I am blessed to have the the most honorable nice guy dealer in the business a mile from my home. I stopped in yesterday to feed my weekly coin need. On the floor he had a large bag bursting at the seams full of Lincoln cents he was taking to the bank. So being the inquisitive sort that I am I had to ask...... He explained to me that he had been taking apart cent books that come to him from various estate sales. Told me that people won't purchase assembled books from him. Average collectors want to assemble their own books. So he was taking the books apart and sending the cents back into the wild. Made me wonder if I am doing it wrong?
I think I might have tried to buy them just for the fun of it heck I might had to have some CRH fun. Lol Dave
You have much better eyesight than I do. Makes me happy that I assembled my cent books back when I could still see them!
It has always been that way TBH. No one really wants to buy complete collections. Everyone wants to put their own together. Any dealer will tell you that breaking up a collection is always the best way to maximize value for 99% of the collections. It would have to be a very prestigious pedigree to want to keep it together. The best bags of wheat cents I have ever seen was from a dealer I knew. Back in the 80's they only kept like 6 dates in lower grades, and the rest went into bags. I bought a few of them, and they are full of early mintmarked coins, just missing those 6 dates really.
Knowing that he was only going to get face value for them, I would have given him a offer for the whole bag.
