Frustration with selling slabbed coins

This is no necessarily the result of "greed and egos." A great many rolls of cents were saved in the early 1960s. There was a lot of crazed speculation over rolls of coins, and there was an active market for them. When roll craze died down, so did the prices. Today a lot of these coins are worth little more than face value because there are way too many of them available.

As for MS-62 graded Morgan Dollars, the 1879-S, which is the one date you mentioned, is on the Coin Dealer Newsletter sheets for $75. In MS-63, the price is $95, but in MS-64, it's $100. When there is very little spread between prices, astute collectors are going to buy the better coins for very little extra money. Therefore a dealer has to pay something less than $75 to make it worth his while to bother with the coins. Just because something is on the Grey Sheet for $X, it does not mean that anyone is obligated to pay you that.

Furthermore, MS-62 is sort of an orphan grade. It works for better, more expensive coins that "just miss" MS-63, which is an established grade, but for common coins, collectors and dealers are not knocking down the doors to buy them.

 

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A good point, and well received. I agree to a great extent, although, it would be preferable to have a four and five-figure, and upwards, specimen encapsulated for many practical reasons.

 

Great reply. Thanks.

 

Today certification for coins on that level, certification is almost a requirement.

 

I posted in this forum (Coin Chat) as this isn't about coins, per se, but rather the culture and psychology of coin hunting, grading, and selling, the economics as Charlie put it, above.

I believe that it is relative to CoinTalk site, and it would be distracting to post this conversation in another forum that discusses technical information, coins for sale, members seeking guidance, etc. I feel it would have been inappropriate or insensitive to post this anywhere else.

 

This is a confession that I hate to make: My comment was in general to slabs. In 75 years of collecting I have purchased one slabbed coin. I was unable to ever find a 1916 D Mercury in the wild. And, I bought one slabbed and graded by a reputable TPG. This falls in line with your comment about high value specimens. In my collecting circuit I was able to trade for just about anything I couldn't find.

 

This was many years ago, but a dealer bought a set of Mercury Dimes. Unfortunately, the 1916-D was a glued on “D” fake. One dealer said “There are a 1942/1 in the set, so that made up for it.” No, it didn’t. If the coins were all real, it would have been a good set, and a better investment.

You don’t want a 1916-D Mercury from the “dealer wild.” If you find one in a roll, great for you. Otherwise, you need to buy a certified coin, or study like heck to be an expert who can spot the real thing.

 

This forum you can post anything. Sure it was not meant for coins probably but to say coins or anything about the hobby or currency is not prohibited. People post from cars, pets, flowers etc here and no doubt I’m sure you can look on history and see there are some threads of about coins. No worries here and probably not to anyone else either. I put the sunset to break the ice I guess. Give a smile off of a comment that meant no harm I’m sure. I guess if we were not suppose to speak of coins, a moderator would let us know. Andddd if you wanted to go to coin chat as well I’m sure that would not have been a problem either.

 

I had to take psychology three times. The answers they wanted were not the ones I wanted to give.

 

One thing is for sure about selling at auctions. There will be bad days that hurt.
All you can do is hope the good days help balance things out.

 

Okay, I thought my eyes were playing with me as they do occasionally. The squirrel avatar's eye does actually blink every minute or so. I'm not sure what the significance of this is except my eyes were true and not tricking me. Maybe it a psycology thing or something.

 

I know you posted that response after 5PM. Normally things don't start to blink at me until after 9PM.........