Opinions On This 22-D

Forgot my other question...

I know this penny isn't off-center enough to give it any value to an error collector, but does the slight off-centerness *take away* from its value as a "normal" coin or does it carry the same value as any other similar condition 22-D?

Thanks for the response. I was hoping it was worth about that much. I bought a pre-filled 1909-2007 album (nice quality album) for $85 shipped because it included 5 dates that I was missing. This was one of them. The other three were 26-S (VG), 11-D (VG), 13-D (VG), and the 1970 small date. As it turns out, he included a large date 1970 in the small date hole, so I'll have to take that up with him via email. I was also able to upgrade a few of the pennies that I already had to better quality.

The album has very few holes other than the keys and semi-keys, and I have a few coins here that I can fill in some of the gaps with, then I'll resell the entire album to recoup a good portion of my investment. Most of the other coins in the album are in F-UNC condition, and some of the "good" dates (1909 VDB and early teens with mint marks) are in F or VF.

Hopefully after removing the four dates that I wanted, plus upgrading a few others, I can still sell the rest of the album for about $60.

I agree with okie's opinion of VF-30. I'm very bad at spotting cleaning unless it's blatantly obvious, so I can't help there. Other than the distracting spot at the stem of the left wheat ear, I would say it's a very nice VF example.

I don't have gray sheet in front of me, but if my memory is correct $25 is a good price for a VF 22-D.

Good looking coin but it has been cleaned.

I'm also learning and I'm getting to where I can now sometimes tell if a coin has been cleaned. Normally I can tell if the coloring just isn't right or if the coin seems to be nice looking except for a buildup of dirt in the crevices. On this coin I just couldn't tell. It looks uniform all over, but it had a little more "shine" to it than most coins. I figured it wasn't cleaned, but had an olive oil job. The color in the photo is pretty close to exact.

Somers - can you tell us what you see that indicates prior cleaning. I'm trying really hard to learn how to spot it.

BTW mahgobbi, I think it is a nice 22-D.

Actually, this is my first 22-D and I'm definitely keeping it. I only started collecting in December and I've managed to accumulate a good starter collection because I don't keep duplicates. I'm not dealing with a heck of a lot of money to pour into expensive coins, so I've been buying everything in bulk (to get the lowest price per coin), cherry-picking what I want, then reselling the rest. By doing it this way and NOT keeping all of the duplicates, I'm able to break even on all my purchases...kind of like building a free collection.

I've worked on putting together extra books, but only because the resale value on a book is better than the resale value on coins by the pound. I keep the best for myself and put the rest of the good stuff in books to sell, then I take the trash and sell it by the pound.

I still think you would be much better off starting duplicate sets of those. The reason is the expected massive increase in value with the comming of the 2009 cents. And as I said you already have them so nothing to loose for now by keeping them a little longer. You could be improving 2 or more sets slowly and eventually have more than one decent set. If you take your time doing this it would more than likely be worth it in the long run.
In buying completed sets you for sure may come out ahead but be carefull. Probably lots of ones like the one you bought with the wrong 70S.