Imagine my excitement at the prospect of acquiring the "finest" 1963 Franklin known to exist. Then add in the re-assurance of knowing that I can return it for a refund if I don't like it.

I have been working on my NGC 1963 proof set for a few months now, and I have been able to assemble a respectable PF68 ULTRA for each of these, except the Half which is PF68 CAMEO. Since I am temporarily satisfied with this, I have decided to concentrate on a mint set of the same year. I have been placing hundreds, if not thousands of bids on eBay in an attempt to procure MS66 examples, and I have been successfull on occasion. The other day, while checking some of my favorite searches, I noticed a new listing of a 1963 Franklin in MS68 which really caught my eye. I immediately contacted the seller to inquire about their return policy and when given the appropriate reassurance I went ahead and bid. I knew that my meager opening bid would need to be adjusted at the end of the auction. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I was the winning bidder, and even more shocking was the fact that NO ONE else even bothered to bid so I got it for the opening bid amount. That's when I noticed that this coin was actually graded by NTC, and it looked like the coin might be a low grade generic proof instead of a top MINT STATE coin. Oh well, I didn't think there were any MS68 Franklins out there anyway. On a related topic, I noticed that the current number one 1963 proof set has a PR70 dime in it, but there aren't any PR70 1963 dimes listed in the NGC population census. I guess that means its a PCGS coin. I wonder how they talked PCGS into that one.