DANIEL WEBSTER Catalog features top coin

For collectors eager to relive the thrill of last July's auction of the world's most valuable coin, the New York auction house Stack's is selling hard-bound copies of its sale catalog.
The coin is the 1933 Saint-Gaudens $20 gold piece once owned by King Farouk of Egypt. It survived after the U.S. government demonetized gold and melted almost all examples of the 1933 coin.
King Farouk bought the piece with the approval of the U.S. Treasury, but the coin's appearance for sale raised questions of legal ownership. The Treasury had to sign off on the matter before Stack's and Sotheby's could sell the coin.
The catalog lays out the whole history of the coin and the 1933 minting, a history rife with skulduggery that touched mint officials, prominent dealers, collectors and Philadelphia businessmen. No wonder the $20 coin brought $7,590,000 at auction.
The catalog costs $95. Stack's is at (212) 582-2580 or infostacks.com.
Au currency
Frivolity is not the word most national mints would like engraved in stone over their doors, but many mints are moneymaking operations eager to make a buck.
Canada's Royal Canadian Mint, for instance, has struck a series of Harry Potter coins and a five-coin set of figures from "The Lord of the Rings." Liberia has gone even farther, issuing just now a gold commemorative, dated 2002, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the teddy bear.
The bear was born when President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a baby bear while he was hunting in Mississippi. The press made a big deal of that, and in Brooklyn, N.Y., candy-store owners Morris and Rose Michtom made a stuffed bear to put in the store window. It sold, and the Michtom's gave up candy to manufacture teddy bears.
The new coin, with a modest 3.1 grams of gold, sells for $69, plus $5 shipping. Queries go to (800) 472-6327 or infopandamerica.com.
Online viewing
Check it out. The process of viewing coins to be auctioned has been revolutionized by the Internet. Once, buyers had to travel to New York or Chicago or wherever the sale was to be held to examine coins, perhaps for a single day just before the sale.
Now, auction houses can post digital pictures of coins to be sold. Bowers and Merena, for instance, started showing coins June 1 for its auction Thursday through Saturday in Chicago. Other large auction houses are doing the same.