Searching 1973 Mint sets for decnt Ikes

Clanton Gang on ebay has a broad selection of US mint and proof dates including dates you are looking for at market prices.

 

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It's a nice ike dollar. Im not sure on the grading. I wouldn't send it in for grading.

 

there are virtually no corner shops left in NYC

 

Details on soaking

 

This paragraph was tough for me to understand.

 

I agree with cladking. Yes, the importance for future generations of course, but ahead of that is our heirs.

 

There are several ways to do it and I'm still learning more. The tried and true way is 91% isopropyl alcohol. Just let it soak a couple days. Cover the container with plastic or it evaporates quickly. If you add some acetone it helps sometimes. After the soak rinse in warm water and lay them out on a plush towel and blot gently with another towel. Flip them over and blot again.

If you need a faster means I have some.

The '73 set isn't nearly as bad as the other early dates but is bad enough.

 

Wow! It must be the crime rate?

 

Some coins aren't so bad, like the '73 Ike. 25% are damaged but 95% of the damaged ones can be saved.

Other coins are awful. The '68 dime is damaged about 90% of the time and only 30% of these can be saved. '68-D cents are almost always ruined with no chance of being saved. Blue Ikes are a mess and fewer than half can be saved. Some coins sucked when they were put in the sets and are far worse now.

Once they tarnish the clock starts ticking. They can usually be saved in the first ten years but after 20 years very few can be saved.

Only 60% of '76-P type I's in the mint sets were nice. Now 70% of all these sets are gone leaving only about 400,000 nice coins but 90% of these are tarnished leaving only 40,000 coins if collectors start acting NOW. If they don't many of these will be lost. A lot of the 350,000 tarnished coins can be saved if collectors act NOW. A great number of the Gems for this date are at risk until they are removed from the packaging and stabilized. I believe this is important since fewer than 1% of these were Gem when they left the mint. There won't be many Gems if collectors continue to ignore these coins.

A lot of moderns are in danger and especially the first 25 years. I only recently discovered the SMS's have a lot of trouble. Coins that can't be saved are spotted and this applies to a lot of the SMS.

Coins we pass down to our heirs will have very limited value if they need cleaning or are lost irretrievably. We owe it to them and future generations to preserve these coins.

 

Let me say this another way.

The largest group of '73 mint sets I was ever able to check at one time was at a dealer in Indianapolis who had about 500 nice fresh sets back around 1978. From these I bought about five sets that were mixed and matched so they each had Gem P and D packets and a couple odd balls and no envelopes. I paid a premium price for these for the privilege of cherry picking them. If I remember correctly there were only four or five nice gemmy Ikes with a weak MS-66 and a few MS-65. There were some great quarters and a top notch Denver nickel.

Now you might be thinking the 500 rejects have been a drag on the market for the last half century but this isn't the way it probably worked. Each of these 500 sets had a high probability of being destroyed. Very few people even bought one set in those days so odds are a few were sold to walk in customers but 95% of them ended up being shipped to a wholesaler and cut up within the next few years. They may have wholesaled a few themselves but in those days this was pretty uncommon. Those sold to wholesalers are almost all cut up. Most maintain a significant inventory of sets but they get in far more than can be sold as sets. So the sets are randomly cut up to make BU rolls. This is the source of most BU clad rolls because nobody set aside most dates. These BU rolls are primarily used to make date and mintmark sets and sold to the general public or on television. They used to be sold in the backs of the coin papers as well. Indeed a few companies even sold them in ads throughout the paper. There were actually roll sellers in the classified and these were original rolls but sales even in aggregate over many years were quite low. These sellers told me that even back in the '70's they couldn't put together a single roll set without calling several of their customers to get the key dates. One told me he sold less than two bags of 1969 quarters in the first seven years before sales dried up and he took the rest to the bank.

The average 1973 mint set in 1978 had a 65% chance of being destroyed by now. But the sets that were picked over had a 90% chance of being destroyed. This leaves a lot of original sets in dealer inventories and most of them are at the corner coin shops.

I've picked over sets at wholesalers a little bit but generally speaking a lot of their sets are already picked over. Wholesalers have been picking over their own sets for a long time. They do it so quickly they miss a lot of coins but they do it.