Dammit ! Oh well, back to the display shelf with the rest of my broken dreams.. Jk. Hey thanks for the response and opinion Rheingold! Have a great evening
Buy the book for the info... but take the prices w/ several doses of salt (they're high retail and out of date by the time the book is published).
For a coin to be a worthwhile candidate for submission doing so must add something of value to the coin at least equal to the price of admission. Said "value" can be anything from increased liquidity to independently verified authenticity and everything in between. The fact is the vast majority of perfectly collectible coins have no business being in plastic and this includes a fairly large percentage of those already residing in slabs. The TPGs are not the collector's friend but for-profit businesses perfectly willing to take your money while offering no real value in return. Submitting coins is akin to a game: play wisely and well, and you can win, but play poorly and you can easily bury yourself, in some cases permanently. The red book is indeed an excellent suggestion for someone in your situation. Even though the listed "values" cannot be assumed to be valid, it can give you a basic idea of what may have potential and this is in addition to the useful general information contained within. As for said values, the problem isn't that the book is "out of date" by the time its published; you can go back and not find a time in the previous year when they were valid and proves this to be fact. The issue with the quoted values is how they're compiled; they're basically estimations coming from select coin dealers as opposed to being based directly upon real-world sales. There used to be a page on the Whitman website that explained this, but I haven't been able to locate it over the last few years.
Uncleaned maybe in the $20 range. I can't tell about those scratches. If they are from cleaning, then less.
C'mon now Mountain Man, you're talking to a fellow Mountain Man. Fine, I'll go find a hole and fill it...