Oh boy, this was an interesting coin collection... This is a collection from a man who recently passed away. It was my friends grandpa, and I offered to give them a value on the coins that he had been stockpiling. I didn't know what to expect, but I was hoping the coins would be interesting or worth something decent. I was given a small leather bag Which I was told contained all the coins. Not as big as I had imagined but nonetheless, I opened it and found it packed to the brim with little bags containing no more than one coin each. I pulled out one, and the first bag I got was a coin labeled to be worth no less that $1,195. Behold, The holy grail of zinc cents: I couldn't believe my eyes. There were about 25 individually bagged 2007 cents, all labeled at $1,195. There was also another 25 of each 1944, 1958, 1980 and 1983 individually bagged pennies in the collection labeled at equally ridiculous prices. I don't know why he chose those years specifically, but there were tons of them. Now I don't want to make fun of him too much. He was a great guy, and a WWII veteran. He also wrote a book about it his WWII experience. It was a great read, and he had a lot of crazy stories in it; I would recommend. PT Boat 81 by Milton Rackham https://ptboat81.weebly.com/about-the-book.html And as for the coin collection itself, it wasn't all worthless; there actually were a few interesting things in it that may hold a bit of value. I haven't done my research on many of these yet, but here are some of the cool things I found in it. I might throw in a few updates about what these coins are and their values, so stay tuned. There was this thing, which looked to be some kind of German commemorative. Definitely worth researching. Then there was this old lighter made out of a coin. Obv. Napoleon III Emperor Rev. Empire Erancais Date: 1870 I think this one may have been worth more if it wasn't turned into a lighter, but I don't know yet. And finally, there was a captains insignia pin. No idea on value, but a neat find. Overall, a very interesting collection... But I'm glad to have been given the opportunity to look through it.
Lighter invented by Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner (remember Dobereiner's Triads) in 1823... I think Doug @GDJMSP had one...
I wonder if those ridiculous prices are a code for something else, or a decoy for would-be thieves? Maybe there are valuable coins marked "3 for $1" somewhere...
Since there was a few real copper cents struck in 1983 ( likely mint personnel efforts), He probably just went by the date rather than weight, etc. That's due to listening to others. It would be terrible if he had paid that much intended for his heirs after he left the living. We should all take notice. Jim Thinking also that the cent should be studied "Just in case " he actually knew what he was doing with an expert dealer or such.
I don't think he knew what he was doing. Personally, I think he may have made up the prices himself. I was talking with his family and they said that he thought wear, damage, or "colors" added value to them. Colors could mean toning or verdigris whether they were appealing or not, and he put a sticker on some of the bags to mark them as such. Also, he never spent anything on his coins except for the 1944 and 1958 wheat cents and a fake 1797 8 reales coin that he got at a thrift shop... which he thought was real. Everything else was something he already had or something he found in circulation.
Kind of lame to get the families hopes up like that. Nobody that actually had to acquire coins of that value would store them in that manner unless used as a decoy as someone stated. I looked up the 2007 Lincoln on NGC and the highest graded ones are MS68 with a population of 4, valued at $700. So that number probably wasn't even grabbed from the highest value in a price guide. There's lots of people that just hoard stuff like this and over value the collection because it's theirs. The decoy idea is pretty neat though.
