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Hmm, here's a decent 1914 cent in the bag. Whoa! What's that under the date? No way. It's GOTTA b
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,228 ✭✭✭✭✭
Cherrypickin' a bag of Wheaties last night. It was very late and I needed something to help me sleep, so I had 'em on the bedside table. Squinted at 'em in the lamplight while my wife snored beside me. I wished I could find my loupe. While I still do not wear glasses, my eyesight ain't what it used to be, especially in less than perfect light. I turn forty this year. I guess Father Time catches up with us all eventually.
I started finding 1909-VDB coins; at least four or five of 'em. Some decent grade but whizzed orange. A lot of the early stuff in this bag were whizzed or slick or both. Par for the course with bulk Wheat lots, right?
And then I got a so-so 1914, with some streaky laminations. And a '21-S and a sorry-lookin' 1911-D and some other slightly better dates like S-mints from the late 'teens and early '20's. And an early-1940's brown AU++/UNC coin with pretty violet and blue toning. And a bunch of shiny '43 cents that were obviously reprocessed, plus some rusty unreprocessed ones. Then a badly corroded and pitted 1880-something (?) Indian cent. And some BU-ish early Memorial cents.
Then another 1914 Wheat, this one pretty nice- I would say F15 to VF20, even brown, and unmessed-with. It had a little blip under the date that gave me a double take. Nah. It couldn't be what I thought my eyes were seein'. Had to be a little piece of dirt.
Turns out it was just a little piece of dirt- Lincoln also had a small gob of dirt under his chin.
So just on a whim, I got a toothpick and some Vaseline and removed the dirt from both places.
Lincoln's chin came clean just fine, as did the blip under the date. But... there was STILL a little blip under the date!
No way. It couldn't be. This sorta stuff always happens to other people- never to me.
Frantically I went out to the living room and shuffled through my briefcase, found a magnifying glass, and looked under the date.
Guess what.
(I'll give you a hint: "D" doesn't just stand for "dirt"...)
I started finding 1909-VDB coins; at least four or five of 'em. Some decent grade but whizzed orange. A lot of the early stuff in this bag were whizzed or slick or both. Par for the course with bulk Wheat lots, right?
And then I got a so-so 1914, with some streaky laminations. And a '21-S and a sorry-lookin' 1911-D and some other slightly better dates like S-mints from the late 'teens and early '20's. And an early-1940's brown AU++/UNC coin with pretty violet and blue toning. And a bunch of shiny '43 cents that were obviously reprocessed, plus some rusty unreprocessed ones. Then a badly corroded and pitted 1880-something (?) Indian cent. And some BU-ish early Memorial cents.
Then another 1914 Wheat, this one pretty nice- I would say F15 to VF20, even brown, and unmessed-with. It had a little blip under the date that gave me a double take. Nah. It couldn't be what I thought my eyes were seein'. Had to be a little piece of dirt.
Turns out it was just a little piece of dirt- Lincoln also had a small gob of dirt under his chin.
So just on a whim, I got a toothpick and some Vaseline and removed the dirt from both places.
Lincoln's chin came clean just fine, as did the blip under the date. But... there was STILL a little blip under the date!
No way. It couldn't be. This sorta stuff always happens to other people- never to me.
Frantically I went out to the living room and shuffled through my briefcase, found a magnifying glass, and looked under the date.
Guess what.
(I'll give you a hint: "D" doesn't just stand for "dirt"...)
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Comments
******
I figure I have approximately two cents invested in it.
And there is no "VDB" under Lincoln's shoulder.
And my wife was rudely awakened when I started talking out loud to myself.
That's paydirt.
and it sets us apart from practitioners and consultants. Gregor
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Great find.
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<< <i>Awesome ! I'd love to see a cherrypicked 14D. Got a scan? >>
Not yet, but I'll post one. Trouble is, I am at home out in the boonies, where I am forced to use a verrrrry slooooow dialup connection.
Uploading pics takes so long, I have never successfully done it from this computer.
But for an occasion like this, I'll give it a whirl. I guess I can always play solitaire or make a sandwich (and eat it), or maybe write a novel while I wait on the upload...
09/07/2006
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
<< <i>BRAVO LORDY, BRAVO! Whatcha gonna do wit it? >>
SELL it, of course.
But I'm thinkin' I might submit it to PCGS first. Y'all can prescreen it when I post pics.
Somewhere around here I have a submission form I got at FUN 2004, with four freebies. Upgraded my CC membership to Platinum there, got eight submissions, used four, and had four left over. Assuming I can find the form, which they told me not to lose, I hope it's still good. It's been over a year. Anybody know? I'm not a very frequent submitter.
-Daniel
-Aristotle
Dum loquimur fugerit invida aetas. Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.
-Horace
<< <i>Whered you buy the wheaties to pick through? >>
This batch was from about three or four different sources and I had thrown it all in one bag so it got mixed together. I really don't know. BUT I have a very strong suspicion, since one or two of the sources of the coins were old Whitman folders I had bought and popped the coins out of. I would've noticed a '14-D in one of the slots of those folders. Chances are, it is from the biggest of the three sources- I bought several pounds of mixed, mostly loose Wheats from a nice fella off the BST Forum a few months back. I cannot remember his forum name but he was nice and sent a bit of silver and other stuff with the lot- and wrote some nice personal notes like "hope you like this one I found" on the few coins that were in 2 X 2's (this '14-D wasn't one of them).
I have a strong hunch it was from him. There were a lot of 1931-1933 coins in his batch, too (no '31-S though). I will have to dig back into my old PM's to see who he was. I don't think he's been around much since then. As I recall, he was one of those folks who had a little trouble catching on here and either got flamed for some newbie mistakes or was just mistrusted because he was an unknown character. If I can contact him I am gonna send him a gift because even if this '14-D did not come out of his lot (and I think it probably did), he still was very nice and sent some nice stuff mixed in amongst the whizzed uglies. And he sent all the coins in plastic tubes. There was some silver like a Barber dime or two and a Walker half as bonuses. I'll bet a diligent search on the BST forum will reveal the thread where I bought the coins from him. I think he used "Wheat" or "Wheaties" in the title. This would've been late last summer or early fall, I think.
<< <i>Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy
awesome find!
You just never know when you might stumble across a coin like that!
<< <i>Ok, so tell the truth................would you rather have found it with a metal detector? >>
Good question. Maybe. Even a crusty, lower-grade 14-D would be a treasured find if I'd dug it. I would NEVER sell it then, as I don't sell my dug coins (and only rarely the other dug stuff). My dug coins have a value that is much more sentimental, since I found them, exactly where somebody lost them, years or even centuries before. Usually their monetary value is a secondary consideration, and most of the time they don't have much monetary value since dug coins generally ain't as purty as their nondug counterparts. It's rare for me to dig a coin out of the ground and have it be something I'd even look twice at in a coinshop. (THIS being a possible exception since it is still the only Oregon Trail I have ever owned, dug or nondug.) But a corroded large cent or crusty Indian or even a humble Merc dime that comes out of the ground to me has a special value all its own. Be they humble or fantastic, the dug babies always put a big grin on my face.
A cherrypick like this is a huge thrill and something I will remember and talk about for years to come (y'all have noticed my tendency to tell longwinded stories, no doubt). But it's a different sort of thrill than if I had found the coin in the ground. Not better or worse, but different. Believe me, I'm no less thrilled for finding it the way I did- it's not too often that I make "Eureka!" finds while lying in bed in the middle of the night!
Scans of the '14-D are made now. Just gotta upload them (this will take some considerable time with my fargin' slowass dialup connection here at home). I will post them in their own "guess the grade" poll thread when they're loaded, and link to that thread from here.
I believe the free grade certificates do not expire. I would check with PCGS just to be sure before you send them in.
Awsome find. The best I ever found searching old wheats was a 1914S in fine condition when I first starting collecting. My heart skipped a beat until I got my eyepiece.
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Hope the pics are good enough- I had to compromise some to upload them on this connection.
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Great story and find indeed. We all live for this day.
So did YOU finally get to snore that night?
That is the kind of coin to hang onto it and it looks very nice too.
I would never sell such a coin!
<< <i>So did YOU finally get to snore that night? >>
What do YOU think? I'm already a night owl and an insomniac.
Especially when I get all amped up about something. And you can imagine the amperage after I found that '14-D. I stayed up the rest of the night and when I finally took a midmorning nap I had been awake for 24-30 hours.
<< <i>That is the kind of coin to hang onto it and it looks very nice too.
I would never sell such a coin! >>
Thanks. I agree- it's a nice looking original piece to my eye (or will be after I gently toothpick out the remaining dirt on the obverse). And I will always remember the find. But I have no particular intention of hanging on to it. I don't collect Lincolns and to tell the truth, I am not much of a collector anymore these days, anyway, except for the Holey Coin Vest and hat, the set of 1901 Victorian portrait coins I am assembling for my daughter Victoria, and my dug stuff. I'll save my sentimentality for those arenas. Otherwise I would be too tempted to collect everything, and that would put me in competition with my own customers for the better stuff. A conflict of interest. I'm still only a part-time, mostly small-potatoes kind of dealer, but a dealer nonetheless. As a collector I walk the roads less traveled, and travel the more popular roads only as a dealer.
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Lord M:
I'm not a Lincy expert by any means- if the coin is legit- would it not be worth a few xtra to have it authenticated and preserved properly and then graded? I understand our friends here - the owner of the boards do not authenticate or preserve- but the guys across the street do......
Great find..might make me look thru the 3 coffee cans of wheaties that I have....
Just saw your pics. That's an official YOU SUCK!
Great find, man. I have to hate you now
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