Fairmont: The Aftermath

In case you’ve spent the last five-plus years in Numismatic Siberia, you’ve no doubt heard of this accumulation of coins.

It’s huge. Likely well into the hundreds of thousands of coins. The value is likely in the area of $1,750,000,000 (this is figuring 500,000 coins at an average value of $3,500).

The hoard contained half eagles, eagles and double eagles produced from 1834 through 1932. Coins from all mints were represented: Carson City, Charlotte, Dahlonega, Denver, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. It was marketed and sold by Stack’s Bowers beginning around 2018 and extending to the present.

It contained some six figure coins (with the individual high price achieved by a nice PCGS/CAC XF45 1870-CC double eagle at $815,000) but most were in the collector sweet spot of $2,500 to $10,000. Price records were broken by dozens of issues in all three denominations.

As I alluded to above, I heard a lot of opinions about the Fairmont hoard and thought I’d address some of them as the suite of auctions conducted by Stack’s Bowers comes to an end in February 2025.

1. “Stack’s Bowers Could Have Sold the Coins More Transparently”

No one other than the principals involved in this deal is aware of the terms and conditions involved. There was too much focus on the backstory and not enough on the actual coins. If there was more transparency allowed, I’m certain that the coins would have been sold more based on their story than on their quality. I do understand collector’s hesitancy to bid on high-dollar coins at auction when they were unaware of what else was going to be sold. I think it’s safe to say that Stack’s Bowers was not allowed to be as transparent as some buyers would have liked but that many of these same buyers don’t ask McDonald’s where their burger came from.

The day-to-day mechanics of selling a deal of this size were daunting, to say the least. Selling the high grade 1891-CC double eagles was the easy part. Selling hundreds of About Uncirculated to low-end Mint State 1891-CC half eagles was the hard part. Stack’s Bowers wisely partnered with marketing firms such as JM Bullion and RCTV to sell significant quantities of these coins and many other issues which existed in quantity.

Not to mention the creation of the ‘Trash Gold’ sub-genre which took issues like MS62 1896-S double eagles which previously sold for small premiums over the Type price in the lower Mint State grades and created a market where such coins commanded significant premiums. This worked well until gold gained 30%+ in value which put the brakes on Trash Gold.

2. “The Coins Were Fugly”

I get it: not everyone liked the Fairmont look. If your experience with pre-1933 US gold is combing through eBay listings or going through boxes and boxes of doctored coins at shows, these coins with their deep, dark, dirty appearance looked funny. I’ve been an advocate of dirty gold for four-plus decades and I loved 75% of the coins from this source. The other 25%, not so much.

I’m not alone. The success rate that these coins had at CAC was impressive, particularly on the No Motto half eagles and eagles. In many cases, over 50% of the coins in a specific category stickered. What’s really critical to note is that many seemingly ho-hum coins (like a random XF45 S-Mint half eagle from the early 1870’s) were essentially unknown with undoctored surfaces prior to the release of Fairmont into the market. Amongst the cognoscenti certain Fairmont coins now command sizable premiums above non-Fairmont coins based on their natural appearance.

Assuming that the majority of the scarce to rare pre-1908 Fairmont coins have been sold, I believe that these coins will trade for even larger premiums a decade from now. A new collector of Liberty half eagles in 2035 will browse through the Stack’s Bowers sales from 2022 and 2023 and wonder with amazement how nice the coins were and how reasonably they sold for.

3. “Fairmont Killed the Market for (fill in the blank)”

For some areas of the market, the appearance multiple examples of specific dates was enough to kill it dead on the spot. For other areas, these additions to a starved market were welcome additions.

Thin markets such as No Motto fives and tens from San Francisco couldn’t handle the infusion of multiple Condition Census coins. Areas with a strong collector base such as Charlotte and Dahlonega half eagles not only welcomed the additional coins but thrived as a result.

Then there were coins like PCGS MS60 1891-CC double eagles that dropped from $40,000 to around $30,000 because a market that was thought to be robust (high grade Carson City double eagles) was for a number of reasons not as deep as one would have thought. My gut feeling about coins of this sort is if you find one that’s nice and you can buy it for 60 to 80 cents on the dollar, sign your check and overnight it to the dealer selling it. In my experience you will not get many opportunities like this in the future. Just don’t expect these coins to sell for more in 2025 than they did during the April 2022 and August 2022 Stack’s Bowers auctions which clearly represent the frothiest price levels for a significant number of the highest graded Fairmont coins.

4. “Fairmont Was Bad for the Coin Market.”

As a discriminating buyer, I typically find it challenging to buy enough nice coins for my inventory. During the peak years for Fairmont availability (2022 and 2023), it was not unusual for me to have bids on nearly every pre-1900 coin in the auctions in which these coins were available. I was able to obtain some exceptional coins both for my clients and for my personal holdings and I’m pretty bummed that I’ll likely not have such an opportunity in the future.

If you bought the really special coins in the sales (not the most expensive; just the specific issues which you never see nice) and you can hold them for a few full market cycles, you’ll do fine financially. If you are a true collector of dated gold, you didn’t buy these coins just to flip them in a year or two.

Unless your collection is full of bad deals and dangerous dates (i.e., those which were prime candidates to be discovered in quantity in overseas hoards or in shipwrecks), I can’t see a single reason why Fairmont did nothing but good things for the better date gold market. Among other things it did the following for me:

• It taught me what 100% unadulterated US gold coins should look like.
• It showed me what dates in the Liberty Head half eagle and eagle series were truly rare and which were not. My conclusions for all three design types of Liberty Head double eagles were especially enlightening and you can read about them in various blogs and articles that I’ve written or my website.
• It reminded me that for most pre-1900 issues, low mintages figures were an excellent predictor of what was truly rare.
• It gave me a larger pool of really special coins to sell than at almost any time in my career. This included a large percentage of coins that I could re-sell for under $5,000 which made these coins perfect for beginners and dabblers.

For more information on rare date gold coins and for more detailed articles and blogs on the Fairmont hoard, please email me directly at dwn@ont.com and also visit my site (www.raregoldcoins.com).