COLUMBIAN HALVES STILL DOMINATE ON EBAY

I’ve noted before that Columbian half dollars by far are the most dominating World’s Columbian item on Ebay. Since every day fluctuates and just entering “World’s Columbian” or “World’s Columbian Expo” might give you anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 listings to explore, nothing even compares to the overwhelming number of listings for the Columbian commemorative half dollar. Name a hundred different WCE collectibles and the odds are pretty good that you will find more than 90% of them on any given day and likely with multiple listings for a great many of them.

I suspect most of you reading this, as a subscriber (please remember it’s free!) or just someone interested who is dropping by for a first visit, collect Columbiana. This blog/publication is for EVERYONE interested in the World’s Columbian Exposition. Readers needn’t be collectors or scholars or librarians or coin collectors, just someone interested in any number of aspects of the World’s Columbian Expo.

I am planning a mailing–email or snail mail–to nearly 200 collectors who have purchased one or multiple Columbian items from me during the first five months of 2024. The majority of these buyers did so on Ebay and many others (often the same collectors) purchased from The History Bank store (www.thehistorybankstore.com) as well. previously.

I hope to increase the number of folks interested in the WCE who also will become subscribers. As the number increases I would like to see the journal evolve into not just an onlinepublication/blog, but a forum for interaction and communication among those interested in the fair. We’ll see, but if you’re already reading this you are the core of those I hope to reach, and please feel free to suggest your friends, fellow collectors and others visit this site. It is very difficult to quantify the size of the universe of Columbian collectors and others might be; but if some 200 individual collectors bought from me between January and May of this year I would have to guess that there must be several times this number who are possible journal readers.

Back to the headline: An update on Columbian half dollars on Ebay. I still find it surprising that by far the most “popular” — or most plentiful — Columbian listings on Ebay are for Columbian commemorative half dollars. I personallly never hunt for the half dollars in my daily treks through Ebay but in May I conducted a quick tally of Columbian halves (although somewhat differently as I did a couple years ago when I counted listings over a several month period); this time it was just a look on three random dates in May 2024 and the tallies were nearly identical each time. The average number of listings for Columbian Halves was 277–or perhaps 15% of all Columbian items listed at that time.

The vast majority were for single coins, although nearly 15% were listings for multiple Columbian halves. And there were several for large lots–5, 10, a dozen and a few for rolls.

For everyone who is a veteran of Ebay wars, used to bidding and buying in the trenches, I would say that almost NONE of you are spending your time on Ebay searching specifically for Columbian halves. The exception might be those looking for BU and/or slabbed coins, or an undergraded bargains. I would assume that if you were searching for a slabbed example, you most likely will be looking for a 65 or higher grade. If you’ve tracked the prices over say the last decade or two, you’ve probably noticed that an MS65 was typically selling for around $500 for many years, and today can be found for roughly half that amount.

All this aside, I would guess that the vast majority of Columbian half dollar sellers do NOT specialize in Columbiana and likely know very little about the fair or the myriad souvenirs and other items from it. And if you look through actual sales on Ebay (just click on ADVANCED SEARCH and “sold” examples when you want to explore Ebay sales) you will find a number that is quite small in comparison to the nearly 300 half dollars listed for sale.

That record of actual salse on Ebay is very valuable but it should come with a warning not to make any broad deductions from just a handful of sales on Ebay.

In the simplest terms, the listings for Columbian Commemorative half dollars are from coin dealers or the many nonprofessional sellers on Ebay–mostly those who happened to find the halves in grandpa’s coin dish or maybe even at a swap meet. The very large number of halves for sale translates into a quite small handful of actual sales; the buyers are generally a mirror image of the sellers–neither sophisticated coin collectors nor serious WCE collectors.

I’ve purchased just a few Columbian halves in the last several years and all were BU and most high grade BUs. The last time I bought a large quantity of the halves was more than forty years ago! I had just completed writing my first book about the fair that was published by Preservation Press/The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Besides the hardcover book, I produced a limited edition for the Trust. It came with several “upgrades” as well as the limited quantity. The binding was hardcover leather which was in a slipcase that was die cut to hold a Columbian half dollar.

The Press limited that edition to just 150 copies and it was never sold in bookstores or made available to the general public–because the 150 copies sold almost immediately. The Trust included a full-page prepublication ad in its magazine for members of the Society for Historic Preservation–and those readers bought all of the copies within a couple of weeks of receiving their magazine with that ad. Other magazine readers had to be turned away. I was quite sure we could have sold at least twice as many based on those quick sales and the interest of the few who even knew a limited edition was published.

In 1992 when I went searching for 150 Columbian halves grading at least XF there was no Ebay; it wasn’t until 1995 that the world of online selling was thrown into bedlam that has only grown in the years since.

If I needed 150 XF-AU Columbian halves today, I would probably be able to locate them with just a few emails to Ebay coin dealers. In 1992 one had to do a bit more leg work to find a dealer or dealers who had the half dollars in stock. The first sellers I spoke with who had that quantity didn’t have an adequate number of coins grading a minimum of XF. When I found a dealer with 150 XF-AUs the wholesale cost was $13 per coin; the price would be about the same today– 32 years later.

Today I’m engrossed in working on my next (third) Columbian book — a catalog of WCE tickets and passes, and I want to stress that it will neither be a price guide nor a typical catalog. Included will be all known tickets and passes and besides specific information about these, I will also include a series of short- to medium-length articles as well. I want this book to be a reference used often, but also one that will be a good read as well.

And while it will not be a price guide, I will provide historical data on actual sales along with important details that will help the reader decide what each item might be worth to them; and based on the available information, readers will no doubt find that “values” are very different from one reader/collector to hte next.

I am also examining the possibilities of different bindings and if there is a market for a limited edition. I will provide updates here throughout the rest of the year; my plan/goal is to be finished by the end of 2024.

I have been working on an article examining several current topics about sales and values for various Columbian collectibles; as I completed the research and began writing it became clear to me that it would be a very long article, longer than I want to publish here. So, I have decided to publish a three-part series examining current sales and how those sales may be modifying how collectors and sellers view the market….and how their perceptions drive values. It’s no secret that I believe traditional price guides for Columbian medals (so-called dollars and items listed in the very outdated Eglit guide) are simply not appropriate for many reasons. I will go into depth in the next article here, which will be Part I of the series about current sales and perceived values.

Please, if you have questions or comments, let me know; and if you have or know of other collectors who have rare tickets and/or passes, please put me in touch. While I am quite sure the book will include dozens of examples most collectors have never seen, I’m also aware that there are many collectors who very well might have tickets I’ve never seen.