The specialists at Stack’s Bowers Galleries have offered some insights into a few of the wonderful selections from their official coin auction of the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Summer Expo.
As collectors, we often disregard the original purpose of coins as lubricants of commerce. They were intended to be handled and spent, thus becoming worn and circulated. Credit cards and digital transactions have made that less of a fact for many of us, although we can always look to our collections as evidence of this bygone era.
And while Proof coinage is struck specifically for collectors, it was not–and is not still–uncommon for specimens to get placed into circulation, either out of carelessness or desperation. Nothing demonstrates this point more clearly than the handsome Proof-58 (PCGS) 1901 Liberty Head double eagle offered in lot 343 of our June Baltimore sale.
