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Posted 07/15/2022 6:27 pm
Quote:
Which is why I (and I suspect like you) try to grab any decent mint set I run across. I walk away from many, many more than I purchase. As for the Ikes, '73 and '74 have been the best sets for me. My most frustrating Ike is from a '75 set - a Type I Philly. It has nice luster with just a hint of toning, but the reverse fields are just chaotic chatter, to a degree I haven't seen on any other Ike. If the reverse was like the obverse, it would be special.
Which is why I (and I suspect like you) try to grab any decent mint set I run across. I walk away from many, many more than I purchase. As for the Ikes, '73 and '74 have been the best sets for me. My most frustrating Ike is from a '75 set - a Type I Philly. It has nice luster with just a hint of toning, but the reverse fields are just chaotic chatter, to a degree I haven't seen on any other Ike. If the reverse was like the obverse, it would be special.
The type I Philly are a mess.
I was already buying mint sets by 1975 but I didn't even look for ikes because I had never seen a Gem and in those days I only liked well made clean coins. I never saw a Gem Ike until 1978 when I saw a 1977 Gem in a mint set and then I started checking every date more carefully. Much to my surprise they were turning up here and there but the '76 type I was the last one I ever found. I think I looked through well over 2000 sets.
If memory serves they made only about 8,000,000 of these but they were almost every one awful. Only about 60% of mint sets coins could be described as chBU because the rest were banged up so much and had retained planchet flaws. Until recently most of them just got cut out of sets and hauled off to the bank. Now most of the sets are gone and the survivors are picked over a little and tarnished. Yet wholesale is only $4.20
It's not unusual to find them in dealer stock for a couple dollars.
None of the ikes are really common in chBU. I suspect the '76-D type II is the most common but the lowest wholesale is the '77 P & D.
Most of the dates aren't too tough in chBU (not much tougher than MS-60) but nice clean specimens of the '71, '73, and '76 t I, are not very common in chBU. The '72, '72-D, '74 are also a little tougher.
In Gem the '77 and '78-D are "easy" but nothing else. The '76-D type II is easiest in PL.
Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps.
