There's a number of auctions right now by a seller that apparently bought a huge lot of wheat pennies at an estate auction. She is selling them in 10 pound lots, which according to my scale, is about 28 rolls. There's a stock photo that's on all her auctions--some 10 pounds, some one roll, a few envelopes of 10 pennies. She only has a feedback of 2--and that's for books, so I don't know if she knows coins or not. These could be all 1950's AG or they could be truly unsearched. I put in a bid on the lot--don't know why--and I was immediately outbid and walked away. Now I've been offered a second chance to get the lot for $25.89 plus $9.99 shipping. That's $36 for about 1400 pennies. Which could really be worth $14.00. Would you do it?
At that price, it works out to about 3.6 cents per penny. This is a fair to strong retail price for common date circulated wheaties. You have to assume that these lots are mostly composed of 1950's VF coins. I can almost guarantee you these sorts of lots have been searched for keys, despite what any shyster claims on Ebay.
I agree with your expectations of what she will get, but I do not follow you math. 1# pennies = 150 150 X 10 + 1500 ($26.89 + $9.99) / 1500 = 2.46¢ each Even the BIN is only ($29.99 + $9.99) / 1500 = 2.67¢ each. Not that I am recommending the seller, but about a year ago, my local dealer was PAYING 3¢ each for them
The description says "10 pounds of pennies", NOT "10 pounds of wheats". There's no guarantee that you receive even 1 wheat!
Aaack! Carried away by my greed, lol. So if he collected them for 60 years, and there's been Memorials for the last 40, this is really a lame deal. I'm going to watch them though, to see what kind of feedback the buyers end up leaving. The first lot went for $27 (plus the $10 shipping).
If it were me being asked I would go ahead and pick them up, because like you wrote, the seller was not selling any other coins, you would be buying them for a bit more than melt, but you never know what you might find.
I've bought large quantities of U.S. cents to search through over the last year. I knew from the start that the keys and semi-keys had been pulled but I was more interested in varieties and errors that I knew had been over-looked. The person I bought them from is a dealer and an old friend of mine and I know what his primary stock is. The price was right and I had fun going through them. I have three sets of circulated wheats and memorials each missing just the keys and semi-keys. Plus I have a nice collection of errors and varities. I know that I can sell the remainder for probably more than I paid for all of them so I essentially put together a few collections without any cost. I won't get rich from this but it is a hobby that I really enjoy. So, basically it comes down to what you expect from your purchase. I wouldn't count on anything valuable. Usually bulk coins are the remainders or rejects. Good luck on whatever you decide!
it depends, the new copper coated zincolns are about 2.5 grams, the old 95% coppers are 3.1 grams so about 147 a pound for the old coppers, about 180 per pound of zincolns
I just took a bunch of rolls of pennies--all 50's and 60's--some in wrappers, some in tubes, and put them on my scale. 14 rolls came to 5.1 pounds and I allowed a tiny bit for the tubes.
I've always heard there's 145 wheaties to a pound, now taking in consideration of wear, its probably pretty safe to say 147 wheaties. Then again, I'm not picky 3 rolls per lb.
I sell wheaties by the pound and have scales accurate to 1/10 oz. I have found that there are usually 148-152 wheaties to the pound(16oz.) It depends on how much wear and how many steelies are in there. I guarantee more than a pound and usually make sure that there are at least 155 in the package.
WHAT? Everyone makes it sound like when you hear UNSEARCHED that there is a possibility that it isn't true. :smile I've heard so many stories of people buying those that I sometimes wonder if people even read these horror stories of ending up with a pile of almost useless Copper. I've got a buch of UNSEARCHED pennies. I just inhirited a bunch of coins and no nothing about them My Uncle/Aunt/etc. left me these Wheat back cents and I just want to sell them. Someone found these tons of pennies in bags in a corner somewhere. I'll sell them for?? Etc., etc., etc. I'm really waiting for a person on ebay to say something like I've got this pile of Wheat backs that myself and many others have gone through ten times and just want to sell the rest for an outrageous amount of money.
Buying wheats is for fun and I do it sometimes. I slowed down doing it over the years due to too many common coins. I just recently sold many tubes that I sorted over the years on Craigslist and the story goes like this. First I tried to sell individual dates and mm rolls for a certain price like 3-4 cents for common dates. Then 5-6 cents each for certain s mint rolls which were some nice 49-51s ones. I got very few takers due to the coins being sorted as everyone wants the thrill of the hunt. So two weeks later I run an ad for wheats which I state maybe searched at some point for 4 cents each. I got many responses and ended up selling over 5000 wheats. I created a batch using common wheats and some s mints. So in the end I got more money this way and got rid of many common wheats and ended up shipping the s mints to a dealer. Just another point some of these coins I bought over 20 years ago for 2-3 cents each and ended up selling for 4 cents each so wheats are not a good investment period.
Update: I don't know why, but I received one of those "second chance offers" to buy the 10 pounds at my original bid, and I went for it. It seems like 6 or 7 people also bought 10-pound lots of these, not including other second-chance offers. So what did I receive??? Absolutely nothing. I filed a claim with eBay today for a refund. Since her feedback hasn't changed, I assume no one else has received anything either. Oh, well. Live and learn.
