Hi all. I was browsing through some of the small coin lots I purchased recently and stumbled upon this 1873 Seated Liberty dime. Now, from what I have gathered, please corect me if I'm wrong, and I seem to be wrong most of the time, ill get the hang of this one of these days. Yet I digress. From what I gathered these coins are kind of rare. There was only 455,000 ever minted, if I am reading this correctly. Now, I know mine is in bad shape but, its got to be worth something? Anyway, thanks a bunch.
I'm sure it is worth something, but probably not too much. It is listed at $25 in good condition and this one would be significantly less than that.
Maybe, just maybe, a $5.00 coin and that's because of the date. It has lots of circulation and it suffers from way too much damage.
Clearly he says "due to the wear" indicating that the wear and damage may affect the weight and reduce it's melt value. makes sense to me. Personally I'm not paying for 2.67 grams of weight if it actually weight 2.1 or 2.2 grams let's say. Anyways, this coin is damaged and will most likely get "genuine, AG Details (or less and get poor details) Damaged" with a .98 slab number, no grade from PCGS if it were sent in. won't fit an album really anymore without a ton of finagling of the hole, it's pretty much a junk silver cull at this point. likely also has a "harshly cleaned" in the mix there too as its devoid of luster. I would say though it's got to be worth $5-$10 to SOMEONE out there if put up on ebay I'd think. maybe even someone overpaying for it and drop up to $20, because now a days people will drop $19.99 on just about anything, in gradable, not detailed, "poor" or "AG" condition it's worth about $15 I'd think. Might take a bit to get a buyer if you tried to sell it, it won't be for everyone, but I am sure there has to be a few that would want it out there in this big world. definitely worth more than melt to someone. APMEX sells their seated dimes of random dates in "cull" condition for $5.99 each. you could start somewhere between there and melt value probably as a starting point if you did want to sell it.
The term melt value means the value of a coin is worth only its weight in precious metal times the going rate of the metal. If it has wear, then it weighs less, but is never worth less than its weight. Now you might not get the full melt value from a dealer, but that is another issue.
