1931 S Lincoln RD vs RB

Maybe one of the Lincoln cent experts can explain this to me...quite an extreme in the price guide values. Thanks.
31 S MS65RD... http://www.pcgs.com/cert/32070533
31 S MS65RB... http://www.pcgs.com/cert/80566680

 

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It's just a guide and prices may not match what the coin would actually sell for.
Early Lincolns in Red bring higher prices. RB Lincolns are much more common.
Check a few more dates. They will probably also show a large difference in price. Nice early Lincolns in red can be tough to find.

 

Red Lincolns are pristine more like the day they were minted. RB are not. On your 31s much easier to find a PCGS in red 65 than rb 65. Current pop PCGS 798 to 142.
Then on your NGC side it reverses RB 175 to RD 41. That is just a sign of slabbing where there was more money that could be found at the time. The low mintage on that one with the demand because of it inflates the value. I don't consider that date worth it. Not a rare one for red. (Many graded red sitting in cases regrade them again all you get is RB) Yes coins can tone in cases.

 

Thanks Id, I clearly understand that it is just a guide...and about early RB's being more common, BUT... 375.00 difference for the same grade?
1937 ms65 RB vs RD is 10.00 difference...realizing of course that the latter is a much more common coin with a huge mintage.

 

RD is worth more points in the Registry than RB. So people chase the RDs even more than they did before, thus it is more in demand and will get a higher price. I understand why people want the RDs, but the premiums sometimes seem high to me.

 

Shown below are the PCGS slab counts for the 1931-S Lincoln Cent in all Mint State Grades, for all 3 color classes. The facts of the situation are Mint State reds (RDs) are more common than either RB or BN. Mint State Browns are the rarest in terms of PCGS-graded 1931-S Lincolns. In the MS65 grade, there are 798 slabbed red (RD) coins, 142 slabbed red-brown (RB) coins, and only 24 slabbed brown (BN) coins. If you want a bargain coin that holds it's value better (IMHO) it's better to buy a beautifully toned RB or BN 1931-S (at the lower price) and avoid the more common and higher priced RD's. Most RD's that old have been dipped (to make them red ... imho) and sometimes can appear lusterless and flat due to that process.



Here is an example of a nice lusterous MS63BN that I picked up for $150.

 

Actually, the 31-S is one of the least extreme price increases. The 1924-S is $2,600 in 65RB, but $27,500 65 red. Now there is an extreme. The 23-S through 27-S are all similar.

 

No kidding? Wow! It seems the more I read about Wheaties, the more confused I get. Now, on to studying the 1922 No D for even more "cornfuseshun"!

 

I've always viewed population reports as humor/useless data.... there is no way to account for crack outs & crossovers to name a few.

The only real data here is now many times they have looked at a 1931-S wheat cent. Not to be confused with how many 1931-S wheat cents they have looked at.

 

Now you know why I go for Brown Lincolns.

They're a ridiculous bargain at the grade.

 

Unfortunately, IMO you have misinterpreted what the pop report indicates. That is, more RD have been submitted than RB or BN. Although lots of these were possibly saved due to the mintage, I'll bet there are still more in the marked in RB and BN.

 

I think the price difference is crazy as the red ones will all be Red/Brown eventually.

 

For the 31-S, it is entirely possible there are more red than others. There are stories out there of many bags of those cents being purchased from the federal reserve banks. (Back then, the public could buy directly from the Federal Reserve banks.) I met a man who managed to get two bags from the FRB in Seattle. Someone else had a story of another 10(?) bags. That is a fair percentage of the entire production being recovered in full red from bags.

 

That's a question I had. I have some silver coins in slabs that are changing color or toning as time goes by. From what I've seen and read, the red pennies can also change from red to brown. Or once the pennies are put in a slab and out of the elements, do they stop toning and stay red if red when first put into the slab?

 

MOST slabs will stay red, but that is far from a guarantee. PCGS stopped guaranteeing color on them several year ago because they were turning. NGC will guarantee them for only 10 years.

BTW, there are many who will tell you NO slab will protect a coin unless stored totally out of oxygen.

 

Does anyone have any idea of how they might have been stored BEFORE they were slabbed as RD? 80+ years is a long time.

 

Then, would it be fair to assume that most older "RD" Wheaties have a color that has been altered? NOTE: in an older home, I have never seen copper piping that has not turned to brown from it's new shiny red.

 

Actually, it's not a "looked at" population, it's a final graded and slabbed pop. I agree that the TPG's are bad at accounting for crackouts and resubmits, however I wonder if with Secure Plus Fingerprinting of coins at PCGS, if that might improve over time.

One last thing, your argument would be much more convincing if the PCGS Slabbed populations went more like 80 for RD, 60 for RB, and 40 for BN. In that case I could see where maybe all the RD's were cracked out and resubmitted and they were counted twice -- in that case the real pop would be more like 40 for RD.

However with their advertised POP of over 800 slabs for MS65RD ... even if you say each and every red in that pop number was submitted twice (which is a hard sell to me given the cost of grading) ... that still makes a true count of 400 MS65RD's ... still leaps and bounds higher than the count of 24 slabs for MS65BN. (Plus who's to say that all the BN coins were not also cracked out and resubmitted (so that 24 pop of BN's might really be only 12).

To me the PCGS slab population reports, signify there are multiples more RD's than BN's in higher MS grades.

To further my point check out the slab populations at the MS66 grade. The pop is shown as 105 MS66RD's, 4 MS66RB's, and only 1 MS66BN. There is no way you are going to convince me that there are more BN's and RB's at the MS66 grade (than RD's) -- the difference is just too large. Even if you tried to sell me that each RD coin at MS66 was submitted 4 times (which is nuts) ... you still have a 25:1 ratio of RDs to BNs.

 

I agree w you GDJMSP !

Excerpted below is from Q. David Bowers definitive Lincoln Cents book ... talking about Matte Proof Lincoln Cents (which in the 1960's were about 50 years old)...