Pawn Shop 09 S VDB Lincoln?

I would be extremely cautious on this.

When I am in my favorite pawn shop and coin comes in am I might be remotely interested I offer 50% above what they just paid as soon as the seller leaves and 9 times out of 10 they hand them right over. I have made a few very nice buys this way but end up with a bunch of stuff I don't really want in the process.
For example, I bought 33 rolls of wheat's a few months ago for $1.50 per roll. I was in there when the guy came in with them and was paid $1 per roll. I pulled 4 coins out of the rolls for my album and kept all the pre 40's as I have a ton of 40's and 50's already. I was left with 28 whole rolls that I consigned to a local auction house for a 10% sellers fee. My final take was $189.00 on the deal plus 4 filled holes and 4 coins short of five whole rolls of pre 1940 wheat's.

Lots of good help on here! thanks a lot everyone! I know the guy who does the coin part pretty well and I've done some research on fakes, it seems to be the real deal. I thought that he would cut me a deal of about $400 on it, $799 is too rich for my blood ungraded!

Doing research on fakes is smart but not conclusive. I know a person that is a coin dealer and has been for well over 50 years and got taken in by a 1916D Mercury dime. To this day he has no idea if real or not. He sent it in to a TPGS and it came back as a fake. He resent to another TPGS and it came back graded and slabbed. So een TPGS's are not infalable. He also purchased a 1914D that turned out to be a really great fake.
I wouldn't be surprized at all as to how many collectors have fakes in their collections and don't know.

For the most part, pawn shops offer few deals. The same might be said for antique shops, who usually lock everything up in cases, away from casual browsing. The one exception I found was a pawnbroker who also sold militaria. He had some great Aussie coins brought back by soldiers as souvenirs of wars. Some of my best coins come from him; this one was only $1.50. It's a $300+ coin in this grade. There might be other gems out there, overlooked in pawn shops.

JBuck, I hear ya--I've almost given up collecting silver coins due to rampant cleaning--even from "real" coin dealers.

I have been in lots and lots of pawn shops and the one I go to is pretty awesome. The guy who does coins gives me at minimum 50% off of book value and usually does better. This is not the norm for pawn shops as it goes though :) I've just been lucky. I've completed half of a Canadian type set at my pawn shop for less then $15 in pretty darn good condition, they really only charge book on high end coins..