I Think I Just Got A Decent Deal On IHPs

Nice...I hope it's a good date spread. For the 22 that are fine or better, take a good look for repunched dates and double dies. I find a lot of sellers completely overlook die varieties other than 1867/67, 1869/69 and so on. Some of the less obvious ones are still valuable. If you find anything interesting, post a photo and I might be of help. I just hope they weren't cleaned too harshly--one of my big peeves. Cleaning never makes a coin better.

Yeah--understandably, some of those dates are hard to come by!
Just as an FYI, I have a few decent, uncleaned (F and higher) IHCs that I'm willing to sell. If you find you still need some dates, send me a list.

Thanks Kurt, I may be in touch.

j_h_s - I'm assuming they are all post-1880 and I'm ok with that because I'm still very new to collecting. I didn't even bother to ask what the date range was because I was happy with the price even if they are all 1900s. As long as I'm confident that I can re-sell something for my initial investment after cherrypicking what I want, I'm happy with the purchase.

Another reason I'm pretty convinced they will be post-1880 is because the seller posted a separate auction for a few 1960s and 1870s G4 pennies.

I'll post the results once I get the coins.

Well, the pennies arrived today and I'm not as excited as I could be about them. Don't get me wrong, for $.54 each I'm not complaining, but the quality was worse than advertised. I haven't counted everything up yet, but he claimed there were about 40 culls. I think it's closer to 50% of them. According to his listing there should have been no less than 22 pennies which would grade as "fine or better". He confirmed that fine would mean full liberty. I seriously doubt I saw 22 coins with full liberty in that package...if there were, I think a bunch of them would only be visible under magnification. Most of the ones which had a clear details and full liberty had other problems which would reduce their grade to G4 or worse...some had perfect detail, but would have been graded as culls because of corrosion or dents/bending. I'm guessing he included these ones with the "fine or better," simply because they had some good details hidden under the corrosion or dents.

A lot of the coins were dark green or black. Some had nice details, but they were just ugly. Do black, or close to black, coins grade the same way as normal pennies or are the downgraded for being ugly?

As for date range, I have mixed feelings...overall, it was the worst I've bought yet. Mostly 1900 and later, with a handful of 1890s mixed in and a few 1880s. There was one big surprise though...an 1863 in decent condition. It's probably not VG, but I think it would grade better than G4. It's my first older IHP and I was very surprised at the size of it. I knew they were a little heavier than the 1864+, but I didn't expect it to be a full double the thickness. I could actually feel the weight difference without a scale.

I'm not going to try to get a return because the 1863 fills a hole for me and I can get back my investment on the rest. I'm just disappointed that he misrepresented the condition. I may email him and let him know that I'm disappointed, but I'm not so upset that I'll start trouble or ask for a refund.

I think you will make your money back dumping them back on ebay and just being honest that the lot is a range of conditions. They usually sell for $1 per coin, even with culls mixed in. The ones that sell lower are when the seller explicity says all the coins are culls- then they go for 50-75 cents each.