Fast forward several centuries. The following story is posted on the Harry W. Bass, Jr. Foundation website www.harrybassfoundation.org

"In 1955, an accountant friend of Bass’ asked him if he could obtain some 1955-D Washington quarter dollars, since the mintage on the coins was low. Bass served as a bank director at the time. Bass said he was able to obtain a $10 roll of the coins for face value. Ten years later the friend brought that roll of quarter dollars back to Bass and explained a coin dealer down the street offered him 10 times the face value. ‘That captured my attention,’ Bass said. ‘I looked at numismatics being first, perhaps, an investment vehicle.’"

Bass went on to become one of the premier collectors and students of US coins, particularly of die varieties of Federal gold coinage and patterns. He served for seven years as president of the American Numismatic Society. Following Bass’s death in 1998, the assets of the Harry Bass Foundation, which makes grants to Texas organizations in the areas of education, human services, religion, science, arts, and culture, grew through the sale of a portion of Bass’s greatly appreciated coin collection.

Within its museum in Colorado Springs, the American Numismatic Association displays Bass’s spectacular and comprehensive collections of American gold coins, experimental pattern coins, and paper money in the multimedia Bass Gallery. The estimated value of these collections is $50,000,000.


Josiah K. Lilly, Jr., a third generation chief executive of the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company, died in 1968. His estate donated his collection of over 6,000 gold coins from around the world to the Smithsonian’s National Numismatic Collection. In return, based on appraisal of the coins by numismatic experts, the estate was granted a $5,534,808 federal estate-tax credit. Mr. Lilly had assembled coins of the highest quality, including numerous extreme rarities. They would have appreciated at a higher rate than the broader CU3000 Index. But even if we assume that the collection was worth only $5.5 million in 1970, and appreciated at the rate of the Index, had the Lilly family kept it, they would have an asset valued at more than $341 million today.


Willis J. duPont, of the family that founded DuPont de Nemours & Co., was a major coin collector. His purchase of Grand Duke Georgii Mikhailovich’s collection of over 10,000 Russian coins and 1,250 medals would have been produced a huge return on investment, except that duPont donated it to the Smithsonian Institute, where it forms the basis for the National Numismatic Collection’s Russian section. Perhaps the family received a tax deduction based on the appreciated value, as was the case with the Lilly family.


John J. Ford, Jr. died July 7, 2005 at age 81. As a teenager during the Great Depression, he paid 15¢ for a Confederate bill that later sold for $200. He quit his paper route to deliver for Stack’s, a famous coin dealer, then became a partner in the New Netherlands Coin Company. A coin dealer, he also built a major private collection. Eleven auctions of Ford’s numismatic holdings have already produced $35 million, and after nine more planned auctions the total may exceed $55 million. Ford, a numismatic scholar, produced auction catalogs with coin descriptions of unprecedented detail, boosting investor confidence in the days before independent authentication and grading.


Louis Elisaberg (1896-1976), dubbed "The King of Coins" after photos of his gold and silver coins shone forth from the pages of the April 1957 Life magazine, assembled the only complete collection of US coins: every type, every date, every mint mark. Considering that there is only one known specimen of some issues, Eliasberg accomplished a virtually impossible feat. He constantly strove, through original purchase and "trading up," to acquire each coin in the highest grade available. When Eliasberg loaned his collection to the Smithsonian in the late 1950s, 1.5 million people visited the exhibit. In 1975 Eliasberg calculated that the coins acquired for his hobby had appreciated at an average of 119% per year, demonstrating the value of quality. The collection was sold in three auctions from 1982 to 1987, for a total of $44 million.


John Jay Pittman (1913-1996), born in rural North Carolina, was 10 years old before he owned a new pair of shoes. He became a chemical engineer at Kodak and, on his adequate but limited income, slowly proceeded to acquire US and foreign coins for his collection. Pittman and his wife even took a second mortgage on their home to raise the money to travel to Egypt and bid in the 1956 auction of King Farouk’s coins. It is estimated that Pittman invested a total of several hundred thousand dollars in his coin collection. In three auctions from 1997 to 1999 the coins brought in more than $30 million. Like Eliasberg, Pittman was an early adherent of buying what I refer to as "investment-quality" coins.

Former US Congressman from Louisiana Jimmy Hayes put his collection of finest known "first year of type" US coins on the auction block in 1985 to finance his successful run for a seat in the US House of Representatives. The coins brought in $1.2 million. We don’t know how much Hayes paid for them, but considering that he started collecting as a youngster in 1957, and became expert at evaluating coins (his acquisitions were before the advent of grading services), it is likely that his ROI was as exceptional as the quality of his coins.