I was wondering why I don't see them in SP70 condition. I see mostly 69 and under. Looking at the PCGS price guide, I do see they have prices listed for the year 2005 but no others. Why is this? Thanks.
I don't collect the satins. As a matter of fact, I stopped collecting the Mint Sets when they changed to the satin finish in 2005. I bought 15 of the 2005 sets, and after going through them and finding countless 70's (it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell the difference between a 69 & 70), I came to the conclusion that they would be so common that it wouldn't be worth it. For the subsequent years of the satins, I've read reports that the quality had declined. I'm inclined to believe that the Mint loosened their standards for the successive years because I also noticed that some of the business strikes were of very poor quality. It looked as though the Mint was using degraded satin finish dies to produce business strikes. I don't think they anticipated that the satin finish dies would not last as long and it was costing too much money to produce them for what seemed like a shorter useful life. Chris
Hmm, you would think the mint would be more inclined to keep their standards high as to sell more quality coins. Thanks for the reply Chris.
There may still be many of them out there in mint sets after the first year getting them graded became a losing cause. In a bulk submission which was how most were submitted the graded coins could not be sold for what the grading cost. Oh and they still can't, I sold a couple of SP69 coins recently for about five dollars shipped.
Yeah I've noticed they have been selling way below what's listed in the NGC and PCGS price guides on eBay.
