Well, I once knew a guy, we'll call him... meattlite86, who fell for unsearched rolls and spent a lot of money buying them up and learning just how dishonest sellers can be. It's probably best that meattlite86 didn't have more money, or he might have stupidly bought things like this as well.
I won! I won!... I cant wait to show everyone my beautiful expensive silver Morgans! . . . . . . . . Happy pre April Fools Day!
Well, there's something like 330,000,000 people in the US. 62 is only something like 0.0000187% And look at all the people that have a "road kill" US penny (ugh, it's a CENT, not a penny; look at the reverse) that think it's an error. Or their cent is a DD. Sorry, I apologize. I needed to make those last two comments. It's an itch that I needed to scratch.
I ran across a dealer once that was very dishonest. Never bought from him. Never went back either. He would take a roll of mostly dateless Buffalo Nickels and slip the end one out and replace it with a Shield Nickel. He never showed the date, just the shield on one end and a buffalo on the other end. He claimed he sold several rolls every week. The amazing thing was he had about 25 plus of these rolls on display and available for sale. You could even pick which roll you wanted. I have no doubts that he sold them but you could tell the end coin was replaced.
I actually personally met someone who sells “unsearched rolls.” We actually made friends before I realized it was all a scam, and I even met him at his home and talked Coins with him for a while. He’s a very kind old man who suffers from MS and sells them to pay for medical bills and such. Even so, when it all dawned on me that it was a big scam, I up and cut off communications with him. I just didn’t know how to broach the subject without being rude/angry. He no longer sells them, but I felt betrayed nonetheless and feel like I shouldn’t reconnect because I’ll bring it up. Regardless of your reasoning, lies are lies. He never talked to me about the rolls, but I’m certain he has a crimping machine at his house.
Since shields are smaller this should have been quite obvious. Not quite as bad as gold dollars as enders, but still. It’s certainly possible, but not necessary. With a little patience and practice it’s quite easy to reproduce by hand.
Yes, I'm aware of that. For me, that's another strike against the Mint. That goes along with the items they sell that are greatly overpriced. But my opinion in this case will mostly fall on deaf ears. BTW a recent Coin World Weekly contained a Letter to the Editor that mentioned the same thing. So I'm not the only numismatist that finds it annoying to call the US 1¢ coin a "penny". And to be truthful, in day-to-day conversations I use the word "penny". But I think US numismatists should use the word "cent".
It's unbelievable that there was 62 bids on it and the average price on each coin is approximately $550 per coin!
