Why did this 1979 Penny sell for $2800?

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by agrace97, Oct 15, 2019.

  1. BadThad

    BadThad Calibrated for Lincolns

    GOOD LUCK! It's that thinking that has kept collectors and dealers away. They almost universally believe they can just buy a roll or a mint set and pull out MS-68 and higher coins.

    I've collected memorial cents for decades and have searched thousands of mint sets, OBW rolls and bank rolls/bags for the highest grade examples I can find. Sadly, the cents in the vast majority of mint sets are MS-65 and lower. OBW rolls are often corroded or contain just crappy 65 and lower coins.

    1979 is a VERY difficult year for Lincolns. Over-used dies, hits, stains and carbon spots are the norm. 99% of them just look like crap. In fact, I'm still searching for an upgrade! I haven't even put my current coin into an airtite because I'm hoping to find a nicer one.....and mine is pretty darn nice.

    1979lincoln.jpg 1979lincolnREV.jpg
     
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  3. GoldFinger1969

    GoldFinger1969 Well-Known Member

    So I've been told....:D
     
  4. GoldFinger1969

    GoldFinger1969 Well-Known Member

    It's a bit counterintuitive that you have softer metals like MSDs (silver) and Saints (gold) much older, yet better preserved and in high grades it seems.
     
  5. baseball21

    baseball21 Well-Known Member

    Not really. The increased production numbers means speed and good enough not high quality for moderns, softer metals strike better and cleaner, and really as fopaux as it is to say Morgans were kind of the ASEs of their day and Saints are kind of old bullion. Neither were workhorses
     
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  6. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    There are some memorial cents that come extremely nice and MS-68's aren't too tough. The '79 just tends to be scratched, gouged, poorly made, or all of the above. It doesn't help that so many have spotted or tarnished because it reduces the pool of coins to check.

    Copper takes a nice strike but it's also soft enough to mar easily.

    What many people don't realize is that in 1979 nobody cared about moderns and nobody cared what the coins from the mint looked like. The mint makes far better quality today but they probably get a hundred times more complaints than in 1979. Nobody cared and this was even more obvious with coins like the 1969(P) quarter. There are several dates of cents that are tough in Gem and '79 isn't close to the top of the list.
     
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  7. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    And this is one of the reasons attrition on moderns is still staggeringly high. You could take a collection of high grades you just inherited into most coin shops that and they'll tell you to just spend them.

    I've seen dealers tell people to spend rolls of 1983 quarters and once found four rolls of very nice choice 1969 quarters in the cash register at a coin shop. Someday I might send a few of these in for grading. It's not that they are such high grade, just that they are obviously not mint set coins and are probably among the finest made of the date for circulation. I've NEVER actually see an intact roll of '69 quarters since 1969. These had been split open and dumped in. The wrappers were already gone.
     
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  8. BadThad

    BadThad Calibrated for Lincolns

    I too have seen dealers absolutely refuse any kind of memorial cents brought in by customers. Mine will check for the 72/72 and that's it. Many days I've walked into his shop where he's cutting up proof and mint sets, cherry picking a (very) few putting the rest into his register to hand out as change.
     
    Michael K likes this.
  9. Mainebill

    Mainebill Bethany Danielle

    I hear that I have no interest actually I have this pf 68 red 58 Lincoln which I have no interest in but it’s got monumental registry value when I had a ngc registry set. I lost interest when they stopped taking pcgs coins
     
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  10. Vess1

    Vess1 CT SP VIP Supporter

    He does explain it at the beginning. He says its a "conditional rarity". This should happen less with pennies as typically billions are minted. Idk why it sold THAT high and I agree it seems to be over graded. But typically the reason some of these conditional rarities go so high is because the top grading companies such as PCGS and NGC have these online sections called registry sets. You can stick to denominations or do varying type sets and compete...key word "compete" with other collectors. They assign points to coins in the sets based on rarity.
    So say you just bought a common cheap 1979 Lincoln cent in a pcgs slab that was graded a MS65. With its mintage figures there should be thousands of them. Maybe hundreds of thousands. So in a MS65 RD it may only be worth a measely 50 points to their registry set so thats not a desirable one. Cleaned details graded coins arent worth many points either.
    But, a MS68 RD may be a conditional rarity. There may only be 8 graded that high. Eventually there will be one that is one in a billion graded MS69RD as an example. Maybe itll be one of a kind. That one might be worth 20k registry points. The same coin can also be used in multiple registry sets online.
    I have a set at NGC. NGC gives out varying awards for certain criteria annually. You also get to look at other peoples sets in the registry. I finally got mine in the top 100 so I was happy. Its just a challenge and basically about prestige. NGC offers some small prizes at the top. I like it but its not for everybody. Obviously you have to be fairly wealthy to compete for first. ;)
     
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  11. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    I know a few dealers who just indiscriminately cut up mint sets for the till. When I ask them about Gems and varieties they say they don't care because they bought the sets back of face anyway and they are too expensive to ship. They say a lot of their customers notice getting these and other unusual coins in change.

    Where coins are really destroyed is when the sets are actually shipped. Dealers accumulate sets that are too expensive to cut up and then they ship them off hundreds at a time. Generally buyers are destroying these sets to make BU rolls and sets but there is no market for some of the coins and even the better coins must be choice and tarnish free to sell as "BU". This means hundreds of thousands of coins every year are just cut out and taken to the bank. Coins like common dimes and quarters aren't worth the effort of choicing and rolling. Most 1976 tI Ikes can't even be sold as BU. Only about the top 30% make the cut now days and some of these must be soaked and cleaned first. Of course these big guys are searching Gems and varieties before they ship them off to their customers.

    I always thought that we'd run out of mint sets long before now but they made millions of them and there are only a few thousand collectors so prices are only inching up. That Ike from the '75 mint set now wholesales for $80 a roll in BU. Buying one is a little more difficult because most companies will charge less than wholesale and ship culls.

    These are all "funny" markets because there is almost no demand and almost no supply so the huge mintages still rule. Buyers tend to be unsophisticated so it's common for very poor quality and culls to be shipped. Most "BU" '82 and '83 coins aren't even uncirculated at all; they are sliders (AU's). If you buy a "BU Set" of clad quarters it's probably going to have circulated '82's and '83's.

    Of course lots of the BU rolls of zinc and even copper memorial pennies are spotted and corroded. The cents in mint sets are bad in many sets with the '68-P being the worst. This means even BU can require effort but most people think Gems were made and saved in huge numbers so they have no value. They think it's foolish to seek moderns in higher grades.

    But let just a few hundred people try to put together something like a nice choice Ike set (MS-63/4) and prices for some of these would go crazy. If all 20,000 cent collectors were to decide to upgrade their coins to MS-64 and replace spotted and ugly coins dates like the '84 and '68 would explode. Finding some dates with nice attractive surfaces/ reasonably well made/ and not scratched up is a real test of character. The services only grades these coins when people send them in accidentally while trying for higher grades.

    These markets are very thin and sophisticated at the high end but they are even thinner and very unsophisticated a few levels down from the top.

    Yes, I'm selling these now and I get good money for top end but not so good for other coins I know are pretty scarce.
     
  12. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    I seriously doubt there are that many. 50,000 +/- at most.

    Many moderns look like garbage in grades below Gem so if people ever start collecting moderns they'll probably aim at least for nice MS-64's and Gems. This wouldn't help the Gem '79 cent much because it's much more common in MS-64 but it will help many many other dates like the '68.
     
    GoldFinger1969 likes this.
  13. Razz

    Razz Critical Thinker

    There were no mint sets for 82 or 83.
     
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