Small Black Spots On "Uncirculated" LMC Roll

This is typical carbon-spotting from improper storage.

Bummer. I'll see if they will do some kind of a partial refund and I'll keep them but otherwise Ill have to return them all. I'd say about half the cents I got have the spots. It's odd that the other 70-S rolls I got from the same seller were fine though. They must have got those from somewhere else.

Thanks as always for the quick replies.

Yea, this is common, most people store rolls improperly and this is what happens. I've opened many OBW rolls that looked like this.

Back to the point I've been driving home for years - yes, they made billions of Memorial cents, but 98% of them are crap or have become crap, mint sets included.

What's important is "what can you do to prevent it?". A couple of ziplock bags or anything reasonably airtight may have saved these.

Whoa whoa whoa,... nelly.

Calling them carbon spots is a misnomer. They have nothing to do with carbon, this is the manifestation of water droplets from the minting process.

I have a couple graded 65RD by PCGS back when they first came out, so they are sealed and the spots still showed up. My coins are stored in a cooled, dehumidified environment.

It's certainly possible that improper storage accelerated or exacerbated the spotting, but it's my experience they were going to show up one way or another because they were minted poorly.

When you buy a roll of uncirculated coins, you're hoping that someone hasn't gone through them and cherry picked the good ones. Based on the low value of the rolls, odds are that whoever sold them to you did not go through the rolls. Therefore, they would have no way to see the actual coins inside the rolls. However, the seller may have known based on opening other rolls that the coins were likely to have had problems.

My suggestion for getting uncirculated coins (and not getting more than you need as you do when you buy rolls) would be to buy mint sets and cut them up. The quality of the coins is generally better than you can get from rolls and you can look at them in person before you buy if you get them at a show. Mint sets more often than not sell for less than the mint issue price.

Once again the truth about modern coins shows it's ugly head. The vast majority of rolls, bags and mint sets contain sub-par coins. Collectors are "asleep at the wheel" when it comes to moderns. Finding high-quality, well-struck, spot-free examples is more difficult than most anyone understands.

I recommend people spend time on PCGS website looking at modern, top-pop coins to get educated.

http://www.PCGS.com/prices/

In addition to the PCGS pictures, look at the selling history. HA.com has great images to help you learn to the grades the TPG's are applying to these moderns.

Exactly. On the plus side, you can find nice uncertified modern coins at shows for decent prices. You just have to take the time to look at all that's available. I personally buy a couple of mint sets each year, pick out the best ones, and put them in air-tite holders. This way I can handle them while preserving them better than regular cardboard 2x2's or flips would.