The truth is, if I had to pick the single most important change in the hobby, it would be the enthusiastic adoption of third-party certification. When I first came to CCN, certified coins were put in slabs, which had a negative connotation. Collectors smirked that coins would get resubmitted until they reached the highest plausible... Continue reading →
There is no doubt that the conflict was a watershed moment in Canadian history. Before the war, Upper Canada in particular was becoming more Americanized while north-bound trade was steadily growing. Some historians have argued that without the war, Canada would have eventually sought political union with its most significant trading partner. Ironically, the war... Continue reading →
The advantages for the Royal Canadian Mint are obvious: these coins are sold for way more than the cost of production, and the Mint controls the program. That means that it can make a really good profit on each coin, and it means that the Mint gets to decide what coins to produce, how many... Continue reading →
Pittman was a remarkable collector who managed to acquire all three of the 1936 dot cents at one time, and hung onto them until after his death. At one time he was simultaneously president of both the RCNA and the ANA; an unmatched achievement. There are even rumours that he was involved in the deal... Continue reading →
At this time the vast majority of collectors spending money on Mint issues are Canadians, and what’s more, more than 75 cents of out every dollar the Mint makes in numismatic issues comes from this country. That means that Canadians, as a group, easily spend more than $100 million a year on collector coins. That’s... Continue reading →
Legal tender does not mean an item can be converted into another form of cash, but simply that it can be used to pay a debt. When a merchant or bank agrees to swap four 25-cent pieces for a dollar or vice versa, it is doing a favour. The redemption of coins is the prerogative... Continue reading →
Now that all 1-cent coins are being recalled and melted, any survivors out in general use will disappear within the next 24 months. Finally, and this point bears remembering, there are plenty of cases of people poring through rolls and even boxes of 2006 coins and not finding a single error. Those failed searches don’t... Continue reading →
Ever since the new $1 and $2 coins rolled out last year, all of our coins have been made on blanks produced in Winnipeg; the excess capacity is for producing non-Canadian coins in the highly competitive world minting market. Of greater interest is the Hieu C. Truong Centre for Excellence for Research and Development. The... Continue reading →
One of the really difficult things for burgeoning collectors to grasp is the concept of how rarity affects the price of a coin. That is usually because they fail to look at demand. Take, for instance, errors. By definition most of the really spectacular errors are unique; freak coins produced when something went horribly wrong.... Continue reading →
The reason I mention it here is that I was immediately reminded of one of the first things I learned about coin collecting. That old maxim “buy the book before you buy the coin.” In this case the reason the collector found a great rarity was because he knew enough to know what to look... Continue reading →