Rare penny worth a lot of coin

RANDY BOSWELL

POSTMEDIA NEWS

This Canadian 1936 coin is expected to

 sell at an auction next month in the U.S. '

 - HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES

  OTTAWA — Just weeks after the Cana­dian penny was pulled out of circula­tion, the single most famous one-cent coin ever produced in this country — an "exceedingly rare" and valuable 1936 "dot cent" stolen from a U.S. collector in 1964, then mysteriously returned to him — is set to be sold at an American auc­tion next month for at least $250,000.

  The penny was one of just three known to have been created by the Royal Canadian Mint at a time when the nation's coin-makers were scram­bling to prevent a shortage of proper­ly stamped coppers.

  The crisis loomed at the end of a tumultuous year for coin engravers, during which George V died and his son, Edward VIII, became king for only a brief reign before abdicating in favour of his younger brother, George VI.

  Between the time Edward VIII gave up the throne in December 1936 (to mar­ry American divorcee Wallis Simpson) and George VI was formally crowned in May 1937, nervous Canadian offi­cials — lacking a profile portrait of the unexpected new king to stamp on the country's coinage — prepared for a stopgap re-minting of the old George V design.

  To distinguish any new batch of coins that might have been required from the earlier production runs of 1936 George V pennies, a tiny dot was added by mint technicians in the space beneath the "1936" date of the posthumous proto­types, believed to have been made in early 1937.

Ownership key issue in Double Eagle suit

They're remnants of last U.S. government default

   PHILADELPHIA — The 10 rare Double Eagle gold coins at the heart of a federal trial in Philadelphia are remnants of the last U.S. government default, almost eight decades before the current stalemate in Congress over raising the debt limit.

   The daughter of a Philadelphia jeweler found the coins in a family safe-deposit box in 2003. The coins were confiscated by federal authorities. None were issued to the public after minting in 1933, the year President Franklin Roosevelt made it illegal for citizens to own gold and told investors that the government wouldn't repay bonds with the metal. In 2002, a single Double Eagle fetched a record $7.59 million at auction.

   Joan Langbord's lawsuit to reclaim the coins is stirring passion among the numismatic community at a time when gold is near a record reached in May and has rallied every year for a decade. President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have failed to reach a compromise on reducing deficits and raising the $14.3-trillion federal debt ceiling before the government exceeds its borrowing authority on Aug. 2.

   "The government is broke and, eventually, they will dig into everyone's pockets," said Tobina Kahn, the vice-president of House of Kahn Estate Jewelers in Chicago. "Anyone who puts money into gold coins has no confidence in the government or fiat currencies."

   Gold has rallied nine per cent this year and reached a record $1,577.40 an ounce on May 2 as the U.S. kept borrowing costs at a record low and purchased Treasuries to help boost the economy. Gold priced in euros was the highest ever Monday as investors sought a haven against declining currencies amid Europe's sovereign-debt crisis.

   A single 1933 Double Eagle believed to have once belonged to King Farouk of Egypt sold at auction in 2002 for $7.59 million, according to the court filings. The government minted fewer than 500,000 of the $20 coins in 1933, and all were ordered to be melted, according to the U.S. Mint.

   Langbord believed the coins belonged to her father, Israel Switt, according to the filings. The government, in a court filing, said the Secret Service in 1944 investigated "Swift's involvement in the apparent theft of 1933 Double Eagles from the Mint." The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Switt, citing the statute of limitations.

   The family gave the Double Eagles to Daniel Shaver, the chief counsel for the U.S. Mint, saying they wanted to sell the coins and split the proceeds with the government. Officials concluded that the coins were authentic and were government property.

   Langbord's lawyer, Barry Berke, didn't immediately respond to a message for comment. Patty Hartman of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said the trial is expected to last two weeks.

   Thirteen of the Double Eagles are known to exist, according to Robert Hoge, the curator of North American Coins and Currency at the American Numismatic Society. Besides the 10 coins on trial in Philadelphia, the Smithsonian has two and the King Farouk coin is on display at the Federal Reserve in New York.

   The coins, which have less than an ounce of gold in them, were "too expensive for most people to consider collecting them at the time they were minted," Hoge said. "There's so much history with these coins. The gold value of the piece is minimal compared to its historical value."

   Double Eagles were minted during the Depression, when Roosevelt was trying to prevent hoarding of gold and a run on bank deposits. The coin depicts an eagle with spreading wings on one side and the other has the image of a woman portraying liberty as designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that had been in use since 1907. In 1986, the same design for liberty was chosen for American Eagle Gold Coins.

   It's unlikely that the government of today would confiscate private gold holdings as it did in 1933, said Michael Haynes, the chief executive officer of American Precious Metals Exchange, an online bullion dealer.

   "Unlike the period to the 1930s, the U.S. currency is not now convertible into gold and silver," so the circumstances that led to Roosevelt's order don't exist, he said. The exchange's sales are headed for a record year and may be up more than 67 per cent from a year earlier.

--- Bloomberg News

Canadian stamp snafu on block

`Seaway invert' is expected to fetch at least $60,000 at Sotheby's in London

BY RANDY BOSWELL

  The most embarrassing stamp sna­fu in Canadian history is set to go under the spotlight at a landmark auction in Britain, where an extremely rare, unused quartet of the famous "Seaway invert" — a five-cent issue featur­ing an upside-down image celebrating U.S.-Canada friendship — is expected to fetch more than $60,000.

  That's a whopping 300,000 times the stamp's original face value. Hailed by collectors as one of the world's classic postal errors, and described by the auc­tion house Sotheby's as "an icon of Canadian philately," the botched print­ing of the stamp — intended to com­memorate the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 — caused a sensation at the time.

  It even prompted Time magazine to profile a 20-year-old Winnipeg stenog­rapher, Mildred Mason, whose discov­ery of the mistake "touched off a trea­sure hunt" in Canada as collectors raced to snap up the misprints, while the fed­eral government scrambled to destroy the inverted lot.

Red lettering

  First noticed in August 1959 after the stamp went on sale by the millions across Canada, the erroneous batch of a few thousand featured red lettering on either side of an inverted central image — an American bald eagle and Canadi­an maple leaf entwined in rings and superimposed on a map of the shared Great Lakes. The blunder was particu­larly mortifying for Canadian officials because the Seaway inverts overshad­owed a special bi-national collaboration in which the U.S. Postal Service printed its own version of the stamp — the first-ever joint Canada-U.S. issue.

  About 250 misprinted specimens escaped the federal shredder. Dozens of those were acquired by the quick-think­ing Winnipeg stamp dealer Kasimir Bileski, who paid Mason more than $5,000 for her one-buck block of 20 and earned an appearance on TV's Front Page Challenge for his relentless bid to corner the market in Seaway misprints. Most of the stamps have ended up in public collections around the world, including the Smithsonian's U.S. National Postal Museum, but about 60 are still believed to be in private hands.

  The block of four being sold by Sothe­by's in May belonged to the late Sir Gawaine Baillie, an eccentric British aristocrat and 1960s motorsports celebrity who amassed one of the world's most valuable stamp collections before his death in 2003.

  Another unused pair of the Seaway inverts, originally purchased in Ottawa, is also being offered at the London sale. That couplet is expected to go for about $25,000. Baillie's collection is being liquidated in a record-smashing series of 10 sales that began in 2004, including one New York auction last year that saw a single, ultra-rare example of Canada's most famous stamp — the "Twelve-Penny Black" of 1851— bought for near­ly $250,000, double the predicted price.

Pushing final price

  The significance attached to the Sea-way stamps by collectors could similar­ly push their final price well beyond the pre-sale estimate.

  The 1959 invert has been described by Charles Verge, president of the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada, as "the most spectacular stamp error in Cana­dian philately."

  The mistake occurred because in Canada the two colours were printed separately and the stamp's blue plate was initially placed upside-down.

--CanWest News Service

50,000 flawed U.S. dollar coins believed to be in circulation

George Washington dollar coins struck without their edge

inscriptions are selling for between $40 and $60 US on eBay.

   PHILADELPHIA — An unknown number of new George Washington dollar coins were mistakenly struck without their edge inscriptions, including "In God We Trust," and made it past inspectors and into cir­culation, the U.S. Mint said Wednesday. They went into circulation Feb. 15. The mint struck 300 million of the coins, which are golden in colour and slightly larger and thicker than a quarter. Ron Guth, president of Professional Coin Grading Service, one of the world's largest coin authentication companies, said he believes at least 50,000 error coins were put in circulation. "The first one sold for $600 before everyone knew how common they actually were," he said. `"They're going for around $40 to $60 on eBay now, and they'll probably set­tle in the $50 range."

$200,000 stamp stuck in ballot box

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The 1918 `Inverted Jenny' is perhaps the 

world's most famous stamp error.

$200,000 stamp stuck in ballot box

  FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A rare stamp that could be worth at least $200,000 may be on an absentee-ballot envelope sealed in a box with other bal­lots from Tuesday's election.

  Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom discovered the stamp, which may be the famous Inverted Jenny, while reviewing absentee ballots. There was no name on the envelope so the vote didn't count. Rodstrom discussed the stamp with the other members of the canvassing board — Broward Coun­ty Court Judge Eric Beller and the supervisor of elections. A stamp-col­lecting deputy overheard them and said the stamp would be very valuable if it was real.

  But it was too late. "By that time we had already sealed the box. And once you seal the box, under the election law you can't unseal it," Beller said.

  The 24-cent Jenny stamps were print­ed in 1918, said Maynard Guss, president of the Sunrise Stamp Club. Stamp sheets were run through presses twice to process all the colours, and on one pass, four Jenny sheets went through back-ward. Inspectors caught the errors on three of the sheets and destroyed them, but somehow, a sheet of 100 stamps got through. Stamp collectors have spent the past 88 years trying to find them all.

Associated Press

New coin for breast cancer wears pink

Next time a cashier hands you change, you may notice two-bits worth of colour in your  --palm. The newest quarter, a collaboration between the Royal Canadian Mint and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, is adorned with the image of a pink ribbon, and goes into circulation Saturday. Last year more than 5,000 Canadian women died from breast cancer.

--Vancouver Sun 1 April 2006

Smiling, forward-facing Jefferson on new U.S. nickel

   WASHINGTON — After nearly 100 years of depicting presidents in sombre profiles on its coins, the U.S. Mint is trying something different: the new nickel features Thomas Jefferson, facing forward, with the hint of a smile.

   "It isn't a silly smile or a smirk but a sense of optimism that I was trying to convey with the expression," said Jamie Franki, an associate professor of art at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. His drawing was chosen out of 147 entries.

   In unveiling the design Tuesday, mint officials said they believed the new image of Jefferson was an appropriate way to commemorate his support for expanding the country through the Louisiana Purchase and sending Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the territory in 804-05.

   "The image of a forward-looking Jefferson is a fitting tribute to that vision,” said David Lebryk, acting director of the mint.

   For the last two years, the mint has changed the design of the nickel every six months to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, both f which occurred during Jefferson's administration.

   The new five-cent coin, which will go into circulation early next year, is the last scheduled change in the nickel's appearance. It will feature Jefferson's Monticello home on the reverse side of the coin but in an updated image from the Monticello that first began appearing on the nickel in 1938.

--- Associated Press

An artist rendering provided by the U.S. Mint shows the front and back of the new nickel that will go into production in 2006. After nearly 100 years of depicting presidents in somber profiles on the coins, the mint is trying something different: The new nickel features Thomas Jefferson, facing forward, with the hint of a smile.