I am trying to complete a slabbed high grade Kennedy set but to my surprise, some of the Denver Mint later dates seem to be the very toughest coins of the series to obtain. To be more specific: 1997-d, 2000-d, 2001-d, 2007-d, and 2008-d. Can anyone help please help point me in the right direction?
If you are talking perhaps about MS67 in those years, yes, they are very expensive but relatively cheap ($100-$150.00) compared to the 1991D which is around $900.00, the 1990P around $350.00, the 1983 P & D at $300.00 & $400.00. If (I ) were to invest this kind of money, I would buy them slabbed to be sure of the grade and not raw and not know for sure. (Source-Coin World Price Guide). Try Googling "kennedy half dollar dealers" and see what comes up but be careful who you buy from.
Tommy and Larry, I will keep plugging away on E-Bay. Many of these listings are not only expensive but may be on the low end of the 76 grade. Some dates have not been listed in many months. I,ll have a patience and eventually have some luck. Thanks for the advice!
I would also check the following sites on a regular basis: http://www.collectorscorner.com https://www.vdbcoins.com/ http://www.jmscoins.com/store/home.php https://www.davidlawrence.com/ Good luck!
One quick tip: David Lawrence lists regularly on eBay, but, unless there's a significant discount, you'll always find the coin for less money going through their site directly. The same holds for some other dealers, but you might have to put a little more work into locating their web sites.
Thanks for the tips. I met with James Sego at theLas Vegas Show. He has a keen eye for the finest Kennedys and Ikes and I have purchased many from him. The coins I am searching for are currently either not being offered or not of nice eye appeal. As always with collecting, hard work and a little time spent will pay off.
I can believe the part on eye appeal. Most business strikes and mint sets did not have the nicest coins either. Therefore these very high prices. They just are really hard to find in high grades. I still have some rolls of some of these from the Mint and need to go through them but I'm not getting very excited about finding anything great. I guess not too many first strikes even went into the mint sets.
The rolls I high-graded most recently were 08-d and 02-d. They ranged from very ugly to almost ugly! I think mint sets are the best choice if one can find them in unopened mint boxes. The ratio of finding them in mint rolls seems to be about 1/10,000 in ms67 gradable cond. The 94-d, 97-d and00-d may be even tougher.
The real trick is finding any mint sets that have not been cherry picked yet as most dealers know about the rarity of these and have already gone through them. Plus it's hard to self grade them trying to look through the plastic. Too much distortion. But I certainly wish you the best of luck in this worthy endeavor.
I'm a big fan of Sego. You can check mint sets and dealer stock but this will require a lot of leg work. About 1.5% of mint set halfs are Gem quality but the very high grades can be deceptively elusive. If you have the nicest 15 of a 1000 sets they will tend to lay out 11 MS-65 and three or four MS-66. Sometimes there will be an MS-67. Of course this varies by date and some are much easier and some are much tougher.
Relatively few dies were used for mint set coins. For halfs they'd get about 25,000/ 30,000 strikes so there were maybe 60 dies used. EDS lasts for hundreds (even thousands) of strikes but that "new die look" wears of the half dollar dies in only about 10 strikes. That's 600 per year on average. Then these 600 coins are subjected to the same insults that other mint set coins suffer. Of course even new dies that are badly adjusted won't make a full strike. Business strike coins are made in much larger numbers (though not so much in more recent times). Far more new die strikes go into mint bags but the dies strike half a million coins and finding the ten new dies among these is like looking for a needle in a haystack. In mint sets new dies are easy because you have 10 chances of finding 10 in 30,000. Every 300th mint set has a coin struck by new dies! By contrast you'll have to check 25 bags of half dollars.
Finding good mint sets to check is not easy. The trick is to get as close to the point of purchase as possible which means looking through dealer stock. Sometimes you can make a deal with wholesalers to check their purchases but this may not be possible any longer. The wholesale mint sets are picked pretty clean in modern times. Look for nice clean sets in original envelopes and for unopened mailing packages. Believe it or not many dealers open these packages just to be sure the sets are there and will sell them as is.
Adding to Osmanli's list: check out Dave's Collectible coins at davescollectiblecoins.com or davenders on eBay. I have always had great experiences ordering from him -- coins are always as stated. Good selection of Kennedy Half Dollars, too.
