24th

This is my 24th letter as president.

The holidays are now behind us and that means the FUN Show is over. This year’s sghow was in the new Convention center across the street from the old center… what a beautiful building and much easier to park and get around. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and after picking up my car rental I couldn’t help but notice it was sunny and almost 80F out. Something mysterious in my car made me pull left instead of right for the Convention turnoff. After a couple miles I figured out what was wrong with the car. It had pulled into a golf course! Oh well, so I was a little late.

On Friday afternoon of the show we had a small but lively Club meeting. We had no formal scheduled agenda so we just enjoyed a lot of “Show-and-tell” items (we should do this more often). I saw a stunning 1856 Flying Eagle in the collection of Ira Davidoff. By far the nicest example of the Snow-3 I have ever laid eyes upon. It was housed in an older PCGS MS65 label, but as they say in New York, forgettaboutit, it’s an MS66 in today’s market. Rick Snow showed us a newly discovered variety from the show. It is a repunched date on an 1857 Flying Eagle cent, which will be listed as Snow-20 (with a neat die chip on the eagle’s right wing). There was a lot of discussion about the high-end condition-census material being auctioned and the astronomical prices being hammered upon them. The main concern was the grading services market grading and inflation of standards. Those in attendance included:

? Don Rhodes, a long-time member from Tennessee
? David Templin, also long-time member from Tennessee
? Glen Marhefka, a serious high-end Indian cent collector from Cleveland, Ohio.
? Bob Pedolsky, from Charlotte, NC. Bob is a good friend of the designer of the new Jefferson nickel.
? Bill Krechowsky, from Merritt Island, FL
? John Sheehan, a guest.
? Rick Snow, past President and president of Eagle Eye Rare Coins.
? Greg Davies, of Tampa, FL, a collector of Indian and Lincoln cents.
? Ira Davidoff, a serious collector with a sharp eye from California.

I took along some neat Indian cent exonumatic pieces for show-and-tell, such as Love Tokens on Indian cents, repousses, counterstamps and so on. After a couple hours of passing coins around we adjourned to hit the show floor.

And what a show it was for those selling as well as the hard-working piker scrambling the floor looking for a good buy… like me. I had a great show buying, probably the best ever for me. I found a choice high-end mint state 1869/9 Snow-4, which was an upgrade to my collection. I find about five Snow-3’s for every Snow-4 I come across, especially in Mint State. I found a few lesser repunched dates I threw in my trade/ eBay box.

But the best purchase for my Indian cent collection was an 1891 Doubled Die Indian Cent in MS64 BRN. Not only was it a high-end UNC and a large upgrade for my collection, it also was an earlier die state than normally seen coupled with an above average strike. I always look for this variety and until the show only had a couple mid-grade circulated examples to show for my efforts. The best thing about it was the price of $65.00. I found a few other items of interest for my collection, but this was the prime specimen.

And it got me thinking. Although they may not be as popular as overdates or the interdenominational clashed dies of our series, they still capture a lot of attention, and it got me thinking. Gosh, I’ve looked for all of these for so long, how do I personally rank them? There are a lot of desirability and rarity ratings out there, but man, I’ve looked hard for 20 years, not only at unattributed pieces, but the variety dealer’s listings as well. So I decided to list the best doubled dies in the series and assembled the table attached with just some of my thoughts at the end of my president’s letter.

But one more story from the show before I sign off. The last night of the convention I had a fascinating dinner with a couple old coin friends from California. They're both really sharp and in their mid to late 60's. One of them is Sheridan Downey III, an ex-lawyer who quit years ago to become a very successful (and very honest) full-time dealer specializing in Bust Halves. The other guy is more like me, a serious collector. He went to Harvard and retired as a prof from UC Santa Clara. These two guys do everything together. The last night of the show I gave them a ride to their hotel and they said, "Let's go out to dinner, Chris... we'll buy." They love this high-end Chinese place called Ming’s Dynasty by the Convention Center.

The ex-lawyer is just a really nice guy-- a couple years ago he bought a really rare Half Dollar for $30,000.00 and couldn't sell it because all interested parties thought it was counterfeit because it had a unusual grainy surface. So he sent it to me for analysis, and after a bit of head-scratching and some nifty X-ray work we determined it was indeed

genuine but had been dipped in Mercury years ago. So anyways, he said thanks, go and take your buddies out to dinner. So four of us ate and drank and drank and drank and racked up a huge bill at a fancy restaurant downtown and finally the waitress laid down the bill and said, " we have Mr. Downey's credit card on file and he said he'd be delighted to treat all of you."

"Never knew you were such a good tipper, Pilliod," my buddies said as we headed out. The next time I saw Sheridan I cringed, and he joked he had to deliver pizzas for a month after he got his credit card bill.

Well anyways, I remembered once he mentioned his grandpa being a US Senator from California (type in "Sheridan Downey" in Google and his name will come up). So down in Orlando he tells me this great little history of his Granddad and how he ran as Upton Sinclair's Lt Governor when Sinclair ran for Cal. governor. And then in 1938 was elected to the US Senate. Early on, they stuck him on one of the War Dept Committees because nobody wanted it and fortunately he was right in the middle of all the political action during WWII. I think he and Roosevelt hit it off pretty well. He handily got re-elected in 1944, but then the strangest thing happened that might have changed history forever.

Late in his second term, his Granddad suffered an unexpected seizure (he called it an epileptic seizure). He'd never had one before (and never had another one after), but back then they hospitalized him for observation for a long time. And while he was hospitalized the date to register for re-election came and went. His wife decided she didn't want him to run again... so she didn't fill out the papers and he had to bow out of re-election. According to Sheridan, his Granddad was really upset at the old lady, as he was only in his 60's and felt fine.

As a result, he couldn't run in 1950-- which he would have easily won. So this opened up one of the most famous Senatorial elections in the annals of the US... Richard M. Nixon vs. Helen Cuhagin-Douglas. And, as they say, the rest is just painful history.

Chris Pilliod, President

And as always, send any articles to our editor at:

Fly-In Club Editor
Frank Leone
P.O. Box 170
Glen Oaks, NY 11004 email:flrc@aol.com

If you would like to share any thoughts, my email address is: cpilliod@msn.com