ive been buying silver dimes on ebay and have come across a whole bunch of different ones of varying quality. My question is, what is the value of a AG-G coin from the teens versus a VF-AU mercury from the 40s? should I be keeping my roll of teens or my roll of 40s? I want to invest in silver. Ideally I want a coin that has a back up numismatic value underneath the value of silver so that if silver falls and I need $ I can still get $$ from the coins. I have thought that it would be better to keep the coins from the 40s but I just dont know Thanks!!
Basic problem of everyone buying coins: what's valuable and what's not? I search for mercury dimes on eBay. When I buy junk dimes I try to get them at just below melt. If I have to go a bit over, okay; but it kind of depends on how bad I need a mercury dime fix. I won't spend too much on any mercury dime off of eBay unless it is slabbed by NGC or PCGS. I prefer PCGS. I will spend a *few* dollars on an unslabbed coin if I'm really interested in. But, not too much. No more than $20.00 Usually a lot less. You can't always trust the pictures on eBay. Partly the pictures aren't always very good. Partly because you can see what you want to see. I have a slabbed PCGS dime I got off of eBay. I thought it looked really good. When I got it, I thought the buyer was deceiving me; there were spots in places that I didn't see in the picture. I went back and looked at the picture, and sure enough - they were there. I just didn't see them the first time. I was looking at all the positive things about the dime. If I had seen that dime in person, I would not have bought it. How do you judge value? Well, what I do: I look at the price for the coin on the PCGS website and take 15% off of that. I won't bid anymore than that. (Now, this is me. You may choose to different). I also look at both the red book and the blue book - but it really doesn't say much. From what I have gathered, ( and I am a novice myself), the blue book is what you can expect a coin dealer to give you - the red book is what you can expect a dealer to charge you. But all of the prices in both books are old, because the books were compiled about 6 months before they were published. I also have David Lange's book that I look at when I'm trying to research a dime on eBay. I don't know why you wouldn't want to keep both your roll from the teens and the roll from the 40s. But the prices are going to depend on the condition of the coin, the year of the coin and the series of the coin. It depends very much on the mintages of the coins: The reason that the 1916-d is such an expensive coin is that it had such a low mintage. Reading up on coins is a never ending process. That includes the mercury dimes. Do your research.
cool thanks for the information. I am planning to sell some so I can afford to buy more. I want to basically keep "refining" them so that I keep the best and most valuable out of each one that I get. I scored a VERY NICE lot of basically a roll of AU from the 40s and I think I will be keeping those but its more like... is there any upward potential to keeping worn down teens or is there more upside to keeping very nice ones from the 40s!! Agggghhh the decisions
