CARSON CITY COIN COLLECTION ARTICLES

Add up their face value, and the 111 rare coins in the "Battle Born Collection" amount to under $600.

But throw in their lure to coin enthusiasts - each struck in the Carson City Mint between 1870 and 1893 with the most prized coin the only known 1873 "No Arrows" Seated Liberty dime to exist - and the price tag soars.

Their owner, an anonymous Nevadan, could earn $11 million-$15 million at auction next week in Philadelphia, and a Reno coin dealer assisting him in the process says it will be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

"This is my Olympic moment," Rusty Goe, owner of Southgate Coins, said Tuesday of the upcoming sale, part of the Rarities Night Auction at the American Numismatic Association's World's Fair of Money Convention. "This is the biggest event that's ever happened to me in my 30-year career as a coin collector."

Goe serves as a paid consultant to the collection's owner, whom Goe refers to only as "Mr. Battle Born" after Nevada's state motto.

Until the coins are sold individually at auction, they remain the only complete collection of coins made in the Carson City Mint, Goe said. They represent each of the 111 different date-and-denomination combinations issued from the Mint before it closed in 1893 in what is now the home of the Nevada State Museum.

The auction's success could be affected by potential buyers' confidence at the moment with market conditions, Goe said, adding, "We just won't know for sure until then. We'll see how close we come to our pre-sale estimates."

Either way, Goe hopes to use the event as a showcase for Nevada and the Carson City Mint's opening at the height of the Comstock Lode era.

He's already convinced Stack's Bowers Galleries of Irvine, Calif., which will put on the auction, to print a separate catalog on the Battle Born Collection in addition to the main publication for participants.

He also said a bit of historic irony has not been lost: The Philadelphia Mint, the nation's first opened in 1792, opposed creating a Carson City branch when the issue was debated in Congress in the 1860s.

"They said, why do we want to put a mint in that heathen territory, a Wild West area like that? So for this one night, Carson City will steal the show from the Philadelphia Mint," he said.

To read the complete article, see: Rare Carson City coins going to auction (www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-01/rare-carson-city-coins/56647974/1)

To read the complete article, see: 'Battle Born:' Rare Carson Mint coins going to auction on Philadelphia stage (www.rgj.com/article/20120801/BIZ/308010046/-
Battle-Born-Rare-Carson-Mint-coins-going-auction-Philadelphia-stage)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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