1983 Penny Errors With Cud Looking For Advice

Well, I'm late to this party - so I'll just say that this is a very nice Cud you found. Congrats.

to the CCF and HOLY CATS WHAT A NICE FIND. And on the ground no less. The ones I find just barely pass as coins. The 2 counter clashes are great.

Yowza and congrats!



to the CCF!

Well it would be very expensive for you to grade one coin. First you pay the $69 club fee to be allowed to submit coins. Then the Error coin grading cost will be $70. There is a $10 handling fee. Then you have to pay to ship the thing to them so at least $5 first class not fully insured, and then the return shipping which for your coin would be $27. So your minimum cost to personally send in that one coin would be $181. Something to think about as that is just money out the door for a coin you could just sell outright, maybe for a little less, but maybe not that much less. Then there is the wait. Over the last year my wait times have been around 5 months to get a submission back. Lately they seem to have picked up the pace, but you could reasonably be without the coin back until well after the 4th of July. Of note, in the last year alone my grading fees were over $6,000, so doing the whole grading thing is both extremely expensive as well as time-consuming.

I still think the coin should go in a PCGS holder, and this cost is why I recommended finding someone already submitting error coins to piggyback on their order (this is not easy to do). You'd drop your cost down to just the $$70 plus minor shipping to and from whomever is your host submitter. Some coin dealers will do this, but most don't as it is a risk/liability with no reward for them at the end. But in the end, if you are just looking to maximize your income from selling the coin, going through this whole process may not be the best way to go as you will put out a lot of money and not have the coin back anytime soon to actually sell it and recoup that money.

I should add one thing. Likely it is best not to get too fired up about the end potential for this coin. It's exciting to see one, far more exciting to find one, but this just isn't a problem-free example. Your images are okay for seeing the coin in a mildly blurry way, but clearly the obverse has taken a couple of hits with one large one in the hair. If this were to come back from PCGS as EF-Details (environmental damage), which it very well could, then the value of the coin might easily drop by half. A details coin pretty much can't be used in a registry set so those folks won't buy it. All the risk is taken by the person sending it in, who is paying and hoping to increase the coin's value, which is why a raw coin like this one just can not get near the same price as one already graded. Everyone can see the coin is a risky submission, so your actual sale value as-is, or depending on the final grade, may not be what you are hoping for. Just wanted to add that bit as I understand you don't have experience with all this stuff.

Thanks Tropicalbats. I appreciate the detailed explanation. Are there any specific auction sites/stores I may want to link into if I decide to try to sell this coin? Or just ebay or something? I figured there has to be better options specifically for coins rather than ebay. Thanks for the advice! Greatly appreciated!

I fully agree with that. You have been given solid advice from true numismatic experts who are generous with sharing their knowledge and time.

I can see now that my initial value assessment at the beginning of this thread was way off. But now I know it's not just another 'common' Cud.

The quick answer to your question about adding coins to lower the overall cost of a submission is: It does do that a little. The $69 club fee is annual so you only pay that once per year no matter how many coins you submit so with more coins that fee pro-rates out to less per coin. But you can only submit errors with errors, nothing else, on one submission form. So you can not submit a doubled die for grading on the same form as an error coin. Doubled dies also have to be "major" dies listed in the CherryPickers' Guide or PCGS won't put it on the label. Doubled dies come in around $60 per coin so not much cheaper than errors, and still accrue all the shipping costs and all that. Anyway, yes, shipping and fees get cheaper per coin with more coins on one submission, but few have enough error coins valuable enough to be worth submitting to PCGS sitting around, as even a $150 error coin isn't worth submitting as you will pay well over half the value to get it graded and unlikely it increases in value that much. I get in a lot of error coins, but the most I have ever had at once worth enough to go to PCGS was three. And just to be clear as to one of your questions, no, the cost of grading per coin does not go down in bulk and will still be $70 per coin.

tropicalbats
i meant to respond about the damage you were referring to on Lincoln's head. I don't believe that's actually damage on his head, it actually lines up with where the cracks from the die or if you look at other examples It lines up exactly. I believe that it just is more visible on this coin. Maybe it was one of the last ones struck or one to be struck after the others but it appears to line up perfectly with the cracks from the die. The other areas that look like damage almost all appear to have something to do from what I can see and tell and how they line up with the damage from the dies and not damage after the fact. I could be mistaken and I'm sure there's some damage since it's in circulated condition but at least that mark on Lincoln's head I'm pretty confident is not damage at all but just more visible markings from the damage to the dies on this specific coin. I could be wrong and I know you guys are a lot more knowledgeable than me but at least regarding that mark on his head, I'm pretty sure that's a mint error marking that is just more visible on this example of this specific error. The odds, in my opinion of it lining up and being right at the edge of where the crack is on the other examples of this type of error lining up exactly, I find to be either a crazy coincidence or has to be part of the damage the coin received from the dies at the mint. Please correct me if I'm mistaken and you can enlighten me since I know very little still when it comes to all this stuff thank you!