- Saints
- Saint-Gaudens' $20 gold coin issued 1907-1933.
- Sesqui
- 1926 Sesquicentennial commemorative half dollar or $2.50 gold
piece.
- Sideways
- A fluke which arose from an arbitrage game dealers played beginning late
in 1988 was known as taking a coin sideways.
White slabs were
then trading on teletype at 10% to 20% higher prices than their
clear sisters in allegedly identical
grade. A savvy trader could go to NGC's (White's) office and, for a small
but useful fee of $12, get an opinion from their graders whether his clear
coin would go sideways. If it did it would receive the same numerical grade.
If he got the hoped-for "Yes" answer, he then paid NGC's regular $75
walk-through fee and received his newly graded--and now more valuable--white
coin back in three hours. Inspired by others' success at this, Bruce L.
tried it with a PCGS Matte Proof-65 Indian $5 gold piece. By making the coin
go sideways from clear to white my good friend netted $2,000 more when he
sold the coin! Insane, but true. Naturally, the process went only the one
direction due to the price differential. As time went on the price
difference narrowed to the point where this activity declined.
See Pigs.
- Silver Coins
- Code name for cocaine, a popular adjunct to the coin business during the
boom years of the 1970s and 1980s. "Do you have any silver coins for sale?"
First heard from Boy Wonder Kevin L. Devotees often took to carrying about
on their persons small nasal spray bottles filled with a mixture of cocaine
and water. Occasionally one could spot someone spraying a toot! (For a
number of years there was a whole lot of sniffin' going on.)
- Singles and Doubles
- Derogatory epithet for the Booker T. Washington commemorative half
dollar (single Negro portrait on the obverse), and the Washington-Carver
half (conjoined busts of the two blacks).
First heard from someone in the late 1970s who would not want even his
initials mentioned here: "Can you use any singles at ten back of
bid?"
- Slab
- Also grade-certified, certified. Used early in the
spring of 1986 to describe the plastic holders then being issued by
Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) members, and later by other slab
services such as Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) and American
Numismatic Association Certification Service (ANACS), NCI (Steve Ivy),
ACCUGRADE (Alan Hager), Hallmark (Bowers), and PCI. Tout sheets by PCGS
claimed its holders could only be opened with a hammer blow.
"Slabbed," as in "Do you have any slabbed Saints?"
Slabbing became one of the most ingenious innovations ever dreamt up in
the annals of American numismatics.
Heard at the October 1986 Long Beach, California coin show: "Do you think
this will Slab-5? Slab-4 maybe." (Slab-5 being slang for Mint State 65
grade, etc.) See clear,
Pigs,
raw,
sideways, and
white.
- Slabland
- Shorthand way of referring to one of the two primary grading services,
PCGS or NGC. "That's a great piece you've bought. Why not send it in to
Slabland to see if it'll five." (Not to be confused with Disney
corporation's theme parks, in which the seductiveness of wishing upon a star
is also the chief focus.) See slab.
- Slide Marks
- In years gone by, collectors used to store their coins in nicely done-up
cardboard albums. Two clear plastic slides kept the item in place and
allowed one to view both sides of the coin without hindrance. However, to
remove a slide when one wants to insert a new addition to the set, it is
necessary to press one's thumb on it in order to "push" or slide the slide
out. This often results in the underlying coin(s) receiving one or two
parallel hairlines, known in the trade as slide marks. Once imparted to a
coin, slide marks are there for good, reducing the value and, in some cases,
halving it. With the introduction of grading services in 1986, grading got
tighter and slide marks took on added importance in evaluating the price.
Toning helps hide the damage. See
slab,
tonguing.
- Slider
- A coin having light friction on the high points. Unscrupulous dealers
(oxymoron) like to purchase at About Uncirculated prices and bump up the
grade when selling. By bumping up the grade to full Uncirculated, a heady
profit can be reaped. Coins that are close to Uncirculated grade are
sometimes referred to as super sliders, or Choice About
Uncirculated. I have also heard the following rubbery terms used:
looks Unc, nearly new, new enough, nearly there, almost there,
virtually Uncirculated, and nice. What a battery of winsome sounds
for "slightly used"!
- Slug
- Any of the round or octagonal California private issue $50 gold pieces
from the 1851-1855 gold rush era. Term said to have been invented by miners
who kept several of these clunky coins in a pouch and who, when accosted by
a bully, slugged him over the head with this handy weapon!
- Splendiferous
- A double-edged sword. Most people view the word splendiferous
as a snobbish, erudite proxy for "splendid". However, its more unfortunate
connotation (and the one in which I always use it when cataloging) is
"deceptively splendid". That is, not splendid at all but, on the contrary,
ugly! The more times I employ splendiferous in an auction sale, the more
hideous the coins are. I use it sparingly, however, reserving it for the
truly awful.
Q. David B., past president of Bowers and Ruddy (now High Chief of Bowers
and Merena Galleries)--May Allah smile upon his bones!--employs the word in
its positive sense, perhaps not realizing it has this ulterior
meaning.
- Steelies
- Steel cents issued in 1943 because copper was a critical wartime
metal.
- Stella
- Pattern 1879 and 1880 $4 gold pieces featuring a large star as their
reverse motif. America's most famous researcher and pederast, Walter Breen,
reports in his monumental Complete Encyclopedia of U. S. and Colonial
Coins, p.511, a curious incident surrounding these rare patterns:
Though extremely popular today, and much exaggerated in rarity,
Stellas in their own day provided a juicy scandal resulting in amusing
newspaper copy for several years--and many laughs at the expense of the
congressmen who had ordered the restrikes. The story broke that while no
coin collector could obtain a Stella from the Mint Bureau at any price,
looped specimens commonly adorned the bosoms of Washington's most famous
madams, who owned the bordellos favored by those same congressmen. Today
there are several dozen 1879 Flowing Hair Stellas with telltale traces
of removal of those same loops, whose owners probably sometimes wish the
coins could talk.
A record of sorts was made in August 1991 when dealer Andy L. sold his
PCGS slabbed Proof-66 1880 Coiled Hair variety Stella at
a Superior Galleries auction I cataloged. Andy had paid $900,000 for it in
the heat of the market eighteen months before. Superior sold it for $400,000
plus the juice. Someone, somewhere,
spent the half-million-dollar difference, more than likely on high living.
Win some, lose some--such are the joys of the market. "May you live in
interesting times."
- Steps
- Referring to the steps of Monticello on the reverse of the Jefferson
nickel. A mania developed in the 1970s of demanding full-step nickels; six
steps are visible when the coin is immaculately struck up. Willing dealers
complied by charging extortionate premiums for these. (Does the reader sense
a bit of chicanery in all this: full steps,
full head,
full bell lines,
full bands, etc.?) The full steps
mania had run its course by the mid-eighties, to replaced by other, equally
clever ruses.
- Susie B's
- Susan B. Anthony dollar coins minted from 1979 to 1981. The public
rejected these small, ugly coins and minting ceased.
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