Proof Coins in Circulation/Coin Hobby

I found a 1976-S Ike in a bag of $500 circulated Ikes this week. Pretty cool, but banged up and definitely an impaired proof, probably grades PR40 or so. Still has some proof mirrors on it though.

 

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Circulated Proof Coins?

I work in vending and I've collected probably a hundred of these coins over the years but I haven't found a good answer of their worth but I seal them up and save them anyway.

 

I've found a couple Jeffersons and a couple Washingtons over the past year. Last one was a DC. None of them silver though :/
Did find a 2000-S silver Rosie though

 

That's because ALL of the 1978 proof coins have blob or "filled" S mintmarks.

Sometimes the proofs are spent because the sets are given to a none collector who just doesn't care. To him they are just money. A couple years ago there was a news story back in 2007 about a kid whose mother gave him a 2007 proof set. He busted open the set, went to McDonalds, bought something to eat, and was arrested for passing counterfeit coins. They said they knew they had to be counterfeits because the dollar coins with those presidents hadn't been released yet.

 

If you do get one most of the time it,s all scratched up and really looking like it had a
Better day LOL but the one jallen found looks really decent

 

I have spent many proof coins so I can guarantee it happens. On many occasions I have gotten a roll of them with some low grade ones. So I just pass em along. Most modern proofs are worth very little per coin.

 

Yeah, somebody just did on here. It was an Ike dollar.

 

I have found a few proof clad quarters, but then again I went through about 700,000 + quarters from 1973-1988.

 

Circulated proofs

Here's a thread from a little while back: Spending a Damaged Proof SBA

-and-

Here's a 2007-S Proof George Washington presidential golden $1 coin that I received in change in the summer of 2010.

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This post would have been so much better with a link to that thread: Found this Ike in circulation

 

proofartoncircs mentioned going through 700,000 coins. I went through at least 200.000 pennies alone searching for Wheaties and the odd Indian head before I found a 1972 ddo penny AU58 brown. It is little goodies like that which make it all worth while.
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Cool find Chris. :thumb: I think someone could lift your fingerprint off the reverse of that GW proof though. TC

 

I actually documented an acetone cleaning with before/after pics of this coin. Those prints didn't budge. Good learning tool though and I was thrilled to find a proof in circulation.

 

The answer is yes. Have you ever watched storage wars? People accumulate proof sets and store them, yes in rented storage. Sometimes the sets are intact, sometimes the collector takes what he believes to be the most valuable coins and probably, re - slabs the pieces and keep the more valuable coins maybe in a safe of a period of time.
So the grading company, in this case some off the wall company throws them in a slab and if they are from a period before 1980 and have no mint mark, they are automatically marked P for Philadelphia.
So then here is thus one storage bin with cardboard boxes of these re-slabbed coins and for some reason the owner doesn't pay the rent and fails to show up. Then the storage company auctions everything in the storage room ,lock,stock and barrel and whoever buys the stuff, probably not a numismatic afficiando pulls out any silver remaining and any dates just about everybody is familiar with and someone like me sees an ad with a box of coins for sale, and purchases them for a couple hundred bucks.
And guess what, finds all kinds of interesting coins in the box, slab bed and not only finds DCAM coins slabbed but some marked with a P which sure look like proof coins to me.
So once the proof coins are removed from the sets and sold, I consider them circulated. Did I find proof coins, I just said so.
And although the finest specimen of a 1969-S Doubled Die came out of a $4 + proof set, the most recent one found IN CIRCULATION was an AU-55.
Are proof coins intended for circulation? No. But do they seep into circulation from time to time, of course.
And when you find what you think is a proof coin, often it is not. New proof coins are absolutely clear details and the fields are often polished or vice versa. Where there is a challenge is proof coins from 4 or 5 and maybe even 6 decades back which are found in circulation because the natural degradation can easily fool you.
If 1969-S proof coins were valued because of low mint numbers instead of very bold doubled die obverses, I am sure in the case of the AU-55 , it would have been thrown in the roll and take back to the bin pile.
So here is the rub, even should you find a valuable proof coin in circulation, it could be in such bad shape that most grading companies would not verify it is a proof coin.
The best thing to do is go to yard sales, or pick up proof sets over craigslist, at a coin shop because values can be found if you know what to look for.
Whether coin collecting is a hobby or a source of income, it requires lots of research and studying otherwise you want know what you have when you do acquire it.
It's happened to me over and over. When I started collecting pennies, do you want to know how many times I re-rolled what I thought had no value only to discover I rejected some 1989-D' because they were well circulated. But 1989-D and even 1990-D have been discovered at times to be transitional, copper weighing 3.1g. The mint transitioned from copper to zinc in 1982, later in 1982, all 1982's were supposed to be zinc. But one 1982-D small date transitional coin was discovered a couple years ago and of course 1983 also need to be weighed.
But in the beginning, I bought a box of pennies and rolled them over and over and over.
And still threw a 1922 no S in the re-rolled pile.
Don't believe proof coins are never found in circulation. And watch Coins or Blueridgesilverhound on youtube; they always broadcast something useful to any collector.
And get Free PCGS coin app on Google play; it is helpful because most of the pictures and gestimations can point you in the right direction.

 

I put proof coins into circulation when they would cost more to sell than spend.

For example, If I buy a 1968 Proof Set because the Half Dollar looks to be Deep Cameo, I'll pull that coin out of the set for grading and then examine the other coins. If they are not note worthy as either Cameos, Doubled Dies or high grade coins, then they go into the change bag. The change bag gets rolled up every few months and deposited in the bank.

I feel confident that, unless a Collector has a method of selling these without having to incur eBay and PayPal fee's, most collectors would do the same thing since they just take up space.

WOW, this is an old thread.

 

The finest known was pulled from a proof set? What in the world was it doing in a proof set because the 69-S doubled die is a business strike coin not a proof.

They have graded coins at least as low as Proof-4. That's 4 not 64.

 

I think they made business strikes and proof sets in San Francisco in 1969.

 

FYI:
1) The 1969 S DDO was NOT a proof, it was a circulation strike.
If you trust PCGS, look here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/537766...MIkdTZj6za1gIVDVmGCh3NIgcAEAQYBCABEgIBKfD_BwE


Also, if it had circulated, then it would have been a PR-58, not AU-58. A proof coin always maintains its status as a proof.

2) there was no such animal as a 1922 no S, it is a 1922 D no D,
you found one and you sent it back into the wild?

 

I recently purchased this proof, three cent piece. It had been sent in for grading with several other coins, including one of mine. When the shop owner was unpacking the box to retrieve my coin, he showed me this one. The fellow that owned it at the time, told him he had found it in his pocket change. No idea if that is true or not but that's what I was told.

 

They did, but they didn't used the same dies to make both types. The 69-S DDO die was a business strike die. It was never used to strike proofs.