My condolences on your grandfathers passing. I note you have 196 silver dollars, 174 Morgan and 22 Peace. Mint as you mention but maybe Choice AU 55 or 58 for some. If you have the time, go to VAMworld.com and try to determine the VAM variety and check the rarity. Vammers will pay more for rare varieties on EBay or in a good coin auction. Some 1882-CC could be of the HitList 40 variety. You mention looking for Cherry Picker varieties on the other coins and now I look forward to you doing VAM varieties for the silver dollars. Take your time, study varieties and good luck.
Wow, Great stuff you guys. Thank you... I too am brand new to fourms and have also been left a conglomerate of large hordes of Walking Liberty and Franklin half dollars that I am trying to get my head around. How best to move forward has been an extended research project and frankly a real pain in the backside. But your information has been helpful and I find myself actually starting to enjoy this journey. My immediate quandary is what to do with a particular five year proof folder that has at least two very valuable coins in it. A 1970 no S proof dime and a 1971 no S proof nickel. Both appearing to my untrained eye to be deep cameo and very nice. Of course the other coins in the holder also seem very nice. My research is confusing... Should I strip the two above mentioned coins from the set and have them graded for sale or attempt to sell the set as is? Are there other coins in the set to look into? As I fall head long into this hobby I am finding that the more I think I know leads to the more I am sure I do not... frustrating! So, my question is... how do I smartly go about selling the pictured coins below? A bit of input from you good folks would certainly be appreciated. Please excuse my amateur photos, their the best I know how to do at this juncture. Thank you in advance...
I would send in the no S proofs for authentication and grading. Most people would err on the side of caution when buying these raw and grade them on the low side; at least I would. The set looks nice.
I have been told that a coin that is graded and noted as "cleaned" is worth one grade less than the grade on the coin. Does that make sense...?
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/how-to-detect-cleaned-coins.327555/ It depends on severity and the coin type/grade. A seated dollar with an old, light cleaning would be given a pass in the market, and maybe it would trade for a 5-10% discount. The same cleaning on a common-date BU Morgan would make it worthless. The rule of thumb I use is a 10-15% discount for a very light/old cleaning, 25-35% discount for a noticeable cleaning/overdipping (on UNC coins) but not overly bad, 40-50% discount for a harsh cleaning, and >50% for a cleaning akin to being scrubbed with steel wool. These discounts would be less for more-valuable types/issues like draped bust dollars and an 1893 S Morgan. But there is no way to tell for sure if the TPG will call a coin cleaned or not since their line is always moving. You can be fairly sure how they will treat certain coins (pass on lightly-cleaned seated dollar, details on a harshly-scrubbed anything, details on a lightly-cleaned BU Morgan, etc), but others are completely at the whim of the TPG. Once a coin is in a “cleaned” holder, its value will relegated to the same damaged coin price, regardless of severity. Coins with a very light cleaning are worth significantly more out of the holder since it forces people to look at the coin instead of the label on the holder.
People like cut-and-dry rules like that, but that is not the case. The cleaning can be more or less severe.
Hey all! I finally got around to taking some photos of the 1941-S/S RPM FS-501 (coinfacts link). I took two sets of images, one with harsh direct lighting and another with diffuse lighting. Let me know what you think on the severity and type of cleaning, as well as the impact on value. Take a stab at the grade as well. PCGS gave it UNC-Details. I appreciate everyone's feedback! Here is the RPM:
That's a good idea! I looked a bit on varietyvista.com for some strange Ike dollars I had, but that site was not the easiest to navigate. I'll give VAMworld a try with the Morgan and Peace dollars. I remember being pretty bummed-out when Cherrypickers' didn't have an entry for 1882-CC, given that I have 20 of them.
Holy smokes! I wish I had known about GreatCollection's raw consignment policy before sending 15 coins to PCGS to be graded. That would have saved me some cheddar! I'll definately be using them for consignment. I put the coins on a light table and used a couple of desk lamps. The images still came out with a low-contrast "flat" look. I then pushed up the contrast with Adobe Lightroom, which makes them "pop"! If interested, I could make a post with my camera setup and the photo editing steps if that is something folks would be into.
So was looking through my stack of 1882-CC for VAMs on VAMworld.com and my 2nd one is a 1882-CC_VAM-2 Die Clash. This is awesome! I have a strange diagonal markings over the "D" in Dollar, I'll post images soon.