i was going to ask if Ikes were delivered from the mint in bags rather than rolls. But i think these may be slot machine dings. Still lustrous but looks like bag marks. Have we got any Ike collectors about?
All Ikes left the mint in $1,000 bags except for the collector versions in mint sets and the like. There were no rolls issued by the mint with Ikes. Many of the Ikes looked just horrible straight out of the mint. The 1971 coins were very poorly struck and heavily marked in most instances. Some of the other dates were nearly as bad. Some of the mid dates (especially '74- 77) had a lot of trouble with what the mint calls "finning". These are the high rims caused by metal being forced around the collar. These are considered unacceptable for issue so many were put into a machine like a cement mixer and rotated until the rims were knocked down. These coins look like VF's that have been through the casinos right out of the bag. Gems of all dates are scarce or rare and some dates are decidedly difficult even in nice attractive uncirculated. The '76 tI in the mint set is so poor that wholesalers won't accept nearly half of them as even being uncirculated. The mint set coins tend to be far better than regular issue.
I have collected a full set of Ikes (no proofs) with ALL of them coming out of mint sets and I only bought them in original sealed cello packaging. I find that a several of them have toning even though they were in sealed cello. The toning is light golden, evenly distributed across the entire coin and not unattractive at all. Is this common to Ikes??
I've been collecting Ikes since 1971. Got some nice ones, too. When the high grade BU's suddenly shot up in price, I sold a ton of them, but there are still a few nice pieces in my collection. Now I just look for doubled dies or other errors. I had 2 Gallery Mint $1 coin replicas struck on clad Ike blanks. They look really good! Too bad there were no clad planchets in the 1790's. Once in the 1980's, I needed some quick cash, so I hauled out over 600 Ikes to the pawn shop to borrow $300. The pawn shop guy told me they didn't loan money on coin collections, but I pointed out to him that there was over $600 in cash. That really seemed to stymie him. "But we can't lend money on coin collections..." Again, I pointed out that I wanted to leave $600 as collateral for a $300 loan, but he didn't get it. He got his supervisor and he was pretty adamant, too. "We don't loan money on coin collections." Again, I pointed out that there was over $600 cash here for collateral. It took them a while to figure out what was going on, but they did, finally, loan the money.
No disrespect, but I have to say this..."That's why some people work in PAWN shops" These are probably the same people that can't add, make change (without looking at the register) and believe that SAC dollars are actually made of gold.
