Owner Comments:
Mintage: 4,110,000
The 1875 is by far the most common coin in this series, with a mintage that roughly equals the total combined mintage of all the other years this denomination was minted while featuring Wilhelm III (1876-1889). Because of this, of all the coins in this set, this is the only one that you can almost always find 4-5 of for sale on eBay at any given time - and that’s just the NGC graded ones. If you add in PCGS graded examples and raw coins the number goes higher.
Based on that it probably stands to reason that the first coin I bought for this set was an 1875.
Because this year of all years is so common, I really wanted to get a high-grade example - an MS66 or, better yet, an MS67. I wanted this coin to be an anchor / strong point for the set that would follow, which I knew would be mostly MS65 if I was lucky.
NGC graded MS67s are quite rare. There’s only about 50 graded by NGC in that grade and I don’t know that I have ever seen one graded by NGC in that grade come up for sale. I’ve rarely seen one from PCGS come up in that grade. One of those times was in 2009 when I was shopping for this set for the first time.
I paid a premium and got a PCGS graded MS67 to start the set, at a time when PCGS graded coins were allowed in this registry, and, for about 3.5 years, that coin was part of this set and was one of the highlights of it.
As some who have been here for a long time will know, things change, and, in January 2012, all the PCGS graded coins in non-US registry categories were removed from the NGC registry, including my MS 67 1875. I’m not trying to dredge up events of the past that some still have hard feelings over by saying this / bringing it up, but it is a part of the history of the set and how I end up here. For my part, I understand and respect NGC’s decision, but it did leave me with a problem.
I was left with a coin that could no longer be part of my registry set, for which having it in the registry / as part of the set was very important to me. I had a set where I had the 1887 and the 1888, the rarest coins in the set by far, but it looked like I didn’t have the most dirt common date that literally everyone who collects the series has.
I spent years debating what I wanted to do about this - literally, years, from about 2016 when I returned to the registry after a long absence and saw the coin was gone until late 2019. In the interim I prioritized filling out the rest of the common date years first - picking up my 1877 in late 2018.
I considered multiple options including crossing the MS67 to NGC and taking the risk of a down-grade or selling the PCGS MS67 and buying a new NGC graded coin.
In the end I decided to buy a new NGC graded coin and keep both. I didn’t want to get rid of the first coin I bought for the set, a coin I still like, but I also didn’t want to send it off for cross-over. Not really. So this coin was purchased on August 29th, 2019 for $397.
Unlike with many other coins in this set, there is no exciting tale of finding it for sale and a nail-biting bidding war. This coin is common enough that it becomes a case of weighing options based on price, the look of the coin, the quality of the seller, etc.
I had been considering buying a coin in one of the “old fatty” style holders with a 195XXX or, better yet, a 1959XX serial number, to continue the theme holders and serial numbers I have with the 1876, 1877 and 1879 (and, to a lesser extent, the 1887). I even found an NGC graded MS66 with a 1959XX serial number that seemed like it’d be perfect for the set, but… then I tried talking to the seller and suddenly found myself not wanting to give him my money. The coin was already asking premium money for the coin and that attitude just really took the “shine” off it. So instead I went with this MS66. It isn’t in one of the old fatty holders and doesn’t have the “shared history” angle of the numerically close serial numbers, but, at the end of the day, it’s the coin that matters and I can’t promise these will be staying in the old holders anyway. I still dream of one day getting a full 10- or 11-coin set and sending them all in for re-holding to make them all match. But I won’t do that until I have a full set.
This is a very charming coin, and, with a grade of MS66, while is isn’t as impressive grade / points-wise as that MS67, it’s still a great addition to the set. (Sometimes I do wonder if I will ever see an NGC MS67 in the wild, for sale, and what it would cost me if I did).
This is one of only two MS66 graded coins in the set and they form the “bookends” or endcaps for the set, the first and last dates for the series - the 1875 and the 1889.
Last Rev: 09/2019