My son loves to research world coins. He always wants to buy the "unsearched" lots he sees on eBay. I keep telling him there's no way they haven't been picked through and that he won't find anything of value. Still, I got him 2 1/2 lb lots this year and sure enough there wasn't anything worth finding in them. This bums him out and makes him kind of lose interest. That said, are there any websites or collectors where I can purchase legit unsearched lots?
I don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK the best bet for genuinely unresearched lots is to pick them up at what we call "Car boot Sales" - garage or yard sales in the US. (Flea markets may also work, though over here they usually have more dealers than genuine clearance sellers.) You may also find them occasionally at the clearance auctions, but if there is anything decent in the lot you will be competing with the dealers. Another option is a "wanted" ad in a local paper - that is where I have had my best finds. Certainly Ebay and any other online auction site will generally only be selling the stuff some dealer can't get rid of any other way.
Anything you find on Ebay will absolutely be searched. Anything valuable will be sold separately. Those lots are basically pocket change. Sometimes sellers will salt the lots with a couple of silver coins to get good feedback ratings. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.... A flea market is not going to be a good source - those guys are even worse than ebay. Your best bet for truly unsearched lots would be garage sales, or even better would be estate sales.
In the U.S. in particular, there are many coin people who are so thoroughly U.S.-centric that they quite literally will throw anything non-U.S. that isn't made of silver or gold into the "junk bucket". That means if your son likes world coins, they might really be unsearched, aside from pulling out precious metals. The older the seller, the more likely this is to be the case. A close analog to these lots is the "junk bin" of 2x2'ed world coins that many dealers have at big shows. If their "case coins" contain little to no world coins (a big clue it's not their thing), but they have world coins in the "bin coins", I surf, baby! Surf is up! I land interesting and fairly valuable pieces. Not always. Just enough to keep me coming back.
Just about any coin show and/or coin shop will have a Junk Box. Advantage is you only buy what you think is interesting (and don't get stuck with dozens of Canadian cents or Eliz II English pennies). As Kurt said, You can find some great stuff in these boxes
Actually, I am trying to throw together a really nice set of 1953-1967 pennies right now in as nice condition as I can find. The short set of decimal era 1/2 New Pennies in proof, too.
Anything like that I feel I would be flying blind as I just don't have enough knowledge yet to be educated enough to pick out good ones. Still it's good advice, thank you.
Encourage your son to decide on a focus, or two or three, and concentrate on those areas. If he gets tired of one, replace it with another. Teach him to be a sniper, rather than a trap shooter.
No offense intended toward your son, but we would all love to live in a "peaches & cream" world where we all get what we wish for. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way. If your son insists on unsearched lots, buy him a metal detector and take him for a drive out in the country where he can search all of the fields he wants provided that he has the owner's permission. Chris
I've been told by someone who knows that old trees mark some of the best metal detecting sites. The older the tree the better.
This is true to a point. It's usually a large tree, very old, still standing in the middle of an open field. This was usually left as a shade tree for resting on a hot day. Hunting old stone walls is also a good option. Not so much for coins but for old bottles, including whiskies, that were hidden after downing them so the wife would not find them in the household trash or dump where they buried other trash. Old privy's (out houses) near an old foundation were often topped off with old bottles and many times coins dropped from a pocket when the pants were pulled down.
To me, "A good one" is any coin that helps me learn something new A lot of these junk boxes are 25 cents to a buck. Buy what looks interesting to you. Take it home, and do some research to find out what it is. Basically, you're buying an inexpensive, mini lesson in numismatics. So maybe you spend 50 cents on a coin that turns out to be common. You've learned something. I bought stuff 30 years ago for 50 cents that you can still find in 50 cent junk boxes today. But the value was in what I learned when I was trying to figure out what it was. To me, that knowledge is priceless and helps me enjoy this hobby today. (BTW: I still get a thrill when I get a wheat penny in change, even though I have a complete date set including the 09SVDB, 22 Plain and 55/55 doubled die)
All so very true. I do, from time to time pick out ones that I cannot decipher, like from the Middle East. Great learning tool even though I still get stumped from time to time.
You might, at a show, look for a dealer who has tons of Krause world catalogs, and see if he has old ones he wants to sell. Don't just look for ones where it looks like they are for sale, but spot a dealer with lots in the area they use for their books carried to look up stuff. I scored two used ones once for 10 dollars by just asking if the dealer if he was willing to sell me his older versions. They had not been intended by him to be sold there.
Ever notice how Krause and Mishler bailed out on so many issues not using our alphabet? Thank gawd there's Y# as well as KM# coins.
Back in "the good old days" you could sometimes cheaply obtain interesting coins from dealers who considered anything that was not a domestic coin "foreign junk". Unfortunately, fewer dealers have such an attitude today.
