Where To Buy Mint Sets?

I'd say a coin shop is he best bet because one, you can haggle a little bit especially if you're a regular customer, two, there is almost no chance you get fakes, three, you can physically look at the coins, four, you get the coins immediately after purchase, and five, I like to support local businesses. ebay you can often find better deals but your chances of getting screwed over are a lot higher.

If you are willing to put out a bit of change you can usually get a deal on ebay from someone selling their mint/proof sets as a Lot. I've seen some really good deals this way. On the other hand you may be getting someones rejects. When I have people come into the shop they usually look over multiple sets to figure out which ones they want. You can find some real dogs in the real world, whether on ebay or the lcs. Humidity, smoke, all sorts of things. Even carbon spots from the mint. I run an LCS and would think you can get a better shot at quality. Oth I've seen some really great deals on ebay.

The worst place for mint sets to buy but the best place to SELL them is at a local auction. They will bring retail money and often much more than that. For some reason people who don't have coin knowledge think the 1968 to date ones are worth more than the proof sets of the same year. As we know with most years the opposite is true even if after 1991 you exclude the silver proof sets and just compare the mint set to the clad proof set only. Now on ebay that's better than the auctions as a buyer but you have to be patient. When you add in the shipping lately the common ones like says 1971, 1988, 1989 have been bringing about $1 back of retail to $2.00 over. I would not pay retail money for the 1968 to date mint sets just as a set unless there were something special about an individual coin or coins within the set. A 1968 or 1969 with full steps on the nickels would not be something to pass up. In 1984 look at the cent for a double die. Those are just three examples.

Usually the answer is strongly local coin shops. There is very weak demand for these sets but people are selling estates which include the mint sets and the shop has to buy it all. They are terrible sellers so they stack up in inventory until the dealers cuts them up for the cash register or ships them off to the big wholesalers. The wholesalers choice them out and destroy most of them to make rolls but then they also sell some to the retailers. Most retailers also choice out their sets.

At the local shop the sets are typically very similar to how they were shipped from thwe mint. The local shop owners are starting to get wise to things like frosted SMS and small dates so these will be gone but they don't go over every coin in every set; far from it. Offer bid or a little more than bid to poke through them and they're usually happy. Straighten the sets and buy the parts so you leave them in better shape than they started and they'll sell them even cheaper.

As a rule the best sets come in bunches of five and will have fresh envelopes. Once in a long while you'll even find choice sets that someone accumulated by looking through more sets. It's not very hard to find nice choice sets because these don't accumulate anywhere. When lots of sets get together they are destroyed so most sets on the market are fresh. Just try to avoid sets that are obviously picked over or shop worn. After a while it's not hard to tell good ones from poor ones so envelopes and such don't matter.