samclemen3991

I do not slab a great deal of coins myself and I don't know if my feedback is of any value to you. About 2 years ago I was considering sending in about a half dozen Seated coins to have specific designations added. However, before I did, I casually asked whether they as collectors, looked for coins that were all ready labeled or whether they preferred to cherrypick such coins. On three other coin web sites more than 20 people answered and to a man they all said they wanted to do their own cherry picking and in fact avoided coins that had all ready been labeled. That gave me a great deal of pause because why spend what is significant money if in fact it drives away the very people you look to sell to. I am sure this might be very different based on the type of coin or the designation that is being added. IE people pay more on expensive coins if the added description is there. James; good luck

I am a little confused at this point. I was a coin collector in the 60's, 70's, 80's etc. I have never had any interest in mint sets or proof sets. My collecting interest has always focused on coins that were actually MADE to circulate. Likewise all modern coins I have collected came straight from circulation. I take it I am to understand that anyone seeking a high quality coin to collect from this era MUST actually pursue specially made and marketed coins because production levels were so poor? The discussion keeps addressing whether there is an actual population of coins that would please a collector but production amounts of coins made for circulation and coins made as actual collector pieces seem to bleed together. There is no way to distinguish the two from each other, correct? Finally, I tend to focus on Seated material, but have grown curious as to whether there are any actual dealers, besides individuals on E-Bay , who market modern clad coins circa 1965-say 1999? Any information appreciated. james

I have been thinking about your claim that modern coins will become hot collectibles some day @cladking. I think that this will only happen if there is some sort of catalyst. I am in the janitorial supply/cleaning service business. In Dec. 2019 a supplier of mine, Nuance Solution, had a glut of disinfectant spray. I was ordering floor chemicals but my sales person offered me as much as I wanted at a very cheap price. In the end, he pointed out the stuff has a shelf life of a million years and I would recoup the money plus profit over a few years. Remember March 2020? Over night my cleaning service was dead in the water but covid had another side effect. The price of disinfectant doubled, doubled, then doubled again. All before May. the same company was sending me price lists with huge mark ups and instituting strict volume controls. I just can't guess what that catalyst would be. I know some bemoan the chance of a cashless society but who knows how things will bend in the future? James

Jason Abshier your point is well made. There is a tendency for some people to portray coin collecting as some sort of treasure hunt. "Do You have this penny worth 10 million dollars in your pocket?" This valuation as reason for involvement is a mirage that makes the vast majority of collectors cringe. Real coin collecting has at it's focus history, myth, great stories and links to past events. I know I did not get involved in coins because I thought it was a get rich scheme. If any modern coins have a good story to tell or bring people the joy of owning it because it links them to the story of their lives, then they will become sought after items. James

So Cladking, are you saying you cherry pick very specific dates and conditional rareties? as I understood some of the information posted here, they are saying they save wholesale lots of all the denominations and all the dates. also that they leave these lots unsearched. I find that approach puzzling but perhaps I miss understood. james

I am a little baffled by the idea of collecting rolls of coins. I will admit that when i was a kid in the 60's I had a neighbor named Mr. Windy. He had 4 igloo coolers in his basement and each one was labeled with a decade and were full of rolls of Walking Liberty Halves. However, he was obsessed with that particular coin. he even made large wooden copies of the Walker design and decorated them with real coins. Do you fixate on one type of coin? It seems a tremendous commitment of resources for what? something you never look at? Do you expect some kind of reward? Hope this doesn't come off as too combative but I won't lie. I sorta understood Mr. Windy and his fixation but cannot see a rationale for hoarding coins made in the billions. james

I am afraid I set myself up for a disappointment. I was all set to talk about my nearly life long fascination with the New Orleans mint. I guess I will have to just join the Spearmint group. James

I have had very little to do with John Paul Sorosi coins since way back in the 90's when I ordered the silver Washington quarters. However, about a decade ago I did get a ACME letter telling me that the daughter of John Paul was going to continue on with the coin shop. I collect Seated material so I wish her the best but don't think of them as one of my regular coin sites. Are there people who collect BU rolls Cladking? I know one tiny part of numismatics. James

I have no dog in this fight either way but just wanted to share a personal collector experience. Trust me, I had statistics in college too and understand the limitations of empirical data. (Have enjoyed reading thread though) Sometime around 1995 I found an old blue book collecting album for Washington Quarters. The start date was 1960 which is just one date off from my birth year. I found that to be neat but also a rather odd year to pick. At that time I owned three businesses and one of them required a large change supply so I thought it would be cool to fill it. I don't know if you know the Chevy Chase movie where he is trapped in a round about and keeps saying, "Look kids Big Ben!" Even in the 90's it seemed every 3rd quarter was a Bi-Centennial. Those will be rare ten years after the sun does a Super Nova. I was able to fill the silver holes, not through circulation, rather through John Paul Sorosi coins quickly. I am in the middle of fly over country and was able to get a handful of Denver coins from the 60's and 70's plus about two early philly clad dates. Of course coins that were just being minted were easy too, but after about 6 years and only getting about a quarter of the album filled two things happened,.I lost interest and the clothes dryer broke. My collection was released back into the wild. I just wanted to share a personal experience and read very little into it. James

Good luck with your coin collecting. Everybody and their cousin Ralph will tell you to collect what YOU like and that there is no money to be made in coin collecting. Both sentiments are probably true. Having said that Hope truly is the bird that perches in the heart and you never know what life will send your way. Usually things never go as predicted. Case in point. My nephew at Thanksgiving drank too much and loudly declared he would NEVER marry. We got the wedding invitations last week. Set for August. James

Wow. There is a blast from the past. I well remember as a kid NOT so patiently waiting for the drugstore to get a new issue in. could barely afford coins so mag subscriptions were out of the question. James

This reminds me of my daughters Silver Eagle. When my oldest daughter was around ten my mother bought her an Eagle. One day while straightening up her comics I found this coal black disc mixed in with the comics. Sure enough, it was that silver Eagle. Took it all of about 2 years to go terminal. James

I am just beginning to realize I made a numismatic mistake. When we were wrestling our dead dryer of 25 years service out of the laundry room a perfect dryer rubbed quarter fell out of the thing. I put it in my cat bank instead of a 2x2. My bad. James the only unanswered question I have is: "why is it that when someone posts a coin with some overdate, clash mark, or other neat feature I can never see it?"

VkurtB. Just so I understand. You are angered or something because someone is using their acumen and capital to profit in a capitalist society? I think that is just called envy. James

I don't think you know what a scam site is. On the one hand I have been on Cointalk since 2017 and can't even tell you for sure who the moderators are. Neither has anyone affiliated with cointalk tried to scam me. On the other hand, shortly after I joined Cointalk an individual on that site claimed he was starting his own site to discuss Seated coins only. I was told the site would be on something called freelists or something like that. I was intrigued so I asked if I could join. I was only on the site about 5 or 6 days when I figured out that 2 individuals did 90% of the posting. figure A would post a coin and claim he wanted more information. Figure B would claim the coin was some uber rare variety worth thousands of dollars. Then they would try to pressure anyone else on the board to buy the coin. In my case they tried to sell me an 1874-CC Trade dollar. The coin had been heavily whizzed, so much so that they hade to re-engrave the dentils. the CC on back was so large I can only imagine they somehow lifted the C off of a pair of nickels and somehow stuck them on the back . They also claimed the coin was an MS-70 and worth $6,000 dollars. I told them they should send the coin to a third party grading service if they thought it was such a true rare variety. The next day I was banned. Then poster A and poster B told everyone on the site they had discovered I was a corporate troll who worked for those nasty Grading Services. About a week or two after that I got a 401 when I tried to reach the site. That is what I call a scam site. James (Not affiliated with any grading service)