FormerTeller
Bronze Member
- Apr 24, 2011
- 1,879
- 1,355
For those who read my previous post (http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/c...ncredible-dumping-experience.html#post4819443), you know that I recently stopped an older gentleman from cashing in his silver for face value, and was able to purchase them from him for pretty much the melt value. At that time, he mentioned that he had several silver dollars and old currency at home, but I wasn't able to meet with him until after the holidays. Well, the day after I got back from vacation, he called up me! He said he had all of his coins and bills ready, and that he had a friend who was coming with him who had a small penny collection to sell as well. We decided to meet at the same bank the next day. I called up the bank and asked them if we could use one of their offices again, and they graciously obliged.
The next day we meet, and he hauls out his loot. When I was talking with him the week prior about the value of the coins, I mentioned that the current price of silver meant that most of the silver coins were worth about 11 times the face value, but that the silver dollars carried a small premium. I had decided earlier that day to offer him $13 per "ordinary" silver dollar, ordinary meaning 1921 Morgans and most Peace dollars, which seem to be the most prevalent. He starts laying Ikes on the table...
Fortunately, he soon followed with Peace and Morgan dollars. All of the Peace dollars were 1922 and 1923. There were a couple of 1921 Morgans, and some older ones. Again, wanting to be fair, I had brought a recent copy of the Coin Dealer Newsletter with me, to look up a rough value of anything that might carry a very high premium. I looked up the older date Morgans, and noticed one of them was a 1892 Carson City in what would otherwise be VG condition, but had what appeared to be a scratch or mark - surely pmd - across the obverse. Still, I told him it was worth considerably more than $13, admitted that I was not a Morgan specialist, and mentioned that he might want to take it to a coin shop or other expert to get the most out of it. Their response was "no, that's ok, we trust you." *sigh*
I ended up giving him $13 apiece for most of the silver dollars, $15 each for a couple of the nicer ones, and $50 for the 1892 CC. He also had a solitary 1964 Kennedy half, and some buffalo and liberty nickels - no key dates, all in Good to Fine condition. That ended his coins, so he hauled out his bills - a beat up 1935E $1 silver certificate and a beautiful 1957A $1 silver certificate - looked Crisp Uncirculated to my novice eye. He also had 3 sequential $1 bills from 1974 - the first and last in sequence again looking crisp uncirculated, and the middle bill encased in acrylic plastic. He flipped the middle bill over, and it was completely blank! I was quite impressed. I told him I had heard of that type error before, but that I hadn't seen one, and had no idea how much it was worth. I took a couple pictures with my phone, and texted them to a currency dealer I've done business with before, and while waiting we decided to look at his friend's coins.
Now, as I mentioned in my last post, this was an older gentleman; I'd put him in his late 70's. His friend, a woman who was I would guess in her early to mid 70's, turned out to be his fiance!
They were cleaning out their houses, getting married, and moving to Colorado in two weeks! She hauled out her nickel collection, which turned out to be all common date nickels in blue Whitman folders, none worth more than face IMO. She had a bunch of 1970's half dollars and $2 bills, and I had the unenviable task of informing her that they weren't more than face value. However, she took it in stride and asked if I wanted to see her penny collection. Now, the day before, the gentleman told me that his "friend" had a penny collection from the 1960's. I wasn't terribly eager to see it, particularly after seeing her other "collectibles", but was determined to be nice. She started pulling out tubes of uncirculated cents - 16 of them! The dates ranged from 1959 to 1969, with different mint marks. Most of the tubes were taped shut, with tape that you could tell was put on decades ago, but we opened a few of them. Sure enough, the tubes contained what they looked like - uncirculated red-brown to red cents. Unfortunately, I had no idea what they were worth. I offered her $2 per roll, and she happily accepted.
By then my dealer friend had texted back. He said that if the bill could be extracted from the acrylic, and that if it was in crisp uncirculated condition, then the three bills together would retail for about $400, and that he'd pay $300 for them. However, there was a catch; because the owner said he put the bill in between the acrylic in 1974, the dealer said that it was not uncommon for the paper to bond to the acrylic, in which case it was worth in his words "a nice paperweight." He suggested that I have the owner separate the acrylic and see if it would come out all right. I relayed all this to the couple, and they asked me to open the acrylic, saying that if it didn't work out they wouldn't hold it against me. By this time we had developed a pretty good rapport, so I agreed. I tried slitting the tape that held it together, but it was like packing tape, with threads running through it. I had to peel off the pieces from each side; the adhesive still held, which surprised me. The tape removed, we held out breath as I gingerly tried to remove the bill. It came out!
I held it up to the light - no folds, very crisp - and placed it next to the other two. What a beautiful sight! Again, showed my inexperience as a bargainer - I told them I didn't collect error notes, told them what my dealer would pay, and that I'd pay them what he'd pay me and ship it to him as a favor to them both. It didn't hit me until the next day that I might be on the hook if the dealer didn't agree with my assessment, but oh well, live and learn.
All in all, I ended up giving them almost $600 for what they brought in. Mailed the sequential bills to the dealer (kept the silver certificates for myself), and got his check for $300 plus shipping today.
I did some research into the marks on the 1892 CC, and it appears to be "rubber band burn," where sometimes coins were kept in plastic flips, with rubber bands wrapped tight around them. Over time, the pressure of the rubber band 'burns' into the metal, in this case fusing the plastic to the metal. I had one dealer tell me it was a lamination error, but another dealer who I trust gave me the rubber band burn theory, noting he'd seen it many times. Even so, they both agreed it should bring $70 or $80. One of the Peace dollars also had the same markings. One of the nicer Morgan's was a 1900, but in extremely fine condition. And one of the 1921's had a very noticeable die crack on the reverse - relatively common for that year, but cool to see and doesn't take away from the value. Still haven't figured out what to do with the uncirculated cents. Might go through them carefully looking for errors; there were several years that had known errors.
All in all, I think it worked out well for all of us. The dollar and penny breakdowns were as follows:
1882-S (Fine)
1890-O (Fine)
1892-CC (VG details, but AG overall)
1900 (XF)
1921-D (F)
1921-D (VF w/die crack)
1922 x5 (G to VF)
1922-D x2 (F)
1923 (F)
1923-D (VG details, but AG overall)
Unc Rolls:
1959
1960-D small date x2
1960 large date
1961
1961-D
1962
1963-D
1968
1968-D
1968-S
1969
1969-S x4
Thanks for bearing with me through this long winded post. It's still out there, just maybe not where you'd expect!
HH
FT
The next day we meet, and he hauls out his loot. When I was talking with him the week prior about the value of the coins, I mentioned that the current price of silver meant that most of the silver coins were worth about 11 times the face value, but that the silver dollars carried a small premium. I had decided earlier that day to offer him $13 per "ordinary" silver dollar, ordinary meaning 1921 Morgans and most Peace dollars, which seem to be the most prevalent. He starts laying Ikes on the table...
Fortunately, he soon followed with Peace and Morgan dollars. All of the Peace dollars were 1922 and 1923. There were a couple of 1921 Morgans, and some older ones. Again, wanting to be fair, I had brought a recent copy of the Coin Dealer Newsletter with me, to look up a rough value of anything that might carry a very high premium. I looked up the older date Morgans, and noticed one of them was a 1892 Carson City in what would otherwise be VG condition, but had what appeared to be a scratch or mark - surely pmd - across the obverse. Still, I told him it was worth considerably more than $13, admitted that I was not a Morgan specialist, and mentioned that he might want to take it to a coin shop or other expert to get the most out of it. Their response was "no, that's ok, we trust you." *sigh*
I ended up giving him $13 apiece for most of the silver dollars, $15 each for a couple of the nicer ones, and $50 for the 1892 CC. He also had a solitary 1964 Kennedy half, and some buffalo and liberty nickels - no key dates, all in Good to Fine condition. That ended his coins, so he hauled out his bills - a beat up 1935E $1 silver certificate and a beautiful 1957A $1 silver certificate - looked Crisp Uncirculated to my novice eye. He also had 3 sequential $1 bills from 1974 - the first and last in sequence again looking crisp uncirculated, and the middle bill encased in acrylic plastic. He flipped the middle bill over, and it was completely blank! I was quite impressed. I told him I had heard of that type error before, but that I hadn't seen one, and had no idea how much it was worth. I took a couple pictures with my phone, and texted them to a currency dealer I've done business with before, and while waiting we decided to look at his friend's coins.
Now, as I mentioned in my last post, this was an older gentleman; I'd put him in his late 70's. His friend, a woman who was I would guess in her early to mid 70's, turned out to be his fiance!
They were cleaning out their houses, getting married, and moving to Colorado in two weeks! She hauled out her nickel collection, which turned out to be all common date nickels in blue Whitman folders, none worth more than face IMO. She had a bunch of 1970's half dollars and $2 bills, and I had the unenviable task of informing her that they weren't more than face value. However, she took it in stride and asked if I wanted to see her penny collection. Now, the day before, the gentleman told me that his "friend" had a penny collection from the 1960's. I wasn't terribly eager to see it, particularly after seeing her other "collectibles", but was determined to be nice. She started pulling out tubes of uncirculated cents - 16 of them! The dates ranged from 1959 to 1969, with different mint marks. Most of the tubes were taped shut, with tape that you could tell was put on decades ago, but we opened a few of them. Sure enough, the tubes contained what they looked like - uncirculated red-brown to red cents. Unfortunately, I had no idea what they were worth. I offered her $2 per roll, and she happily accepted.By then my dealer friend had texted back. He said that if the bill could be extracted from the acrylic, and that if it was in crisp uncirculated condition, then the three bills together would retail for about $400, and that he'd pay $300 for them. However, there was a catch; because the owner said he put the bill in between the acrylic in 1974, the dealer said that it was not uncommon for the paper to bond to the acrylic, in which case it was worth in his words "a nice paperweight." He suggested that I have the owner separate the acrylic and see if it would come out all right. I relayed all this to the couple, and they asked me to open the acrylic, saying that if it didn't work out they wouldn't hold it against me. By this time we had developed a pretty good rapport, so I agreed. I tried slitting the tape that held it together, but it was like packing tape, with threads running through it. I had to peel off the pieces from each side; the adhesive still held, which surprised me. The tape removed, we held out breath as I gingerly tried to remove the bill. It came out!
I held it up to the light - no folds, very crisp - and placed it next to the other two. What a beautiful sight! Again, showed my inexperience as a bargainer - I told them I didn't collect error notes, told them what my dealer would pay, and that I'd pay them what he'd pay me and ship it to him as a favor to them both. It didn't hit me until the next day that I might be on the hook if the dealer didn't agree with my assessment, but oh well, live and learn.
All in all, I ended up giving them almost $600 for what they brought in. Mailed the sequential bills to the dealer (kept the silver certificates for myself), and got his check for $300 plus shipping today.
I did some research into the marks on the 1892 CC, and it appears to be "rubber band burn," where sometimes coins were kept in plastic flips, with rubber bands wrapped tight around them. Over time, the pressure of the rubber band 'burns' into the metal, in this case fusing the plastic to the metal. I had one dealer tell me it was a lamination error, but another dealer who I trust gave me the rubber band burn theory, noting he'd seen it many times. Even so, they both agreed it should bring $70 or $80. One of the Peace dollars also had the same markings. One of the nicer Morgan's was a 1900, but in extremely fine condition. And one of the 1921's had a very noticeable die crack on the reverse - relatively common for that year, but cool to see and doesn't take away from the value. Still haven't figured out what to do with the uncirculated cents. Might go through them carefully looking for errors; there were several years that had known errors.
All in all, I think it worked out well for all of us. The dollar and penny breakdowns were as follows:
1882-S (Fine)
1890-O (Fine)
1892-CC (VG details, but AG overall)
1900 (XF)
1921-D (F)
1921-D (VF w/die crack)
1922 x5 (G to VF)
1922-D x2 (F)
1923 (F)
1923-D (VG details, but AG overall)
Unc Rolls:
1959
1960-D small date x2
1960 large date
1961
1961-D
1962
1963-D
1968
1968-D
1968-S
1969
1969-S x4
Thanks for bearing with me through this long winded post. It's still out there, just maybe not where you'd expect!
HH
FT
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