Recently GreatCollections had an auction featuring the Bellewood Collection of Lincoln Cents. The Christopher Collection had commented on the huge prices realized for some of the coins on the Coin Cabinet page. An ad in the May 17th Coin World though caught my attention.
The owner of the Bellewood Collection obviously had an eye for quality. I bid on the 1910 and 1910-S as well as several others but was blown out of the water. I did pick up three coins from this nerve-racking auction but they didn’t make the list above. The prices illustrated above are remarkable. 1910’s in MS67 CAC aren’t common but aren’t unheard of either. I paid half in 2017 for what the no CAC 1920-D went for and mine has a CAC sticker.
The Christopher Collection is fascinated by pricing anomalies like this. The excitement of so many great Lincolns available at one time may have led to a bit of a bidding frenzy. Perhaps some buyers were able to discern a difference between a great coin and a world class coin that escapes an amateur like me. Sometimes when an auction attracts Big Money (those who can pay $28k for a Lincoln penny) adding $2k to a bid is a trivial matter. Big Money probably doesn’t peruse the auction sites weekly like us plebeians and this was one stop shopping.
Ah, Big Money. We resent it when we lose a bid to it but cackle with glee when we imagine what coins in our collection might be worth on the right day.