Message:

Uploads are not available.

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Larry Moran, post: 442781, member: 4580&quot;]Now that the coin has been &#039;altered&#039; (a very undesirable occurrence as far as collectors go), the coin is approximately valueless, as you suspected.</p><p><br /></p><p>As jewelry, it is rather attractive with its inscription of the Lincoln&#039;s DOB, except that is not his birthday, which was February 12, 1809.&nbsp; THe matte proof was issued in commemoration of the one hundredth year from his birth.&nbsp; That&#039;s when the entire series of Wheat Cents began.</p><p><br /></p><p>More than 420 matte proofs were struck in each of the eight years they were minted. Matte proofs were never in circulation; they were minted strictly for collectors, as proofs are today.</p><p><br /></p><p>I collect Civil War Tokens and Store Cards. Even during the Civil War, many Civil War Tokens were minted for collectors.&nbsp; Every now and then a brass, silver or other off-metal planchet would see the dies and be given straight away to a collector or merchant.&nbsp; Usually, tokens other than brass or copper were struck as samples and given prospective or current customers of the die sinkers,</p><p><br /></p><p>Folks have been collecting coins since ancient times, in Rome and before.&nbsp; Imagine ordering 1,000 CWT store cards and receiving one or more silver or nickel tokens as a gift included with your order.&nbsp; That makes sense to me and I believe such tokens were highly prized by their recipients.&nbsp; Such tokens probably went into collections shortly after receipt.</p><p><br /></p><p>Since many merchants were not coin collectors, a lot of pieces were mishandled or improperly stored.&nbsp; But seldom did they actually circulate.,&nbsp;&nbsp; Heck, a flying eagle cent was a rarity as most genuine coins were hoarded by banks and citizens.&nbsp; That hoarding was responsible for many of the collectible coins we see today that avoided extreme wear even though minted for circulation, but now are a hundred or more years old.&nbsp; After the war, change managed to find its way back into circulation, but these tended to be lower grade examples and the better examples were siphoned off by searchers who went through their change like we often do.&nbsp; But I&#039;ll bet they were even more careful than we.</p><p><br /></p><p>The flying eagle cent resurfacing in circulation led to extreme wear on many examples, and the Flying Eagle was old hat compared to the newer copper Indian Head Cents which were by then plentiful and popular.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>