A 1794 Silver Dollar graded PCGS SP66 just sold for $7.85 million, a new world record!  This coin is believed to be the first silver dollar ever minted by the United States, and is the finest-known 1974 dollar specimen in existence.  The coin was sold to the nonprofit Cardinal Collection Educational Foundation (CCEF) in Sunnyvale, California.  The previous record was set in 2002 when a 1933 $20 Saint Gaudens sold for $7.59 million.

Earlier this year a very rare nickel sold at a Florida public auction to an east coast coin collector. The 1913 Liberty Head Nickel sold for $3.7 million! It is one of only five known to exist in that particular date and design. The coin was minted in Philadelphia with the Miss Liberty design.

The coin was once owned by an Egyptian King named King Farouk. It was also featured in a Hawaii Five-O episode in 1973.

The value of the rare coin didn’t breach the $1 million mark until 2003. This is an extreme example of how rare coins can perform over a long period time. Rare coins have been regarded for a long time for their performance, privacy and their historic immunity from confiscation. Check out this chart showing the performance of the Liberty Head Nickel over the past 67 years.  What an amazing journey!

This is a very common question that gets asked everyday, and it is a tricky one to answer, because the answer is yes and no.

Bullion is gold that tracks along with the spot price of gold. It can come in coin form like American Eagles, South African Krugerands or Chinese Pandas to name a few. So the answer here is yes, bullion can be bought in coin form. Bullion can also come in bars or ingots in various sizes.

Here is where it gets tricky, because buying bullion isn’t necessarily the same as buying gold coins. Buying gold coins would most commonly be buying numismatic gold, also called U.S. rare coins. This type of gold has different benefits and should be used as a different part of your gold portfolio strategy. Numismatic gold can be bought in bars (very rare) but it mainly comes in coin form, therefore buying gold coins would be associated mainly with buying numismatics.

So you can see if you were going to buy gold you would need to be very specific with what you want to acquire. You can buy bullion coins or you can buy numismatic coins. Do your research first to determine which is going to be the best fit for you. Bullion is considered to be confiscatable, and reportable in some instances. Whereas numismatic coins are considered to be non-confiscatable and non-reportable but will cost you more as they are more valuable. However, the cost can be well worth it as time has shown that numismatics tend to outperform bullion gold.

Key Date Rarity Coins are those coins that are hard to locate or find due to low surviving populations from the original mintages. The survival rate is what is important here. The age and original mintage will not impact the value of the coin as much as the survival rate or number of coins known to exist (population).

U.S. coins from 1795-1933 are no longer being minted, in fact the original die is destroyed once a particular coin is done being minted. This prevented replication. Current populations are what determine if a particular coin is a key date rarity. In 1986, the advent of PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service) and NGC (Numismatic Guarantee Corporation), which are independent third party grading companies, track these populations. They examine each coin through a system of standards recognized internationally to determine the quality and authenticity. This grade is then recognized internationally. PCGS and NGC publish population reports which can be tracked by individuals at any time. In fact when these companies started publishing population reports, some coins that were thought to be rare were discovered to be quite common.

Two official government gold confiscations in 1834 and 1933 helped eliminate most of the coins minted from 1795-1933, thus making them more appealing to investors and collectors alike.

When determining if a coin is a key date rarity, one must compare populations of a particular coin to populations of more common coins. Populations in a specific grade of 1-10 or even 10-100 would be considered very rare when compared to the most common coin in the St. Gaudens type. Over 126,000 are known to exist in just the mint state 64 grade.

One of the most well known cases of building a portfolio of rare gold coins that we know of is that of Harold S. Bareford an attorney from New York.  Mr. Barford accumulated his collection between 1945 and 1955 reportedly for $13,832. He later sold his collection in 1978 for $1,287,215.