As you gaze into the future

I agree with mrbrklyn logic to a point, but I think he's missing something by solely focusing on mintages. It will never be "hard" to complete a lincoln set. It's probably a pretty safe bet that we aren't going to be "losing" very many keys from here on forward.

But the logic of "it's modern / there's tons of them / they'll never be worth anything" is exactly why I think High Grade examples of these WILL be worth something.

Take the 1909 P... easy enough to find BU example of in the $25 range. People hoarded these because it was a first year issue. Now look at the 1910 P. Similar mintages but they weren't hoarded. You'll end up spending 3x the ammount for that 1910P that looks similar tothe 1909 P that you spent $25 on. Once you get into the 64/65/66 grades, throw the book away and get ready to reach for your wallet. I've seen one Red 64 sell in the last year that was problem free. Sale price = $499.

Try to find well struck uncirculated examples of any coin made during 82 from P. If you can find one for less than 100x face, buy it and then call me.

I think the prices we're seeing for high grade lincolns will continue to go up as these prices are being created by serious collectors. New collectors aren't driving these prices. I think you might see a let up in circulated prices in the near future.

 

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so then it is worht the 8 bucks?

Ruben

 

As for the Cents this is nonsense about the 1984 coin. I have over $10,000 pennies in the house since 1981, about half never circulated past the bank to to the Pharmacy to my change draw. I'm certain I have a dozen quality 1984's, if not a lot more, and I'm equally certain I'm not swimming through all those pennies for a buck (100 x face)

Ruben

 

Point of clarification... not 1984 but 1982... and cents don't fall into this as they were hoarded due to the 7 different varieties that year. A couple do and MS67 examples run into the $150+ range.

Nickels / Dimes / Quarters though... I'm spot on. Think I'm off? Go to eBay and do a search of the completed listings for:
1. PCGS 1982 P
2. NGC 1982 P
3. ANACS 1982 P
Didn't find much? I didn't either. Of course you can try and buy these uncertified, but I'm willing to guarantee you won't find a 66 or better and more than likely not a 65.

I count myself as being VERY lucky to have found a MS65 82P dime uncertified on eBay and only paid $25. It's a beautiful coin. (The part I'm leaving out here is that I've bought about 10 other "BU 1982 P ROOSEVELT!!! STUNNING COIN!!! DON'T MISS OUT!!!" auctions only to be disappointed when a 63 showed up in the mail.

 

Well you missed the entire point of the what you're responding to!

1. If you have a bunch of '82 pennies that have been sitting in the jar for 25 years and are more or less directly from the bank, you're very lucky
2. Why this irrational idea that because you have many of them, they can't be worth anything?
3. Not many people have $10,000 of pennies sitting around. There are probably a lot of interesting coins that are worth well more than 0.01.
4. If you're not interested in "swimming through" them, why in the world do you keep $10,000 of them? Seems contradictory.

 

It's definitely that nice.

These sell for upward of $1000 in higher grade but I'm pretty confident this one won't make it that high. It is a very nice specimen and grossly undervalued on that basis.

 

There was a day that you could go to any large coin show and five half a dozen gem '09-S VDB's but not a single gem '72-D with a nice strike. The former would cost hundreds and the latter would have been a dime if anyone had one.

Things haven't really changed that much. The services are grading the later date coins now and they don't demand full strikes so you might find a high grade '72-D but they won't be as numerous as the '09-S VDB. (and it'll run you $30 now)

The point a lot of people are missing is that it's very unnatural for there to be so little demand for later dates. Historically there's usually more demand for modern coins but the prices are low because more were saved, mintages were higher, and time had caused less attrition.

Today in most cases fewer were saved and there just isn't any demand. This exists because old timers don't believe there's any reason to collect later date coins.

 

The '84-D is one of the toughest cents to find nice.

It had a multitude of problems from poor plating, to poor strikes, to marking and corrosion. It's not very likely you'll have any nice specimens in an accumulation if the coins are loose. Even if you had a substantial number of these that were well cared for there might be no nice ones.

All the pre-'86 Lincolns are tough and what sets this one apart is that mint set coins have poor surfaces about 99% of the time. Rolls are scarce. The few coins with nice surfaces will be corroded nearly 60% of the time and these are a little more likely to be banged up that the typical coins.

Ya' never know how tough something is till you look. People haven't been looking at the moderns.

 

I love you but you go overboard sometimes. I have Glass JARS of pennies from that year with shiney red pennies in them

Is the mintage over 10 billion in that year? How enonormous is that number?
They'll so up, when the cost of them is worth the searching.

Ruben
Ruben

 

I'm not missing the point. I think your missing the point Mike. Most families have penny jars dating back decades and your just apreciating what the number 10,000,000 means.

Ruben

 

Mintage numbers are not exactly worthless, but close to it when it comes to the moderns. The fact that SO many coins were needed means quality control was set by the wayside. It's BECAUSE of the high mintage numbers that High MS examples are so rare.

That said MRBRKLYN brings up a valid point, there are probably were some high MS examples out there which weren't graded because Book values didn't reflect true actualized prices.

But it's also because of this that I believe few example remain today to be certified. They weren't preserved. Zincolns don't sit well without being stored in some way shape or manner as to prevent them from being exposed to the environment.

The same holds true for the other denominations from the era as well, just not to such a drastic extent as the clads will preserve well in wrapped rolls (and occasionally pick up some nice toning as a benefit.

 

10,000,000,000 is certainly a big number and you're right that I do engage in hyperbole quite often but that's mostly just to shake up the status quo.

Numbers just don't mean much any more. Back in the old days people each saved as many coins as they could get their hands on each year. When mintages were low the coins were unavailable so few were saved. When a big mintage (like a '19-S Lincoln) came along the coins were set aside in droves. Despite the huge mintages and the huge numbers set aside these coins would still increase eventually because they were affected by attrition. Each year a certain percentage of the number set aside simply gets burned up in a fire or flooded. There are lots and lots of ways that the coins disappear, but they do; inexoribly, year after year after year.

In many cases the newer coins are not being set aside in the kinds of numbers they once were. How many people saved rolls of 1984-D pennies. It wasn't many and finding one of these today is not easy. They go for more than $10 per roll but remember there are two huge factors holding them back. Primarily people aren't interested in junk like an '84-D cent. Everyone wants an '09 or a 1919-S but most people don't even collect the memorials. The second factor is if you ever do find a roill of them the coins will be horrible. Fully half the rolls out there are corroded; there won't be a collectible coin in the roll. The rest will be as made but these were usually made very poorly. They have bad uneven surfaces with bubbles. Dies weren't changed often enough and the coins were banged up in the mint.

When you add all these factors together it means that nice attractive coins aren't readily available from rolls and finding one gets pricey if you have to look at several rolls before finding one acceptable. There are the mint sets but these run $5 and 99% of the coins have problems.

Counting the coins in jars and change jars just isn't realistic. Sure if you dumped brand new coins in a jar in 1984 and didn't move them around a lot then you probably will have a few nice specimens. But this isn't the way it usually works. Most change jars are "active" and all the coins are rotated out every several years. Those that have remained since 1984 are going to have been moved around a lot and be damaged or worn.

I've said many times that there aren't any really scarce modern cents in unc or even in chU and gem. There are clads that are but not cents. The cent just requires too little money to set aside. Everyone can afford 50c and many will set aside bags. It's not a matter of scarcity.

The issue is having the supply to meet the demand if and when these are as popular to collect as a 1919-S. There may not be so many of these left after so many years but quality isn't really an issue because most were made pretty nice and most that survive are close enough to being as made.

IT IS THIS THAT DOESN"T APPLY TO MODERNS.

They weren't saved largely because they were such junk when they were new. You won't find an original roll of '69 quarters because these coins were ugly. Just as the '84-D was a bad coin and not saved it has also not survived well. Most collectors want a nice attractive example of a coin. Generally their standards are gem but they want a coin that's even, normally struck, and without corrosion and damage. Finding '84-D's in 1984 that met this criteria wasn't much of a feat but you'd be surprised how difficult it is today. While the attrition rate on saved 1919-S cents was probably only about 1% in most years (even lower on later cents like '31-S) the attrition rate on '84-D's is probably well over 3% and showing no signs of coming down. Indeed there's little chance it will come down until people start taking these coins seriously.

 

<<The issue is having the supply to meet the demand if and when these are as popular to collect as a 1919-S. There may not be so many of these left after so many years but quality isn't really an issue because most were made pretty nice and most that survive are close enough to being as made.

IT IS THIS THAT DOESN"T APPLY TO MODERNS.>>


This is where the logic fails. The minute they are as popular as the 1919-S 500,000 will pop out of penny jars across the nation in acceptable grades, and that would still be less than 1/2 of a percent of the mintage.

Ruben

 

I think you're overestimating how many high grade cents will pop up by a huge factor. Just consider

1. Most of these coins were poorly made.
2. Most of these coins that you find are late die state examples as well
3. These coins were beat up during packaging before they left the mint.
4. They were fed into poorly made high speed counters (maybe more than once)
5. The automated rolling process also led to more dings and hits
Many thanks to BadThad for helping me with this list.

And this is BEFORE they ever touched circulation.

Once in circulation the actual planchet proved to need some work done to it. Copper plating and stamping Zinc was a brand new thing for the Mint. They didn't do it well in the beginning.

So on the off chance that someone actually found a high grade example (even though few were made), they would have had to have the foresight to properly store this example BEFORE environmental effects could damage it.

Unlike the earlier copper cents where even rudimentary storage techniques could help preserve them (read paper wrapped rolls), the early Zincolns required more sophisticated storage.

This whole argument might be centering around what our definitions of "acceptable grade" are. If you think MS63 and below is acceptable then I'd agree with you. My idea of acceptable for Moderns is 66 and above.