No great deals to be had

Ahhhh, at last a quiet Sunday morning, even the dog is not bothering me this morning. The coffee is hot and the time is mine! It has been a very quiet February for my collecting. I only managed to pick up one addition to my registry sets, a 2009 D LP4 MS66. Fortunately, I managed to get it at a reasonable price. I refused to pay more the $10.00 for the coin and people are bidding them up into the $15 to $18 range on Ebay. If that didn?t amaze me, the price a MS66 2010 Lincoln Penny commands on EBAY right now is ridiculous. I?m sorry but $50.00 to $60.00 is a bit extreme in my mind. I think I?ll wait until the novelty wears off and the price gets more inline with where it should be.

My circulated album sets faired a bit better this month. My Eisenhower dollars faired particularly well. I am now one coin short of a complete non-proof set. The one coin I am missing is the silver 1976S. I also picked up a 1972S Proof Eisenhower for my proof set. That set is also very close to completion needing only the 73S, 74S, and 76S silver proof coins to be finished. I started looking seriously at graded Eisenhower Dollars for a registry set. First of all there just are not that many graded Eisenhower Dollars out there, relatively speaking. Second, the prices some of ?not quite at the top but pretty close grades? are a bit steep for my bank account. I am very seriously contemplating finding really great raw coins and sending them in for grading. Yes, I know this can be expensive but if I can really determine what constitutes a high end grade, I should be able to fair very well. Of course there is always the ?In quantity there is quality? theory that says if I find several VERY good Eisenhower Dollars then I can have them all graded and sell a few of them to offset the cost of having all of them graded. This will most certainly be a very slow and methodical process should I go that route.

I did manage to pick up six or so Walking Liberty Halves in VG/F condition to start that album collection. I kind of have a couple of goals with this one. First, it is a relatively inexpensive way to get to know the Walking Liberty Half. There will be a good deal of research going into the coin over the next several months. Perhaps, I may even venture out and start a registry set of them but now for a while. The second reason is my youngest son. I think he will actually like the Walking Liberty and with a VG/F set he can take an active, ?Hands On? role in building the set with me. I have to wait for summer though before he gets back up here with me.

The rest of my acquisitions have been minor upgrades or filling the odd hole. I did manage to pick up a very nice XF 1932 D to fill a hole and a BU/MS 1942 Lincoln as an upgrade to my Lincoln cents. I even picked up a 2002 Mint Set which I will cut up to upgrade all of my modern 2002 coins.

I am not expecting much more activity in March either. High School Baseball Season has started and between teaching and coaching I am out of pocket between 12 and 14 hours a day. But alas, Sunday mornings still belong to me while everyone else sleeps.