I was at the VNA (Virginia Numismatic Association) show yesterday and saw a coin that looked interesting. The side visible in the case was familiar but really I liked the design on both sides. Dealer really didn’t have any info other than the side he had displayed was in the redbook but the other side wasn’t. It was priced at $100 but he said I could have it at $80. This was what I saw And here is the other side The third side reads “Payable in London Liverpool and Brighton” Here are some screenshots of what I found out when I got home. So please share your stories of when you bought a pig in a poke and it turned out to be a winner.
Oh man talk about return on investment! I mainly buy and resell to make profit (which bugs me a bit, I wish I could have enough money to make and keep a PC) so most of my purchases are "pigs in pokes that turn out to be winners". I would say one of my favorites I have bought and sold is this one, a beautiful blue and orange toned Morgan in a decent grade of 62. Bought $80 as part of a date set challenge, and resold for $200+. A coin that I really enjoyed and wished I had kept a bit longer. Here's a more recent one, got it on an auction that didn't have good photos and just didn't get enough attention for $125. I haven't sold it yet but it is for sale at a price that would return a decent profit.
The closest that I ever had as a 'pig in a poke' was: A Hawaii quarter dollar at a club coin show. It was slabbed by ANACS as an XF-40. I had no clue as to value, but I figured for $20 it was worth the shot. Well, Trends is about $150. I also got one [raw] back in 1999 at another local show that the dealer & I graded as VF. Cost me a massive $8. And another VF in 2003, for $45. - That one was not as great a deal. Funny part was that I had forgotten that I had the other two when I got the ANACS one
At the Portland fall show a few years ago. This was in the $10 ancient/medieval tray and I just thought it looked cool. Similar examples have sold for close to four figures.
This is funny because I bought the same coin about two weeks ago and had the same pleasant surprise when I researched it. I was just buying a few Conder tokens that I thought looked neat and I paid $5 each for them. Mine's not as nice as yours but the price was right.
I don't have a big budget for coins, and I'd much rather buy 500 coins from a junk bin than one $500 coin. That being said, I've learned through the years what is a typical junk bin coin and what stands out. This has enabled me to find some really great values through the years. If you're a U.S. collector you can't really understand just how many excellent deals are out there in foreign coins if you know what you're doing, because most dealers think there's no money or demand there and don't bother to learn what they have. You can especially score big with coins that use non-Western languages because no one but the most knowledgeable dealers know what they are. Here are a few great scores through the years. 1. 1690 Ireland 1 shilling gun metal coin: These sell for a range of $30-$50 or more. I was at a coin shop and asked to look through their bulk world coins. They told me there wasn't much there as someone had recently bought them all, but they had a few. In the box was a bag of Moroccan falus coins from the 1800s. If you don't know what they are, they look like junk because they're very primitive, but I knew it was a great find so I took the whole bag, and it was a little over a pound, at $10 a pound. I ended up keeping an example of all the Moroccan coins for my collection and selling the others for about $3 each. Strangely inside the bag was this 1690 Ireland 1 shilling. Nothing else in the bag was anything like it and I don't know how it got in there, but I'll take it. 2. 1914 China 1 jiao: Same coin shop, different visit. I'm digging through the world coin bulk bin and find this Chinese coin. I know it's silver and I see the famous fat man, so if it's real I know it's a great find. I purchased it at the same pound for $10 rate, and I have been told by people who know that it's authentic. These are selling for about $100 on eBay. 3. 1931 China Honan 50 cash: Different coin shop, I found this in another bulk world coin search and paid about 25 cents for it. I've been told it's authentic and they can sell from anywhere from $40 to $100 or more. 4. Turkey gold 25 kurush: I found this in a world coin junk bin for 15 cents. As soon as I saw it I suspected it was gold, and sure enough, I took it to a place with a machine that tests for gold and it was. I believe the shop thought it was a belly dancing token or something. Last I checked it has about $50 of gold in it. This is the stuff that makes world coin junk bin diving fun. It's really the only thing I'm interested in anymore when it comes to buying coins.
About 15 years ago I discovered NZ $1 and $2 coins had various unlisted faults. Very few people had realized this and I was able to buy bags of 200 from the bank weekly at face and find several with issues. These I then sold on a local auction site for between 3000-7000% profit. This went on for some time before others figured it out and flooded the market