I work at a Grocery store in Denver, Colorado (king soopers).
Last week (the day before Thanksgiving) I cracked open a roll of Quarters and found a missing clad layer Wyoming quarter (reverse side). At the time I had no idea what it was or whether or not it was worth anything at all, but I went ahead and swapped it out for one of my quarters just in case.
The quarter itself is in mint condition and I know its a real one, because it came from a solid roll of Wyoming Quarters. That leads me to believe that the only circulation it saw was from the Denver Mint, to Wells Fargo, and then King Soopers without ever leaving its original roll. I was thrilled to see that its worth something more than a quarter when I researched it online.
I'm a novice with these things obviously, so I'm holding onto it to see if I can get a good price (probably
ebay at this point).
Today I took it to some coin stores, just to get a feel for what they might think. Out here in Denver there is a stretch on Broadway street that has 3 consecutive coin (jewelry) shops.
The 1st one is pretty much all Coins and Paper Currency. Its a store that has been around since I was a young kid (29 now) and they have a great stock of cool stuff. They even have a section just for error coins, although they have no missing clad layer errors on display as of now. This place has real high-end inventory and its obviously doing real well.
The owner was there today and he took a look at my coin, he immediately took it in back to maybe weigh it or look at it magnified and actually looked like he had a good amount of interest in the coin. He came back a few minutes later and basically told me that the coin had little - no value, but he would give me 10$ for it. As he told me this he already had the 10$ on the counter and looked obviously surprised when I didn't bite.
I was on my way out and he kinda held me there and asked me what I was gonna do with it (cause that 10$ was still available) and I told him i'd probably look into
ebay and I told him that there are coins like this there with good active bidding going for 300$+, he looked at me like he was amazed and he actually almost implied that he had never heard of this "
ebay" with his reaction (his exact words escape me, but he handled the word
ebay as if it were in a foreign language). Finally I was leaving and he made me put it back on the counter (literally made me) and doubled his offer to 20$. That was as high as he went.
Its especially funny and I didn't point it out to him, but right on his counter there was a book about error coins that I was looking at while waiting for him to finish up with other customers. In the book right there it has the
State Quarters with missing clad layers generically listed as 100$ and up. It looked to me as if he had been reading the book himself at some point in that day.
After that I went next door to another place that I wasn't nearly as optimistic about. Its about 70% Jewelry and 30% Coin. He doesn't display any error coins and seems more interested in commemorative sets. After waiting for this meth-head couple ahead of me to sell a couple of fistfulls of jewelry that who knows where they got it for 328$, he took a look at it and said it was worthless and just a novelty .... and I really believe that he did think that. No offer at all. Nice guy, but I don't think he's that interested in coins really, unless they are gold-silver etc ...
After that, I skipped the 3rd shop (It seemed more Pawn-Shoppy than the 2nd) and that leads me here.
I'm looking for good advice on what I should do with this coin.
Its mint condition other than a half a centimeter scratch on the back state side ( has to be from cracking the roll open and the tumble into the quarter tray ) other than that its uncirculated.
any advice would be appreciated.