Isn't it true that proof set envelopes never came sealed from the mint in the first place? That is what I have heard here before anyway. Jimmy Gerstel is selling 1963 "Never opened" proof sets for $49 right now!!! My dad used to hoard proof sets back in the day, and he was joking with me that we should call Jimmy up and offer to sell him as many of these as he wants!
It's basically a rip-off if you think you're getting a proof set that no one has looked at before. A few year back I won, at auction on ebay, a couple of "unopened" 1960s proof sets. They turned out to be nothing special. No $25,000 half $ or anything out of the ordinary, except the premium price for the original set. After learning about these sets here on CoinTalk I realized that I just paid a bit too much for what I wanted, in any case. I believe these sets came in an open government envelope and were never sealed. Now, I have heard that some of these sets may have been accidentally sealed while in storage by the natural humidity and time. A collector may have hoarded a large number of sets and the envelope flaps stuck together at some point in time. But that doesn't mean nobody ever looked at them. Just think, if you were a collector in 1960 and you bought 100's of sets of proofs, would you look at all of them? People hoard rolls and bags of coins without ever looking at them at the time of purchase. I'm sure that somewhere down the line someone has bought a proof set that sealed itself sandwiched between two other proof sets that no one has laid eyes upon until newly opened. But I'll bet that that is a rare occurrence, and one you'll probably not find on ebay.
Yeah, a number of my dads old proof sets seem to be sealed. But he remembers that they weren't always sealed. I think it was the moisture in the air combined with the adhesive on the unopened envelopes.
Yeah, $12 is about what I was thinking. But if ol' Jimmy would pay half what he is charging for these sets my dad will gladly sell him several dozen
