What follows is a very strange and sad part of CAC's early history.
I thought it might be of interest to some of the younger folks, or even old folks who just didn't know about it at the time.
Hopefully some of you can add to the story. Here is what I know of it....(if you choose to share what you know of this, please refrain from using real name)
Not sure of the exact timeline any longer but it was maybe two years or so after CAC's inception.
A fellow with too much money and not a lot of numismatic experience got into the hobby and learned that CAC coins were considered by many to be the "cream". He reasoned that GOLD sticker CAC coins were basically the best you can get, and set out to corner the market on them.
Great idea for sure! BUT the fellow made a grave grave mistake: he basically tried to buy up every CACgoldie that was on the market with almost no regard to the price he paid.
He unwisely enlisted the help of basically any coin seller out there. So very soon he was buying from many many sources all with one thing in common: everyone knew the fellow would pay crazy high, completely unjustified premiums for ANY coin with a CAC gold sticker on it.
I know I was not alone in trying to damper this guys exuberance. Several dealers tried to make him understand his folly but to no avail. He would call me about once a week asking what new gold stickers I had located for him. "Just name your price", he would say.
I recall him saying one time, " THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY FOR THAT COIN!"
To which I replied, "Yeah you are right. But you're not buying COINS. Your buying STICKERS".
Of course his activity had a side effect that I believe to this day has skewed the CAC populations somewhat. Many coins that most folks would not normally consider valuable enough to warrant the expense of stickering got sent to CAC in the hopes of getting a CAC gold sticker to sell to the fellow. Especially rattlers and other early slabs.
One could scour a show and buy up all the rattlers like Proof 66 common date Franklins, MS 65 Mercury's, etc. then send those to CAC and offer the Goldies to the rich guy!
This went on for many months. Then it all came crashing down. At an East coast show some Dealer purchased a gold sticker coin with the intent to flip it to our "fellow". He made a comment to another show attendee; something to the effect of, "Wait until you see what the idiot will pay me for this coin...hahaha!"
Well the fellow was near enough to the transaction to overhear the banter about how foolish he was. And apparently it took that: seeing/hearing how others were talking about him, for it to finally sink in. Just buying the cream was going to be financially disastrous if one totally disregards the price paid for the cream.
That was it. The party was over. Shortly thereafter Heritage received a very large consignment of CAC Goldies and of course the vast majority of the coins were auctioned off for a small fraction of what the fellow paid for them.
This last bit is pure speculation on my part but I bet the fellow wants nothing to do with rare coins to this day!
Comments
His mistake was dumping them all in one consignment. His other mistake was enlisting too many dealers to buy them on his behalf. They ended up bidding and outbidding each other for the CAC goldies.
I ended up with well over 60 gold CAC stickered old slabs from his huge Heritage consignment at a very reasonable price. Years later, I realized that it was one of my best purchases because many of them were the scarce NGC 2.0 slabs and PCGS doily slabs.
This collector may have had the somewhat of the right idea but was nearly 10 years too early.
A muscle car or two and some motorcycles parked inside too ….
ok I’ll stop . Man can dream and have goals no??!!! 🤓😉🤓😎
A muscle car or two and some motorcycles parked inside too ….
ok I’ll stop . Man can dream and have goals no??!!! 🤓😉🤓😎
LOL
I have a few of the NGC starred graded slabs only because they are collectible slabs especially when they are stickered.