1984 DDO Lincoln Memorial Cent

EXCELLENT FIND! I want that one!

Cool. I have been looking for that one for several weeks also! "Four score and seven years ago..."

Great find, 931. Like everyone else, I am still looking for one, too.

Jim

I think if I put it on e-bay the way it is now it could go anywhere from 150.00 to 200.00

" I wonder how it got put back into circulation?"

I'll just guess here that it was in a penny jar for years and was recently redeemed by someone who doesn't collect varieties.
It's easy to forget that most coins are circulated by non-collectors--that's my hope in finding anything in rolls.

Hi Gary,

Let's look at this from this perspective. I specifically look for varieties. The average collector is not as specific in their searches as I am and most are just looking to fill in dates in an album.

I've looked through 5 to 6 million coins in the last 8 years or so. Just on 1984 (Philly) cents alone, there were 8,151,079,000 coins minted. Of course there are a limited number of Doubled Ear cents, but even the most diligent roll searchers have not touched the surface of that 8 billion plus 1984 cents out there.

Finding coins in excellent condition from the 1980s is still commonplace so there is a fair chance that if a 1984 Doubled Ear cent turns up in a roll, it will still be pretty nice and not ripped off from someones collection.

I've found multiples of the major die varieties in my searches and they were just coins that came from normal channels of commerce and that ended up in banks.

A classic example for me is an Amish gentleman back in PA that used to bring cents to a local bank in five gallon pails. I lived three blocks from that bank and I would get a call every time he showed up. Five 1983 DDR cents came out of those buckets. I kept the best one and sold the rest.

Many of us in the die variety world are aware that the 1983 DDR cents first popped up in the Lebanon County area of PA. so I had a better than average chance of finding some. The point though is that there are trillions of coins out there, maybe, conservatively a few thousand roll searchers looking for die varieties and many of the coins are still out there for the finding.

In all the years (more than 40 now) You can tell , if a bank lets you know that an 80 year old woman just dropped off some old coins, you can guess that an older collection may be being brought in for cash.

Most stolen coins that are parts of collections end up in other places and rarely end up in circulation. In the overall scheme of things, stolen coins , eve if they did enter circulation would by the percentages be an astronomically small number of coins when compared to the number of coins out there.

If you find a small pile of silver coins or a few silver dollars in the drawer at a little quik-mart, for example, I might suspect some hanky-panky. The stuff that comes from banks rarely if ever would contain stolen coins justas a matter of percentages.

It is possible but not probable:-) So, are the chances of finding good coins in rolls good? You bet!

Have Fun,
Bill

Chances are about 100% that there are more of these pretty much exactly like the one posted still in change...LOTS of them.

Like Bill said, there are 300 million people spending these things, about 2 million actually even bother looking at the date, then only a few thousand bother looking for die varieties....then only a few hundred have a clue what they are looking for. If that number is even as much as 3,000 then we have searched through roughly 1/100,000th of everything out there. There are still thousands and thousands of very valuable coins in circulation.

Thing to do if you want to find them is either be lucky - VERY lucky, or go through around $100 face each week like Bill and I do, and still have very slim yet realistic chances of finding some of them. First thing to do if you want the valuable stuff in change is to speed-read the coins - sort them efficiently - look at them for a couple of seconds...quit studying each face of each coin for ten minutes trying to make it into something.

Of course that statement was made for those who tend to go through a short amount of coins and expect to find gold in every pocketful. This stuff takes a LOT of time, a LOT of patience, and a LOT of coins.

I have found valuable coins in change, but haven't found one of these yet.

Louis
you took that all wrong. it was not meant to be directed at you. most of the people that read this forum know me some personally and know I would never accuse anyone. it was a blank statement that I meant to say that someone took it from a collection. be it from a deceased parent's and didn't know better or stolen. I believe you found it the way you say.
bill and chuck
I agree with what you guys said too but live just a few blocks (yea I'm one of the lucky guy's) from 3 or 4 coin shops and see it almost daily. but our shops here are smarter than the crooks and return a lot of stolen property. maybe 10-18% of the stuff that is tried to sale at a coin shop or pawn shop is stolen. or that is about where the numbers here are. and that's is what I was trying to say.
i just didn't get it out in the way that it was meant.
Gary