150 years. The pot was made of silver and lined with gold. But more importantly, it was packed full with over 600 silver coins and other historical significant objects that came from several different countries. Those Vikings could travel… Many of the items dated back to the early 10th Century, including at least one item from the early 9th. Wow!

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Since many coins contain a precious metal, we expanded our website to include charts and spot prices of silver, gold and platinum (found here). In doing so, I was reminded of a common misconception many people have regarding the system of weight for precious metals. Many think an ounce of gold is the same “weight” as an ounce of beef. It’s not!

When you step on the scale, you don’t think of it but what’s being measured uses the system of weight known as avoirdupois. If we’ve lost a few pounds, we’d say something like, “I lost 2 pounds!” We wouldn’t say, “I lost 2 avoirdupois pounds!” Read the rest of this article »

The Blue Book, or Bluebook as you often see mis-typed, is another book in the coin collecting world that has become a standard of sorts. The formal title is: “The Official Blue Book®—A Handbook of United States Coins”. It’s been around for a full 65 editions!  Any book with that many editions and used since 1942 proves something in itself. It deserves some respect!

What is the Blue Book?
It’s a wholesale price guide for U.S. coins going all the way back to 1616. Among other things, it contains:

• Average coin dealer buying prices
• Actual-sized coin photos
• Historical information about coins
• Grading and collecting tips
• Mintage and grading records

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