Under what circumstances would you buy a problem coin?

For some issues its like having a scratch on the hood of a Ferrari. Yeah you'd rather have one without the scratch but in the end it's still a Ferrari! Its still the coin. I'm not turned off by light scratches that are not related to a cleaning. Cleaning, tooling ,whizzing, holed, AT, etc is the kind of stuff I'd be more likely to avoid personally. Old coins are fairly difficult to obtain uncleaned since it used to be acceptable practice for quite a while. It depends how harsh was 'harshly' to me. I don't personally own any details graded examples yet but may some day.

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Not really enough choices - especially if you collect by variety on some of the older coins. Those of us who are not rich may have to make due with what they can find.

 

I agree with what others have said. I buy problem coins when the price to value seems reasonable or when the availability of clean coins is just too low. I wouldn't pay 50% of a clean s-vdb for a problem coin, but I have bought problem late date large cents, even paid a premium for them, if the variety or die state is rare enough. Here is an example:

 

It barely makes Good and has graffiti dating from the year 1845. It cost me solid XF money (Plus my max bid was almost twice what I got it for). But it is the last (achievable by me) die marriage for my 1827 set. It's estimated that only about 35 or so examples exist in any grade--most of which are damaged. I had been looking for an affordable O-144 for the previous 19 years.



Many of you know that I am "kinda" nutty about 1827 bust halves--okay, so "kinda" doesn't cut it. This one will probably be the last one I ever buy since the last 3 remaining die marriages for the year are all high R-6 (O-137), R-7 (O-148) or R-8 (O-149) coins.

As for the problems, I kind of like them. It lends a sense of history to what is otherwise simply a worn out old coin.

 

For me, it's a simple matter of buying the nicest example that I "can afford." If I were offered an 1804 US silver dollar, that had a hole, was scratched, had been cleaned, and that had been used in a Black Mass, for $100 (+ $2.95 shipping), I'd buy it today. However, I wouldn't post it on Coin Talk until after it was safely in my hands. In this way, none of you purists ("never buy a problem coin") could hurry and out bid me for it (LOL). Jack

 

I think a lot of "problem" coins have nothing wrong with them except they've been circulated. Why that is a problem is beyond me!

 

The mantra that "a problem coin will always be a problem coin" is true. I don't necessarily consider that a negative. Some "problems" actually add to the history and story of the coin's travels. I understand if someone is trying to build a registry set. Obviously, they don't want a problem coin. There are many collectors who collect raw, circulated coins, and the stories they tell are part of the allure. Jack

 

Bust coins: a series within a series.

 

Like a lot of others, I would buy it if it was such an incredibly good deal that I could not pass it up, or if it is for an example that I reasonably could not acquire in a non-problem state. In both cases, though, I would still like to upgrade, if the opportunity ever arose. At least in what I am collecting right now, I have a set of non-realistic standards about what I would like each coin to grade at (and be problem-free). When it comes to key dates, though, that means that there is going to be a longer time between picking them up, my minimum grade standard is going to need to be lowered for those specific coins, or that I will fill them with problem coins to keep my OCD at bay, until each one can be replaced with something that falls into my line of expectations.

That being said, I have no problem with and old market-acceptable cleaning, and in a lot of cases, a cleaning that does not look too unnatural. But, in those cases, I normally will buy raw. If the only problem is a cleaning that does not look unnatural, I can likely source it more cheaply raw than a certified "Details" specimen in the same condition. What drives me nuts are holed coins, personally. On some level, it makes me sad to see them. Of course, I am sure that a lot of them were done contemporarily, and those who did it looked at it with little more indifference than we would look at holing modern day coinage.