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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Paul M., post: 5299987, member: 73165&quot;]I&#039;ve just gotten through all 9 pages of this thread so far.&nbsp; If none of the gold coins are cleaned (and I don&#039;t see any sign of such from the full album page photos you&#039;ve already provided), then, yes, the dealer was lowballing quite a bit.&nbsp; You&#039;ve got an easy $7000 in scrap metal value on that page alone.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the rest of it, there are some standouts and some duds, and it may not be obvious to you which are which.&nbsp; For example, the 1813 cent, while it might look like a dud due to the corrosion, is still worth more than $100 retail.&nbsp; Classic head large cents are the kind of thing where even just having one in the album makes it a worthy coin.&nbsp; The 2 cent is a real standout, as is the 3 cent silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>The 1840 dollar looks like a winner, too, except I&#039;m not sure what&#039;s going on near the stars at about 1:30-2:00.&nbsp; The defect at the lower right on the obverse looks like a lamination, which is where a part of the alloy was improperly mixed, causing a part of the metal there to flake off.&nbsp; Technically, that should be called a &quot;delamination,&quot; but it&#039;s a term we&#039;re kind of stuck with for historical reasons.</p><p><br /></p><p>The 1872 dollar has some obverse rim issues that are going to knock it down in value, as well as the scratches below the eagle on the reverse.&nbsp; This coin will never straight grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>The half dollars as a whole look pretty good, with the 1839 reeded edge being the real standout, IMO.&nbsp; The 1832 is weird looking, and I&#039;m not quite sure what to make of it.&nbsp; And, unfortunately, the 1903 is a big ol&#039; dud due to the huge scratches in the center of the reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>One other major dud worth mentioning is the 1853 Seated quarter.&nbsp; While the reverse is outstanding, whatever happened to the obverse just kills the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>The steel cent looks like it might have a big scratch starting from the second T in TRUST, all the way down to the rim.&nbsp; Unless that&#039;s some kind of photo artifact, or a hair that accidentally landed on it, that&#039;s going to kill that coin.&nbsp; That isn&#039;t a huge deal, since the steelie isn&#039;t going to be a huge contributor to the value of the collection, anyway.</p><p><br /></p><p>What you do want to watch out for there is that many steel cents have been replated once the original plating wore off a little.&nbsp; I don&#039;t think this one has been replated, but, what you&#039;d look for is a flat, reflectiveness, as opposed to a cartwheel type luster under a strong light.&nbsp; You&#039;d also expect to see kind of mushy detail, which I don&#039;t see here, and which is why I suspect it&#039;s not been reprocessed.</p><p><br /></p><p>One other thing to keep in mind here is that the album itself, meaning the book, without the coins, would probably retail on its own for $75 or a little more, easy, even with the condition issues on the gold page.&nbsp; People forget about the value of the physical albums their coins are sitting in sometimes, and the 7070 is one of those that&#039;s both very popular, and hard to get, because the company isn&#039;t making them right now.</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s obviously a lot more I could say about this album, but, what you need is definitely a proper appraisal, if only for insurance purposes.&nbsp; I don&#039;t think Heritage is necessarily the right place to go for this appraisal, because, although they do offer free appraisals, they&#039;re going to be geared more toward the type of stuff they offer in their auctions, and I don&#039;t think any of this really is a good fit for them, except maybe the gold.&nbsp; You should find a local dealer who will take the time to look carefully at every coin, and you will probably have to pay this person for their time, since you have no intention of selling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Even with all the problems I&#039;ve mentioned, plus a couple I haven&#039;t mentioned, plus the potential issues that are there which I&#039;ve missed, and only assigning melt value to the gold, you&#039;ve got an easy $11-12000 retail here, I think. Obviously, that number goes up if your gold coins are all original mint state or very lightly circulated specimens with no damage.</p><p><br /></p><p>I know you said you didn&#039;t want to sell, but, that means that if you did want to sell, you could probably expect about 60% of that as an offer, which would be in the neighborhood of what the dealer offered you.&nbsp; So, my conclusion is that the dealer was probably looking at your gold pieces as scrap metal, which doesn&#039;t look warranted based on what I&#039;ve seen.&nbsp; I am willing to be proven wrong based on photos of the gold coins, but that&#039;s what I think as of right now.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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