Been a while since I posted it one of my coin stories so I thought I'd share my latest. If you haven't read my two-headed quarter story, you should look it up, it's a fun one ;)
My father was at work one day and was approached by a co-worker. He asked my father to take a rusty coffee can full of coins he just purchased to me to take a look at since he heard I knew a thing or two about coins. Since it was a friend he gladly did so. My father asked me over one evening to look at the coins. To my surprise, there was a plain 21
Peace dollar in VG condition along with some other well circulated early date Indian Heads. There was also another coin at the bottom of the can that was worth a bit more than the rest of the coins, however, the coin's obverse was covered in glue. The other issue was the fact it was at the bottom of the rusty can.
I informed my father about the value of the coins and what options there was to do with the coins. I told him the more valuable coin could be brought to a professional such as the NGC to clean and grade the coin. This information was brought to my father's friend who offers to sell the coins to my father for 400 dollars. He said that was 4 times his investment into the coins so he'd be quite happy with it.
My father informed me about the purchase of the coins and offered to sell them to me for 400. Since I always like to encourage family and friends to take a chance on coins like this for me, I offered him 500 dollars for the can. He accepted.
I went through and pulled a few out of the coins that I wanted to keep and sold the rest on
ebay. I ended up recouping everything I had into it and still had the glue covered coin. Shortly afterwards I ran into some unexpected financial issues so spending on my collection came to a halt.
Speeding a couple years forward we arrive at a couple months ago. Since I am going to be moving to China soon I decided it was time to do something with the glue covered coin. I packed it up and sent it to NGC's conservation service to be cleaned and graded.
After a bit over six weeks the coin was successfully cleaned and graded. It was shipped with 2-3 day shipping. 5 days into the shipping, the tracking was showing in transit to destination and had not changed. From past experience, this usually meant the coin has been lost. Another two days went by and still nothing changed, so needless to say, I was getting quite nervous. Two more days passed before USPS finally said the coin had arrived in my state. Then, of course, the first delivery a couple days later was while I was at work. Wasn't worried though since I had the following day off.
Today I went down to the post office to pick the coin up and the worker tells me she doesn't know where it is. She says she will call the mail carrier to see if she still has it. Since I knew my other coin I purchased on
ebay was due in today, I figured she had planned to try to deliver it again, so I hurried home. I made it in time.
The mail deliver stopped at my mail box and then kept going. My heart dropped since I knew I needed to sign for it. I quickly ran out to talk to the mail carrier as she was coming back down my street. I asked her of my package and she said she left it at the post office yesterday. I informed her of the fact they couldn't find the package and she recommended contacting them. After she left I picked up the phone and called. After spending ten minutes trying to get to a person to talk to I was told by the machine there was a 40 to 60 minutes wait to talk to someone. Since my post office was 20 minutes away from home, I jumped in the car and headed back in.
I ended up getting the same person at the front desk who immediately tells me they haven't called the carrier yet. So I tell her that I already spoke to her and she had said it was here. She got a bit flustered and went back to look again. She said couldn't find it again. She looked up the order and noticed it was registered mail, then ran back into the back again. She came out with my package in hand and apologized. Turns out it was there all along sitting in the safe that she had not thought of checking it.
The coin is an 1880 proof
Trade dollar that ended up getting an AU details grade and looks significantly better than it once was. All in all it was a great haul since all I have left into it is the grading/cleaning fees. It was quite the experience as you can see.
Hope you enjoyed the story! I'll post some more pictures later so it doesn't ruin the story ;)
Heres a link to the NGC page for it:
https://www.NGCcoin.com/certlookup/.../NGCDetails/
Posted 06/28/2018 9:46 pm
