My mother was an antique dealer and appraiser for many years. We've been cleaning out her storage unit, and found about eight pounds of wheat pennies. They are unsorted, and include a variety of years and conditions (all are circulated). Interestingly, at some point, someone put stickers on the back on a few dozen of them saying things like, "Catalog value $.10" or "Catalog value $.15." I have no idea of which catalog, and if this was the catalog value last year or 40 years ago. I'm not a dealer, and have limited knowledge of numismatics. My question to those of you who are experienced in this field is, is it usually worth the time and trouble to sort through batches of coins such as this to look for the odd gem, or am I better off just listing them on eBay by the pound? Thank you, Howard
Well there are a few nice ones, mainly 1909-S VDB, and 1914-D. I would search through for those two, and then sell the rest by pound. If you happen to have all the time in the world, then you can totally try searching for varieties, errors, and whatnot. But thats a LOT of coins to put under the literal microscope.
Hi Howard. Welcome to the forum. There are a few dates that do carry some valuable premiums. And frankly, there are some folks here that would relish the thought of going through eight pounds of wheat cents. It would be easy enough to pick up an inexpensive Redbook and quickly determine the dates that merit further investigation. But you have to put a premium on your time then. Last year, I helped a friend from my church liquidate his deceased fathers collection. He had a huge jar filled to the brim with wheat cents. It took a hand truck to move the thing. We spent every evening for a week looking at them when we realized we hadn't put a dent in the jar. They were ultimately sold bulk at about .04 cents each. Here's the other consideration. There are a lot of Ebay dealers that sell bogus "unsearched" lots of wheat cents. And most savvy buyers are aware of this practice. You may be met with some resistance because of the unscrupulous peddlers on Ebay that have given this a bad name. So just be prepared for that. If it were mine, yes I would likely spend some time looking through them simply because I love old coins. If your time is limited and old coins don't light your fire, then yes selling them in bulk would likely be your most advantageous avenue. I used to know the arithmetic, but don't remember now how many cents make up a pound. But expect between .03 and .05 cents each if you do liquidate them that way.
Welcome to CT. Another option would be to get enough postings on CT to have rights to post wanted to sell here. And, sell them directly to our members. Someone please correct me if this is not a possibility.
At the very least, find a red book and take note of dates that are key and which are not. You might find it at a library even. The red book does not have to be super recent... Even in the past ten-fifteen years is good enough for the info. Then simply sort by year and keep the relatively few you probably will end up with to further explore their possible worth.
You might consider getting several trifold books, putting the pennies in them, and give them to family members as presents. Thats what i am doing with mine.
Wound up just posting them on eBay: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/143476945165
