ebay had successfully banned sellers from using "unsearched" in the titles and item description, but apparently that's gone by the wayside (i think centsles or one of the other members was at one point threatening a lawsuit!)
Simple logic: If it's unsearched, how does the seller know it's a
Wheat cent roll?
Even OBW's are not immune from this, btw, with sellers wrapping searched coins in old bank rolls.
Your cent is plated, probably with vanadium or chrome.
That being said, there are truly "unsearched" lots of coins that come in, but most of them come into your LCS, usually as parts of estates or inheritances. (Very) occasionally they'll turn up at auctions; ever more rarely, a LCS who buys hoards such as the famous Mr. Wheat back in the 80s and 90s will simply dump them all into a bucket and sell them by the scoop; statistics tells us that even if there's a circulated 1931-S or a 1909 VDB in those buckets, you'll sell far more $5.00 "scoops" than the value of the possible rarities. Some of the more unscrupulous folks used to "salt" their lots with real VDB cents that were damaged/problem coins or very worn just so they'd have actual testimony from folks talking about what they found.
(Mr. Wheat used to advertise in coin magazines years ago, surrounded by 50 gallon drums full of Wheat cents, selling "by the scoop" or "by the pound.")
On
ebay this great fun scheme takes a variety of forms; "Old treasure chest", "Old mason jar", "Estate lot", "Cigar box", etc. All invariably searched. A relatively new twist on this is sellers buying lots of old blue Whitman folders and even the greens and Danscos, and selling them as "old pawn books full of X" where X is whatever junk common modern coins they want to get rid of, usually thoroughly-searched Wheats, Buffalos or
Mercury dimes.
It's not my way of doing business, but buyer beware is a phrase for a reason.
Posted 07/06/2015 9:58 pm
