I am pretty sure everyone has noticed those huge coin inventories that sell on eBay. I am fairly new to coin collecting and i find it to be one of the most interesting hobbies. But, are these coin inventories on eBay worth the price? The say they will give you a certain amount of coins that aren't searched, but are they really searched? I want to ask experts before spending my money on something that i am wary about Thanks Guys! Greg
My best advice is to stay far away from auctions like that. The other guys are absolutely correct. I'd bet my 09-S VDB that every "unsearched" roll of anything you find on Ebay or anywhere else for that matter, besides your Grandmother of course, is well searched. Nobody in their right mind would sell a truly unsearched roll of Lincolns for just a few dollars with the potential of finding a coin worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. IMO, theres no such thing as an unsearched roll.
Hi Greg, Welcome to the forum! Glad you asked before wasting your money. Nice change of pace. Nope they are NOT a deal. You WILL receive coins if you bid on those "huge" lots. Then as you learn the hobby you will realize that you have been ripped off. Hypothetically, I could offer you deals like that all day. Get out my garbage, tell you it's great then laugh my way to the bank. Figure out what you are interested in. Do a lot of reading and hang out on Cointalk. Knowledge is the key and it's available. Bargain lots are a waste of your money.
I know the conventional wisdom, and I think it is generally sound- stay away if you are expecting to hit a home run, because the odds are decidedly against you. I really doubt any "unsearched" lot is truly unsearched. However..... A couple of weeks ago I participated in such an auction. I bought 6 lbs. of Lincoln wheats that were supposedly unsearched. Did I find anything truly rare? Nope, not even close. Still, I filled in 26 slots in my Dansco Lincoln album with some nice cents. I kept a running tab while I was sorting and feel like I probably broke even, cost versus finds.
When you buy these lots you get X # of one year, Y # of another and 2 or 3 different other years totaling 5 different years of coins of the most common dates, worth the least of all. Out of 50 or 100 coins; do you really need that many of the same cheap coins? If you're trying to fill an album, pick a "lot" that denotes the coins you'll get and maybe that'll be OK for you to help fill your album. Best of all is to be able to look at each coin and grade it for yourself, if at all possible.
I got 86 different dates/mint marks in my lot. Again, none of them were truly rare, but a few were ones I've found to be harder to get, and several were better than ones I already had. I didn't include those numbers (upgrades) in the 26 I mentioned earlier. However, I must admit my Lincoln collection is rather sparse, so I was helped along a lot, whereas other Lincoln collectors might not have been with what I found.
It really depends though. If you are extremely lucky, you might be able to find something very rare. My recent find in a corroded Russian copper lot is perhaps one of the luckiest, having found two late 1870s rotated coins, 1795 Moscow Mint 1 kopek on 1788 Moscow Mint 1 kopek, which is very rare, perhaps a die test. But again, chances of that happening of very rare - perhaps I got it lucky as the concept of a corroded copper lot means that it's almost as good as copper value.
Thank you guys. My lesson is to stay away from those lots! I just won a 1955-S coin that I needed to finish out an album, so it is far easier to get the specific coin you are looking for, rather than buying pounds and HOPING you get the coin. Thanks for the advice! Greg
THINK!!! If I told you I had 10 Nickels in my pocket, all 1964 Jeffersons, but I never looked at them, how would I know what they are? Same with all Unsearched coins everywhere. If someone says they have all Wheat Cents for sale and all are unsearched, how would he know they are all Wheat Cens unless he looked? If is not likely anyone can have anything and know exactly what it is and never looked at it.
Most of those "1,000,000 unsearched wheats" are bs, most of the expensive coins and the key dates will not be there unless they missed them. Just my 2 cents....
some sellers use fake accounts, (through friends or on their own), to fluff up their feedback with "OMG I found gold/09svdb/lamborghini in my lot!". don't fall for it.
I don't think that is to bad at all. After all rare coins are rare because you don't usually find them.
That's true. For example, they minted nearly 25 billion wheat cents, of which only about 500,000 were 1909S-VDB's. That means if you had a truly random, unsearched pile of wheat cents, you would still only find a single 1909S-VDB for every 50,000 coins you search through. That's about 1 in every 350 pounds of wheat cents. So even if the seller is offering the real deal when it comes to unsearched coins, your chances of finding a key date in a pound or two of coins is pretty small, simply because they are so rare. I should also note that approximately one third of wheat cents minted were minted from 1950 to 1958. That means if you have a lot of wheats where less than 1 in 3 is from the 1950's, you're actually doing pretty good.
I had many holes in one of my Lincoln cent albums so I bid on an auction for a roll of wheat cents and won. I found one teen, two 20s and the rest 40s and 50s. I also got a beautiful red 50s cent that looks cool. These auctions are great for filling albums, but I don't think I would bid on one without this purpose in mind. Needless to say, the 40s and 50s are now full in my album! :smile John
From that angle I suppose it works. I know a LOT of us could fill an order like that in a roll. I don't list them anymore because shipping costs more than the actual coins basically. I, for one, hate to charge more for shipping than the actual sale price but it can't be avoided. The last Lincoln roll I sold was years ago and it was all S mints. Filled a lot of holes for a buyer but I listed ALL of them. No surprises, no garbage. Just S mint wheats.
