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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 541496, member: 68&quot;]There are lots of nuances to these.&nbsp; Like the &#039;72-D is pretty easy in gem.&nbsp; While the mint set coins are often tarnished now days there are still many pristine examples in the sets and these can be stunning PL&#039;s with very intricate strikes.&nbsp; This might seem like a date that would never draw a lot of interest in very high grade since virtually perfect examples are &quot;common&quot;, but finding these with the tops of the date numerals fully struck is a virtual impossibility.&nbsp; The &#039;79-D isn&#039;t so very rare in gem but only about 1% of mint set coins are gem and better examples are almost never seen.&nbsp; These are simply marked up.&nbsp; All of the &#039;69&#039;s are often tarnished in the sets so are no longer common.&nbsp; The &#039;69-S roll has been searched extensively for the DDO and the rest of the coins spent.&nbsp; This same effect happens to the other coins with rare or important varieties.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The memorials have a lot of character and they vary on many parameters.&nbsp; They haven&#039;t simply sat in bank vaults for decades and then released; rather they&#039;ve circulated lightly and suffered horrendous attrition.&nbsp; And they did this for decades while being totally ignored by &quot;real collectors&quot;.&nbsp; They were set aside by speculators and included in mint sets or they would barely exist at all.&nbsp; Where would you get a &#039;68-S in any condition if not for speculators or mint sets.&nbsp; Well the speculators missed some dates and the mint sets have been whittled away to next to nothing and in some cases, all the cents in the sets are tarnished anyway.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Collectors are finally starting to look at these coins.&nbsp; I think we&#039;ll see some big pricing changes for many of these and this means just nice uncs as well as gems and superb specimens.&nbsp; New collectors would be well advised not to get caught up in any big excitement if it ever happens because none of the memorials is scarce in just gem (maybe the &#039;68), but they sure are far scarcer than the price guides imply.&nbsp; Despite being scarcer than some of the old wheat cent key dates they sell for a fraction of the price.&nbsp; If you like these coins then now is the time to put a set together.&nbsp; Someday they won&#039;t be cheaper than the more common older coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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