I paid about 300 over the cac price guide for this coin. But if you understood how long it can take to even find one of these WITH CAC, you would know why I did it. There are only 50 of this variety with cac. And there is only estimated 600 in existence. This is the only coin I own i paid that much of a premium on.
I do not pay more for a CAC sticker, but I voted 100% or more . . . Why, you might ask? Because I've paid far more than a 100% premium for coins that were not stickered. I am buying the coin after all, and not the bean. If any of those unstickered coins that I paid so generously for had been beaned, I'd have paid the same price. The bean means nothing to me personally . . . the coin means everything.
I am frugal but not really cheap. I will not pay a premium for a bean either. Getting the bean and paying for it is on the person who paid for it. I'm not an expert grader either but I know enough to know if it's a coin that's worth slabbing and then getting a bean for then I better be able to grade at least within an acceptable range to make it worth me spending a large sum of money for. I'm glad if it's slabbed, meets my grade and eye appeal and that's what I base my purchase on. I think this makes sense?
If I am buying something with a CAC sticker then chances are I am buying it because the coin is high quality and it just so happens to have a CAC sticker. Not trying to undermine CAC though. They have done great work for the coin market IMO.
Ok so this is what I did. It was the only series I had a lot of. I won a lot of these on stock photo auctions. So when I became a member last year I had tons most of these. I started sending them in. Obviously a lot of failures. I'm just a collector member so I only pay if it gets the bean. I wanted to see if there was something to this or not. But you really need a lot in hand if the same grade to see it. This series was cheap and I already had them all. In hand the bean coins are sharper nicer and pretty much 100 percent mark free. The failures have small issues. Once you have this many same coin same grade with many bean and many no bean you can see why the ones that got it, got it and the ones that didn't, didn't. I only pay a premium for a coin if the coin has what I want. But the coins with the bean do display something that failures don't. The problem is, unless you know the coin has been, you don't. There are sellers i won't buy from looking for bean coins because I know they have been or the seller knows they won't get it. I am starting to see why by doing observations like this. A lot of these failed due to strike issues. It isn't that they are graded improperly. Most of these coins would not bean in ms66. A lot of the 1976 have poor reverse strikes. That design was a problem.
It totally depends upon the coin. Some are worth premiums, others are not -- with or without the CAC sticker.
I have a feeling that if one of the options was "depends on the coin," that would get most votes from this community... myself included.
That is what it is too. Some coins appeal to one eye and not another. Even shopping for a cac coin i still look at the coin. Even if the coin deserves it, if there's toning that's unattractive the coin is unattractive
CAC or no CAC, I try to buy the coin, not the slab or sticker. I say try, because I do have a couple with CAC stickers and bought them because I knew they had that guarantee.
When was introduced, I paid a three high premiums and got burnt on two of them. CAC bailed me out of one of them. Today I only buy it if I like it. The CAC sticker is irrelevant to me in my buying decision. It worth a couple of chuckles when they totally blow it, which happens now and then.
0 for me as well. Right or wrong, I go with the notion that nice coins without the sticker get fewer bidders.