"Unsearched" $10 roll of Morgans

Discussion in 'US Coins Forum' started by GeorgeM, Oct 17, 2020.

  1. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    I picked this roll up the other day. If either of the end coins had had S mint marks on the back, I'd be sitting pretty. Have you ever gambled on a supposedly unopened roll from the 1960s and 70s?

    https://www.ebay.com/itm/264876144947

    There were 10 Morgans in the roll, all AU58 or better. About what I expected, and at least there weren't any culls inside. How'd I do? (The roll of half dollars I paid for at the same time, however, did not arrive in the package. But that's another issue).

    Screenshot_20201017-162249_eBay.jpg Screenshot_20201017-162244_eBay.jpg 20201016_222603.jpg 20201016_222700.jpg 20201016_222208.jpg 20201016_221931.jpg 20201016_221753.jpg 20201016_221524.jpg
     
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  3. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    They were in an old (looking) "First Financial & U.S. Trust Corp. / Wall Street, New York / $10.00 DOLLARS / Johnson Fare Box Co, Chicago" wrapper (the last line is pretty faded, so I'm extrapolating). Anyone familiar with the company or when they were in operation? My guess is that this was in the 60s or 70s, when mint bags of dollars were repackaged as bullion investments.

    Compete list:
    1881-S
    1883-O
    1885-O
    1886
    1887
    1890
    1896
    1900
    1903
    1904-O

    20201017_163104.jpg 20201017_163112.jpg 20201017_163140.jpg 20201017_163145.jpg 20201017_163203.jpg 20201017_163435.jpg
     
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  4. bradgator2

    bradgator2 Well-Known Member

    I’ve always wanted to buy a roll like that. But I am too cynical and untrusting to believe it is unsearched or “original”.
     
  5. C-B-D

    C-B-D Well-Known Member

    I mean, you paid $56/coin, which is MS64 slabbed money for common dates. You tell me how you did.
     
  6. LA_Geezer

    LA_Geezer Well-Known Member

    I paid $399.20 for the ten coins the OP listed; one of those was a slabbed 1903 that cost me $91, so that brings the price paid for the other nine down to an average of $34.24. Not all of mine are as nice as the ones in the above photos, not even the slabbed one. There are one or two of these that might be worth $56 to me, though.
     
    GeorgeM likes this.
  7. C-B-D

    C-B-D Well-Known Member

    What are you talking about? I'm quoting the OP and his purchase of the 10 coin roll.
     
  8. Santinidollar

    Santinidollar Supporter! Supporter

    Where I come from, there ain’t no such thing as an unsearched roll.
     
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  9. SensibleSal66

    SensibleSal66 U.S Casual Collector / Error Collector

  10. Garlicus

    Garlicus Debt is dumb, cash is king.

    I was looking at one with a CC on the end, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
     
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  11. SensibleSal66

    SensibleSal66 U.S Casual Collector / Error Collector

    Those should go in "do it yourself" holders . Airtight the call them I guess.
     
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  12. ksparrow

    ksparrow Coin Hoarder Supporter

    What's the likelihood that coins could be stored in old paper like that for decades and show no toning whatever? Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
     
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  13. SensibleSal66

    SensibleSal66 U.S Casual Collector / Error Collector

  14. manny9655

    manny9655 Well-Known Member

    If they were truly unsearched, how did the seller know they were all Morgans and there wasn't a Peace dollar or two in there? Besides that, paper coin rolls weren't widely used until the 1930s and 40s. Yes, they were around before that, but their usage was few and far between. Morgans came in BAGS, not rolls.
     
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  15. SensibleSal66

    SensibleSal66 U.S Casual Collector / Error Collector

  16. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    There were firms that rolled from bags in the 60s and 70s. But, I'm not sure how widespread the practice was, and, while this conglomeration does track with someone pulling together moderate BU coins from various bags, I suspect there's a reason that key & semi-key coins aren't present. They're valuable now because even then they were rare. Presumably, anyone digging through bags was pulling for numismatic value even back then (if they even saw them - you coukd look at 10,000 Morgans pulled at random without seeing anything rare). In that scenario, the only potential to make big money would be on coins that were not recognized as rare before the GSA distributions.

    But, I felt like taking a gamble. I probably could have picked each coin out individually for less (if I was even hunting for those particular dates), and maybe picked up some neat VAMs along the way. A part of me felt like buying the equivalent of a lottery scratchoff.

    If the posted odds are 1 out of 3.95 on $5 scratchers that they will pay off at least face value, most of us know that means if we buy 4 tickets, the most likely outcome is to receive a single $5 "winner" out of the group (for a $15 net loss). But, we all convince ourselves that the next group might have a million dollar winner hiding in it. A single BU trade dollar of CC Morgan in this roll would have been a very pleasant surprise!
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
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  17. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    The seller was pretty clear that any pre-1935 dollar could be in there. They only vouched for the weight of the roll. Some of the other rolls for sale had trade dollars or even seated liberty dollars visible on one end. They went for *insane* money, IMO.
     
  18. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    How much did that one go for?
     
  19. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    Yep. At that price, I certainly had higher hopes.
     
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  20. GeorgeM

    GeorgeM Well-Known Member

    4 of those in MS63 are well above $56 in value. And I suspect that 2 (of the more common dates in the group, unfortunately) might get an MS65 or better nod.

    Some of the more common dates are surprisingly scarce in high grades.
     
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  21. -jeffB

    -jeffB Greshams LEO Supporter

    That font on the roll... I think of that as a 1970s font, maybe 1960s. (This is based on an extensive collection of old SF paperbacks that I haven't looked at in quite some time.)

    I tried a bit of Googling to narrow down the font's origin, but I wasn't getting anywhere.
     
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