Yearly gun show at a small town an hour away that always has an excellent turnout for dealers and customers. We arrived promptly at opening time and started to browse all of the tables. There is a couple items on my list of iron to own, but, did not see any of these creatures here. Nothing special, just modern fun that I wish to own.
Low and behold, a knife/etc dealer had rented 10 eight foot tables for the weekend. Dead center of his tables were two display cases - three foot by three foot. First items I noticed were 60-70 rolls of UNC red Lincoln Memorial cents dated 1960 to 1970. There were three 70 S rolls in the lot, that now reside at my house. Absolutely blazing beauties. Price was $5 per roll of the large date variety.
In the mid to upper half of the right display case resided three paper wrapped rolls of circulated
Washington quarters labelled 41/42, 44/45, and 51/52. Looking around the case further revealed two plastic tubes, approximately half full, of
Standing Liberty quarters. About half did not have dates. ONE of these were a type one. Of course my heart skipped a beat. I did not bring a loupe. Person with the tables had a magnifying glass that must have been out of magnifying fluid - I don't think it could have been more than 1.1 magnification value...IF that. :)
Inquiring further about coins, he said, well, come around and sit in a chair, as I have LOTS of coins below the tables. I looked through no less than eight 1909-1940 Lincoln books, ten 1941-1975, two Buffalo, two
Indian Head cents, & one
V nickel. I only scratched the surface of what he had.
He had a couple 1909 S VDB's (in VG & G...at best), three 1909 S (two were G, one was unc/woodie/fingerprinted), two 14-D's (one in fine, other in G), & two 1877
IHC's (one in VG, one in G at best).
I did purchase five Lincolns - all in AU brown - 1911 D, 1912 D, 1913 (NICE!), 1919 D, & 1919 S. I only need the 11 D, 19 D, & 19 S for my set, so they were easy to pick out of the bunch. I wanted a 21 S in XF/AU, until removed from the album...and found the mush of a strike on the reverse - passed on it. I also picked out four more - 27 D, 27 S, 28 D, 28 S...all were 62 brown, but he wanted $125 for the four. Bit rich for my blood for those coins.
Of interest, he uses
Red Book for pricing. ARGH! Did not try to give advice, just pointed out that the five coins I wanted were AU at best, not MS as the sticker on the outside of the Whitman album suggested.
He shot me a price on the 09 S VDB and 09 S. I purchased the five single Lincolns & three rolls of UNC 70 S that I picked out and walked around for another 20 minutes. Back at his tables, I countered his earlier offer, but he declined. The 09 S is easy to pass on, as he valued it at 250. This coin will always be a problem coin and I doubt it would slab. The S VDB was a nice, problem free coin, but his value was a grand. Sorry, it is just not worth that much.
But, all in all, the 90 minutes that I spent browsing the books was a lot of fun. I so wanted to find some XF/AU/MS brown Lincolns, but they just were not there. Note to self, ALWAYS bring a LOUPE and a price guide....even to a gunshow.
Posted 01/22/2012 01:42 am
