Early Zincolns

I was under the impression some people save AU/BU zincolns because they seem to deteriorate quicker. Thus although the mintages are high, finding zincolns in good shape is increasingly hard.

Not sure who said to only save 83-85, but those are the first full years for zinc cents. In general, they are pretty crappy in 83-84. I venture to say 98% of them are absolute crap with poor strikes, spots galore or other issues that keep them to MS-63 and below. They got a lot better in 1985 and later as the mint improved their processes.

Personally, I save all high grade 80's Zincolns. Particularlly, the 85-D and 86-D as the CDN roll prices are high, $14 and $27, respectively. I've been working on a gem set of Zincolns for a long time now and I'm pretty much there. Every roll has MS-64+ coins in it with most at 65+....quite a difficult task!

On January 2, coppercoins said "I expect that mid-1980s zinc cents to become $10 coins in decent BU within the next 10 years."

I've seen the 1988's with bubbles. It looked weird.

I think was it 82-84 no mint sets were issued ?

Something like that ,cant remember off hand

I forgot about that...no uncirculated sets in 82 or 83, so that cuts down on good quality coins in those years. Same reason the 83 quarter rolls go for a bit

So really, it isn't worth my time to search for early zincolns, since there are other coins that deserve more attention.

Due to natural (and unnatural) attrition - lost coins, deteriorated coins, etc. ALL of the zinc cents from 1982-1988 will eventually start climbing in value. They are all going to eventually be much harder to obtain than the 1990+ zinc cents because that's about when they started getting a real handle on the plating issue and not so many coins will rot away.

My statement was made basically because of the noticeable shortage of better grade coins. With billions produced each year, the millions of mint sets will eventually not be able to handle the demand for better grade coins. It never hurts to save them out of change, but the likelihood of finding nice MS65+ red quality coins out of change has just about gone to nil, unless you find someone who has a closet jar they've been saving since then.

I save ALL red BU cents from 1982-1989 and roll them up for storage. They are stored inside boxes with dessicant in a cool dry place. I currently have about 300 rolls of said dates and am looking to amass 1000 or more rolls. I have been finding them at a rate of about 3 coins out of every 1,000-2,000 searched.

Of course I'm weird and save a lot of things that other people don't. I have nearly 10,000 rolls (about 500,000 coins) worth of Lincoln cents in bags, tubes, rolls, etc. I basically have more than most of the banks in this area (300,000 population) put together.