The Armour coin equivalent to the Comstock Lode just happened a few weeks ago when, lets call him, "4seasons" from upstate NY put a silver Pee Wee Rese up for auction on EBay. The winner shelled out$750 or it and then sent it to me to authenticate just in case he had to return it as a fake. The only other silver I have seen on EBay in the last 17 years was a silver Berra in the Drier collection auction [ see blog # 12 "Auctioning of the Drier Collection"]
If your interested in seeing a fake one see blog 19 Hi Ho Silver..........
The good news for the buyer and seller this time is that the coin passed all my testing and has thus been labeled authentic by ArmourPhil.
I took pics while I had it in my hands.
Scratches on the front and some collapse of the cheek from lack of plastic filling the mold. Back shows 3 divits on he right again from lack of plastic and some more scratches. This will not be a high PSA grader, but it, to the best of my ability it is REAL.
It is also opaque, but that's OK since both of the silvers owned by renowned collector Doug Stultz are also opaque.
After contact with 4 seasons it appears that at least 2 more silvers are in existence and believe it or not they are a correct Mantle L-R and the correct two words Trucks
The Trucks has pot marks on the front and back and the mantle is either swirled with red or red is showing through a bad paint job. Don't pay any attention to the fact that they appear to be different shades. More than likely that is a lighting issue. I took my pics above without direct light. I am not vouching for the authenticity of these two since I have not had them in my possession.
Seems old "4 seasons" also has some golds (he had one up for sale a week ago) . One of you veteran readers wrote to say that this was puzzling (meaning weren't they probably fakes) , but in reality in finds like this, rare colors usually show up together. 4 of my tans came from one person as did 4 of my golds, 5 of my azure blues and 2/3s of my transparent dk red/flecks. The rare colors just seem to be clustered in bunches, maybe from a mail in offer (although I have never heard of one for 1955) or maybe from diff colors being produced in different regions.
Whoever wins the Mantle, hope they let me put it through my tests and authenticate. This would be the biggest find in armour coins...ever.
Note added 05/14/2016: The auction for Mantle went off last night with 3 bidders and the winner shelled out ~$3300 for this certainly one of a kind Armour coin. Since the bidding quickly jumped to $3K earlier in the week I was not in the bidding at all...
Note added 5/29: I have added below a close up shot of the Mantle coins sent by the winner. The swirl is absolutely gold meaning there ARE gold correct Mantles out there and confirming the theory that South FLA and I have about the gold and silvers being made at the same time. 4 seasons Ron, the seller, has also put the 4th and final silver up for sale - Harvy Haddix. Interesting that 3 of the 4 silvers, i.e Mantle, Haddix and Trucks are coins with variations and in all 3 cases the corrected variations are the ones that show up in silver.
For those keeping track the Reese brought $750, the Mantle a whopping $3500 and I hear the Trucks went to ~ $350. Nice payday for Ron. !
