The E-Sylum:  Volume 2, Number 52, December 26, 1999, Article 5

THE VANISHING PROOF SET MYSTERY  

   Ed Krivoniak brought up another recent "sale that never was." 
   He writes: "You failed to mention an American sale that was 
   canceled just a few years ago, involving a consignment of early 
   U.S. proof sets.    The owner of the coins was a lady from 
   Butler, PA, who had been judged incompetent for a number 
   of years and had a caretaker.   This caretaker talked the old 
   lady into going with her to the safe deposit of a local bank 
   where the coins were withdrawn. The caretaker then sold them 
   to a local Butler coin dealer for $60,000.   The dealer in turn 
   consigned the coins for sale at auction.  

   The lady's son-in-law saw some of the remaining coins in the 
   house and started checking on the values. When he found out 
   that they were worth significantly more than what the lady was 
   paid, he raised a stink and got an injunction to stop the sale. 
   The coins were eventually sold by Superior for $1.5 million."  

   Ed interviewed Pittsburgh dealer Saul Weitz for some of the 
   foregoing information, becoming in the process the first free- 
   lance reporter for E-Sylum.  Thanks, Ed!   A postscript:  

   "Saul also told me that a large number of early proof sets 
   started turning up on the East coast at that time and he 
   suspects that more of the sets were sold under the table, so 
   to speak.  There was never any inventory so nothing could 
   be proved but the son-in-law remembers seeing 1936 proof 
   sets years earlier that never turned up anywhere." 

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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