mine is a VF-20 1934-S peace dollar that was labeled as a 1934-D for $10 at FleaMart a few years ago. whats yours?
This 1860 pointed bust....bought as a normal 1860 in an old fat MS64 NGC holder. It is a very nice proof like coin. The difference in price for this pointed bust compared to the common rounded bust is about $1000. Many people collect this variety as part of a complete set.
In before the member who picked the 42/1-D off the Bay... Grabbed a lot of 18 Peace dollars for about $100 over melt, seeing that one looked like a pretty nice 1921 and another that looked like a 1934 with a mintmark. Came back as MS62 on the 1921 and AU50 on the 34-S. Grabbed a lot of junk/culls for $150 or so featuring a holed, graffiti'd trade dollar. That trade dollar turned out to be an 1878-P, a proof-only issue, and apparently genuine. The other junk included some semi-key early Lincolns (10s, 15s, 22d, 24d, 31s), a 26-S Buffalo in VF-XF (but dark), and a 12-S Liberty nickel. All but the Buffalo are impaired, but still, the trade dollar alone may well go for a few times what I paid for the lot. The latest junk lot I bought didn't turn up any big treasures, but even a mediocre lot is still cheap entertainment.
My best cherrypick was a Spanish Distinguished Order of Charles III which I paid $45.00 for at a coin show. It weighed 30.9 grams of enameled 21K gold. I sold it two weeks later at another coin show for $700.00 which paid for my NGC AU-50 1840-O No Drapery quarter.
This isn't my best, but it's one of them. I bought this coin for $29 about 18 months ago. I sent it in to PCGS and it came back as MS64. I sold it on EBay for $900 about 6 months later
Purchased in junk silver, I was told that it was not the overdate by 4 dealers. Now in an NGC XF-45 slab. When I showed it to one of the dealers he said: See, I told you it was good. I just waled away, and thought that he was/is an idiot.
I don't consider this a cherrypick. As I understand the term it's a buyer recognizing a better coin that a seller didn't. In my case neither of us recognized the variety. The coin is an 1862 $1 gold. It was slabbed AU-58 by NGC. Turns out there are 3 DD's, one DDO and two DDR's. The one I got was the DDO. I shipped it back to NGC and had them put the variety on it (VP-001). [I don't even know who/what source the VP references.] It appears that all of the DD's are rather common so my variety is worth only about 50% more than a normal strike. I'd post my images but they are terrible; you can't see the doubling. Must have been taken with my old point-and-shoot. I'll see if I can do better.
I got a lot of 3 1921-P Morgans for $45 off Ebay, back in the day when that was a reasonable price for 3 Uncirculated 1921's. The pics were small but pretty clear, and the coins looked decent. One had really nice surfaces, which is why I went for the lot when I already had too many 1921's. This was the "nice" one: VAM-47, the dies used for the Zerbe Proofs (although recent research brings VAM-1AG into play). It came back NGC MS63PL. I got $550 for it on the flip.
I've managed to do the same cherry pick twice: get 1818/5 quarters advertised as 1818's. One of them was in an NGC holder too. It's not too easy to make out the 5 under the 8 since they're G and G+, but if you take a picture of them and zoom in you can see the top part of the 5. There's another way to ID them really easily without looking for the 5 under the 8. Here's the NGC coin. There's not a huge difference in value at this grade, but the 1818/5 is worth a little more and I'm proud I can pick 'em out.
An Ebay purchase for a group of 15 1909 cents. I blew up the reverse and thought I spotted a VDB on a few of them. No grades were noted. All 15 ended up being the VDB variety and most were AU with a few RB uncirculated coins
