Incredible Find

I hope she lets you keep the unique items like the Buffalo album for all your work. Filling that up would be a simple labor of love. Perhaps you can sell some of coins and stamps on CCF because we need some more items for sale. Hats off to you for handling it with integrity.

THE NICKEL REPORT
Here's an overview of the nickel collection:

LIBERTY HEAD
Range: 1897-1913 (just kidding, 1912)
Total Coins: 11
Unique Coins: 11
Rarest Date: 1897
Average Grade: G-4
Best Grade: F-12

BUFFALO
Range: 1914-1937
Total Coins: 43
Unique Coins: 32
Rarest Date: 1925-D
Average Grade:F-12
Best Grade: EF-40

JEFFERSON
Range: 1938-1964
Total Coins: 22
Unique Coins: 21
Rarest Date: 1939-D
Average Grade:VF-30
Best Grade: EF-40

I'm starting to get a feel for this man's collection. His initials are W.D.D. and it appears he probably simply collected whatever he could come across in pocket change.

He seems to have collected most of his cents and nickels in the late 1940's. Those dates (especially in the Lincoln Cents, which I'll get to later) are of the highest grades, with the grades decreasing the farther back into the past he collected. I'd imagine that Buffalos and well-worn Liberty Heads may still have been in circulation in the late 1940's (maybe some other members can speak to this).

W.D.D.'s Buffalo album had 31 of 64 slots filled. I have already found another 6 Buffalos in my collection that he was missing so that leaves 27 more that I will seek out, most likely by roll searching (that's about as close as I can get to the way W.D.D. probably did it)

The silver Jeffersons seemed unusually and heavily tarnished. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps it is related to the way they were stored?

Here are all three Dansco albums. I may try to fill out the Liberty Heads as well!

THE DOLLAR REPORT
Here's an overview of the silver dollars in W.D.D.'s collection

MORGAN
Range: 1879-1921
Total Coins: 38
Unique Coins: 18
Rarest Date: 1886-S (unfortunately, it was polished at some point)
Average Grade: EF-40
Best Grade: AU-50

PEACE
Range: 1922-1926
Total Coins: 23
Unique Coins: 9
Average Grade: EF-40
Best Grade: AU-50

Unfortunately, many of these coins were polished or dipped. I would guess at least half have been monkeyed with in some way. But there are still several that have some neat things going on that I believe are completely normal. This is where I may need some help from the forum:

Incidentally, my LCS pays $2-$5 over melt for common Morgan and Peace dollars depending on condition. This seemed pretty fair to me. What do some of you think?

(Moderators: I hope it is OK to make a new post for each coin I want to highlight, if not please correct me!)

DIE CRACKS



I did not find any dies cracks on the Morgans, but two on the Peace dollars. I'm surprised I was able to capture such a good image of the first one, it doesn't even look that good in hand! Fortuantely, neither of these coins appears to have been polished or tampered with.

I gather that die cracks are fairly common (cool as they are), but should I expect or ask for any type of premium for these two coins?

AND FINALLY...WHAT IS THIS?



I'd say the wear and remianing luster on the coin would make it least an AU-53, but I'm not sure what the tarnish/toning(?) does to the value. I found it in one of the dollar rolls, but was it perhaps resting in a bag or against some other surface at sometime in its life?

As an aside: I was hoping to find at least one nicely toned dollar for all of the toner fans, but alas, the only toning I saw with any color was retoning after a harsh polishing.

So the lcs is offering 17-20 bucks apiece for the Morgans and Peace dollars ? Dang I wish you had enough posts to sell here.

You should be able to get $30 for uncleaned ones on the 'bay, and you can sell the cleaned in rolls for $22-$24 each on average.

There are probably some collectors for those low-balls. My current project is wearing down a 2011 Vienna Philharmonic silver round... it'll be one-of-a-kind...