Happy 250th, America — Snowpack Numismatics is open
Two hundred fifty years of the republic, told in silver, copper, and nickel. The shop opens today, and the first coin is up for sale.
Today America turns 250. If you spend your evenings with coins the way I do, there was never any question about what day this shop should open.
Snowpack Numismatics is live. A small, hand-curated coin shop run from the Colorado foothills — the same mountain, the same family, the same standards as everything else we put the Snowpack name on.
The first coin
The honor of listing number one goes to an 1889 Liberty Head nickel, struck in proof and graded PR65 by CAC Grading. A nineteenth-century proof striking with mirrored fields you can read by, and the first coin we ran through our studio photography bench — what you see on the listing is the actual coin, photographed honestly on black. No retouching, ever. That is a promise that will outlast this post.
What's in the case
The opening catalog runs deep into early federal coinage and classic American type:
- A 1794 Flowing Hair half dime in F12 with CAC approval — dated the second year of the United States Mint, among the very first silver coins this country ever struck. It was eighteen years into the American experiment when this planchet met the dies. Today the experiment turns 250.
- A 1794 Flowing Hair large cent in VF35, from that same first breath of the Mint.
- An 1857 Flying Eagle cent in MS65+, the coin that ended the large cent era.
- Peace dollars, Morgan dollars, Walking Liberty halves, Barber proofs, a Buffalo nickel in MS67+ — thirty-eight coins at opening, every one of them certified by PCGS, NGC, or CAC Grading, with the cert number linked right on the listing so you can verify it yourself.
How this shop works
Browse the inventory, save a search and we'll tell you when something you hunt for arrives, or make an offer on anything marked for it. Every coin ships fully insured, and the expensive ones travel by Registered Mail. If a coin isn't what you hoped when it lands in your hand, you have fourteen days to send it back.
Coins are how a country remembers itself. It seemed right to spend the nation's 250th birthday opening a place devoted to that memory.
Happy birthday, America. Come see the case.
— Mike
