Lincoln Memorial Cents

Varieties too or just normal? I have..

2000-D PCGS MS68 RD Satin Finish
2000 ICG-MS66 RD Wide AM

If you interested in them let me know an offer!

I don't think it's just the Zincolns that are tough to find in good shape. I KNOW the 80's and early 90's roosies are tough. I suspect most the other clads from that time frame are hard as well.

It's hit and miss with all the moderns. Almost all the dimes and quarters are hard to find but some will come real nice so gems aren't too tough. With the cents none are extremely hard to find but some will prove harder than you think. Quality is very hit and miss. Some of the memorials just don't often come nice and even a few that did aren't nice any more because most have corroded.

As a rule of thumb it's not even worth buying one of those $25 set because you'll end up replacing every single coin in it.

Another set that is a lot of fun is the same thing in PL. Most of this set is available in nice PL but few are common.

Dude...I'm serious! People stashed away wheat cents like mad fire. You can find excellent examples in all years and mint marks everywhere! If your wallet is deep enough, you could put together an entire collection of MS65+ wheaties as fast as you could spend the money.

Now, say I give you an unlimited budget for Memorials cents and assigned you the task of putting together an MS65+ collection. I guarantee you the time you'd spend putting that together would far exceed the Wheat set time. Let's examine the problems with Memorial cents:

1) Many years they were very poorly made. Most you find are late die state too. Dies lost detail because of the massive numbers, copper plating and stamping zinc was a science far from perfect for many years, spotting, etc. (Chuck is very familiar with these.)
2) They were treated roughly during packaging and shipping from the mint. Who cares? It's one Cent and there's billions! Bring over the front-end loader! LOL
3) The bags where fed into crappy high speed counters (probably multiple times) and rolled by coin processors....more dings.
4) The depth of the series, I count 118 coins to complete a collection and make that 174 with proofs. This includes the common varieties and errors. (Did I miss any?)

How about some people think of something I missed here?

Even if you buy all original mint or OBW rolls there's no guarantee you're going pull out any MS-65+'s. In fact, they are mostly 63-64's at best and crappy strikes in most years.

OK....I'm too tired to rant any more right now. LOL

Metalman....so then....you agree with me.

Does proofs count?
http://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/All...m=15306&ac=0

It will be 100% by the end of the year.

I also have a complete BU OBW roll set for Memorials that are unopened. I am also close to a complete mint set.

WOW!! That is a nice set of Memorials, I can not imagine having most of my collection in MS69.

I have to agree that finding this set in a very high grade is tough and is why I set my standards lower on it myself. I thought it would be very easy to find coins on average at MS65-66 and was looking mainly for them. After a few months I slowly started to realize that I would not reach this goal because I was lucky to find MS64 for most of them. So now my Dansco album is set up for Memorials between MS60-65 and feel lucky to have that for most of them. The only exceptions are the Proofs, which I have lucked out on most and received in MS63 to about MS66 on a few, but even these were in lower grades than desired.

My big issue I have been fighting the last few months is if I buy a higher grade Memorial or an upgrade to another coin lately and the upgrades have been winning most of the time. My goal is to have my Lincolns for 1934 to current in MS63RD condition or better and have been shocked to find so many in the 30's and 40's but not from 84-90's.