@WAYNEAS said:
Here is a MS64 PL that sold on the "Bay" last Jan.
Bottom line $304.00.
I did not win this one either.
Edited to add that the reason I did not win this one was because I forgot to bid on it. lol
Wayne
Obviously, there are degrees of proof-like ranging from mild to deep. I paid up for my deeper PL. I am not all that interested in mild looking PL low grade examples. Wondercoin.
Please visit my website at www.wondercoins.com and my ebay auctions under my user name www.wondercoin.com.
@wondercoin said:
‘’These coins bring massive prices but very very few are still being graded.”
CK: The classic dealers don’t want to make easy thousands of dollars per coin on the modern beauties they are convinced are sitting right in front of them ungraded in their stores. They much prefer flipping Choice BU Morgans or Type coins for $5 a coin profit. You understand?
Wondercoin.
Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.
Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.
They made millions of these mint sets. Of course they're going to come in five or ten or 400 at a time. Nobody is claiming they are rare or every single one has been destroyed and the half dollars tossed in the trash. What we are saying is that the bulk of them have been "consumed" and not "collected" or "set aside for the future". What we are saying is that most of the survivors are really badly made and they are now mostly tarnished.
The ones that are left are mostly the few that have been set aside, collected, or otherwise conserved. Many of the mint set coins can be saved but every year that goes by tens of thousands more are ruined or destroyed because these simply don't have the demand that old coins have. There aren't lots and lots of collections of kennedy halfs and there never will be because the coins aren't there. There are millions of collections of old jefferson nickels and these come into coin shops every day but rarely does clad of any type come in other than common stuff like bicentennial coins.
Everyone seems to think there are millions and millions of '70-D halfs that have magically survived more than half a century of neglect. Not only are they wrong but even among ALL the survivors you'd be hardpressed to find many nice choice Gems or any PL's. Nice choice Gems were scarce in 1970 and they are far far far scarcer today. It is much more likely you can find a bag of tough morgan dollars with dozens of Gems in it than you could find a single nice PL Gem in '70 mint sets. You can buy these by the hundreds if you can find them long before you f9ind a single such coin. And then it's most probably going to need conservation after so many years in the plastic. As I mentioned PL's are less likely to be OK than regular strikes.
.
You can check every set in stock and a good rule of thumb is there will be 20 nice Gems per 100 sets, 2 coins per hundred sets that are worth grading and about one coin in a thousand sets that will bring more than a few hundred dollars. You have to know what to look for and this means varieties, FB, FS, PL's, and the characteristics of Gems. It's hard work to "make" these coins and trying to "make" a '70-D half is one of the toughest of all. This is because there is so little demand that only top pops bring good money but rarities in MS-66 or MS-65 aren't worth the cost of grading in many cases.
Morgans that are rare in MS-63 bring hundreds even thousands of dollars but moderns that are rare in MS-65 often have little premium. There are some people who know how scarce these are and will acquire them but they are hard to find because most are raw.
Markets are screwy because so many collectors don't like moderns and so few collect them. This lack of collecting might well be a major problem going forward because old coins will come into coin shops but there might still be no modern collections.
All over the world collectors are discovering that their moderns are virtually non-existent and prices are often soaring even on the weak demand. Modern collecting has always been less common than collecting old coins but the difference now is that so few coins were saved at all.
‘’Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.”
Telephoto1- great thesis you have here. So, take the next year AND SHOW US THE MONEY! We’re not going anywhere. Make grading 1970-D 50C in 67 grade and better your pet project and show us all how much money you make. Reasonable way to show you that you will likely make about NOTHING, grow tired of the project quickly and move on (as most classic dealers who devoted time to these moderns has already) - yes? Nothing argumentative here; show us all the soundness of your thesis please.
Wondercoin
Please visit my website at www.wondercoins.com and my ebay auctions under my user name www.wondercoin.com.
@dcarr said:
From about 1976 to 1982 a friend and I spent a lot of time in the summers buying rolls of half dollars at banks, looking for silver (90% or 40%). The total we looked through was probably about $50,000 face value. In that, we found two 1970-D coins.
How did you make out with the silver finds?
Those were the days of customer-wrapped rolls, and some bank-wrapped rolls, so it was highly variable.
A 40% silver half dollar find would yield a gross profit of about 20 cents at the time.
We could often find 100 for each of us in a day. So that was $20 each, which would pay for gas and lunch, plus a tiny bit extra. Some days there was hardly anything. Once in a while there would be a really good find. I went to a bank in Evergreen and got $100 in halves. Out of that $100, only $6 of it WASN'T silver. And most of the other $94 was 1964 Kennedys.
Telephoto1- great thesis you have here. So, take the next year AND SHOW US THE MONEY! We’re not going anywhere. Make grading 1970-D 50C in 67 grade and better your pet project and show us all how much money you make. Reasonable way to show you that you will likely make about NOTHING, grow tired of the project quickly and move on (as most classic dealers who devoted time to these moderns has already) - yes? Nothing argumentative here; show us all the soundness of your thesis please.
I've many hours sitting in coin shops scanning '70 mint sets and buying anything that was nice solid Gem or very PL. Despite this I've found very few '70-D half dollars in my safety deposit boxes that will bring more than a few dollars. I know I've got a virtually flawless highly PL one that hasn't shown up yet but the odds are good it will be tarnished when I find it and less than a 50: 50 chance it will clean up OK. There's another really nice MS-66 or MS-67 I've yet to find.
This was after years of looking, lots of shoe leather, and gas to get me to coin shops. This was back in the days that any shop might have a couple hundred in stock and they'd all be pristine. This was back when there was no interest in high grades and very little in varieties so most of the sets weren't even cherry picked.
Now it's hard to find more than a few sets at a time and most will be cherry picked unless you can get them from the source; original buyers. It's also getting harder and harder to find sets that are pristine and many will not clean up. The reason there are so few sets now is that most have already been consumed. They are in circ rolls, landfills, and old photographs. They were plowed under the earth in floods and burnt up in fires. They have suffered more than half a century of neglect.
Yes, you can still find an original unopened shipping box because they made millions of sets but you can't find millions of sets today.
Hard to tell from pictures but they sure look better than mine, which I felt slightly above average. I am shocked by the lack of quality of many if not most slabbed 65s - and they do not IMO look better than what I see of yours. Nice job regardless.
Love that Milled British (1830-1960) Well, just Love coins, period.
When we refer to a MAC sticker-ed coin, with just a MAC label, we are talking about a coin that is spotless. For a coin to be spotless it must exhibit surfaces with no spotting anywhere on the coin or 100% spotless free. Coins can have imperfection in strike which does not affect surfaces. Original toning does not affect spotless coins. This designations applies to coins from 1950 to present.
Our Founder
The history of Numismatics, coin collecting, has evolved over the last 80 years from the introduction of MS grading of large cents in the 1940’s by Marshall Sheldon to the 1970’s with MS grading of silver dollars by Paramount Coins. In 1985 revolutionary changes came about with the invention of coin slabbing, the encapsulation of a graded coin in a plastic holder, invented and patented by Alan Hager.
Mr. Hager has 62 years in the numismatic business, started in 1958 as the Silver Dollar Kid at 9 years old. In 1984, 1985 and 1986 he wrote his 3 Volume Opus on silver dollars, The Comprehensive Guide to Morgan and Peace Dollars Volume-1, Proof-Likes and Proofs Volume-2 and Eisenhower Dollars Volume-3, over 1500 pages on dollars. He wrote books on Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, Golf and Boxing cards from 1991 to 1997. In 2008 he wrote “The Standard Certified Price Guide to Canadian Coins”. This was followed by his major contribution to Rick Tomaska’s book on Kennedy Half dollars in 2010 and the reprint in 2011, winning book of the year in the industry.
When you have PCGS or NGC certified coins like a 1953-S Jefferson Nickel in MS-65 selling for $22.00 and its counterpart MS-65 FS selling for $22,000.00 (1,000 times the price of the non-steps), one realizes the gap is too great. Grade Enhancement is now a must as the price spreads are out of line. You now have a MAC & GE MS-65 (4-FS) selling 20% to 30% of the 5-FS value, it becomes very clear as to the value of grade enhancements. Another example is the 1999 American Silver Eagle in NGC MS-69 selling for $65 and its MS-70 counterpart at $6,500 or 100 times greater. A MAC NGC MS-69 has considerably more value and could be worth 10% of the MS-70 value. These are just two examples of the thousands of Modern, Traditional, and world coins in today’s market that have spreads of four times to 1,000 times the value between the grades.
@wondercoin said:
‘’Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.”
Telephoto1- great thesis you have here. So, take the next year AND SHOW US THE MONEY! We’re not going anywhere. Make grading 1970-D 50C in 67 grade and better your pet project and show us all how much money you make. Reasonable way to show you that you will likely make about NOTHING, grow tired of the project quickly and move on (as most classic dealers who devoted time to these moderns has already) - yes? Nothing argumentative here; show us all the soundness of your thesis please.
Wondercoin
No time. Too busy flipping BU Morgans at $5 a coin, remember? LMAO.
It maintains that the only thing the modern market really need is for the last of the mint sets t be destroyed. The reason it's so relevant is that 40% silver is the worst preserved of all moderns in mint packaging and the '70 half might be the most universally tarnished of all the 40% coins. The '69 is often uglier but the '69 is seen pristine once in a while. With the '70 the question is how badly tarnished it is more that whether it's tarnished or not.
These sets are being destroyed at a breakneck pace the last several years because owners are trying to salvage the half dollar before it's gone. If they are tarnished too long they will not clean up and they will often retain spots. Indeed, many of those that still survive are probably in the hands of people who just don't care or are unaware of the situation.
As much as I like the '70-D and its historical importance I must point out one other thing; of all the '70 sets being destroyed and all these sets that have been destroyed over the years only a small percentage of the clad coins have been saved. Why would any wholesaler want to sit on rolls and rolls of 1970 quarters when they aren't even worth the cost of shipping. Of course if they sit on them without first restoring them then they are probably ruined by now.
Collectors may be in for some pretty big surprises. There are almost no rolls of '70-P quarters because quality was atrocious and most of the '70-P's from mint sets are long gone. Only about 8% of these were nice attractive MS-64 or better back when there were two million nice pristine sets available. If collectors ever desire these coins there just aren't going to be many available. Always in the past you could easily find a nice attractive VF or XF in circulation but as collectors slept these too have disappeared. They have been worn, abused, and consumed. The few left are mostly culls or heavily worn (usually both). Even the 50 million culls are hard to find among the 75 billion circulating quarters. If you ever do find a VF it's probably a mint set coin that came from a coin dealer's cash register within the last 15 or 20 years.
When the last mint sets are gone collectors will have to buy singles and we'll see just how shallow the supply really is. Instead of buying '70 mint sets to get the half they'll buy a single and dealers who stock them won't get them from sets either. The BU roll market is very very thin.
Comments
Thanks for the GC update.
I saved myself some cash.
Wayne
Kennedys are my quest...
Obviously, there are degrees of proof-like ranging from mild to deep. I paid up for my deeper PL. I am not all that interested in mild looking PL low grade examples. Wondercoin.
Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
Unless the 70-D is hands down DPL most collectors I've noticed want a minimum grade of MS65 on these PLs.
peacockcoins
They made millions of these mint sets. Of course they're going to come in five or ten or 400 at a time. Nobody is claiming they are rare or every single one has been destroyed and the half dollars tossed in the trash. What we are saying is that the bulk of them have been "consumed" and not "collected" or "set aside for the future". What we are saying is that most of the survivors are really badly made and they are now mostly tarnished.
The ones that are left are mostly the few that have been set aside, collected, or otherwise conserved. Many of the mint set coins can be saved but every year that goes by tens of thousands more are ruined or destroyed because these simply don't have the demand that old coins have. There aren't lots and lots of collections of kennedy halfs and there never will be because the coins aren't there. There are millions of collections of old jefferson nickels and these come into coin shops every day but rarely does clad of any type come in other than common stuff like bicentennial coins.
Everyone seems to think there are millions and millions of '70-D halfs that have magically survived more than half a century of neglect. Not only are they wrong but even among ALL the survivors you'd be hardpressed to find many nice choice Gems or any PL's. Nice choice Gems were scarce in 1970 and they are far far far scarcer today. It is much more likely you can find a bag of tough morgan dollars with dozens of Gems in it than you could find a single nice PL Gem in '70 mint sets. You can buy these by the hundreds if you can find them long before you f9ind a single such coin. And then it's most probably going to need conservation after so many years in the plastic. As I mentioned PL's are less likely to be OK than regular strikes.
.
You can check every set in stock and a good rule of thumb is there will be 20 nice Gems per 100 sets, 2 coins per hundred sets that are worth grading and about one coin in a thousand sets that will bring more than a few hundred dollars. You have to know what to look for and this means varieties, FB, FS, PL's, and the characteristics of Gems. It's hard work to "make" these coins and trying to "make" a '70-D half is one of the toughest of all. This is because there is so little demand that only top pops bring good money but rarities in MS-66 or MS-65 aren't worth the cost of grading in many cases.
Morgans that are rare in MS-63 bring hundreds even thousands of dollars but moderns that are rare in MS-65 often have little premium. There are some people who know how scarce these are and will acquire them but they are hard to find because most are raw.
Markets are screwy because so many collectors don't like moderns and so few collect them. This lack of collecting might well be a major problem going forward because old coins will come into coin shops but there might still be no modern collections.
All over the world collectors are discovering that their moderns are virtually non-existent and prices are often soaring even on the weak demand. Modern collecting has always been less common than collecting old coins but the difference now is that so few coins were saved at all.
‘’Very droll. It's not about dealers not liking to make all those "easy thousands of dollars"; it's about all the people with 5-packs, 10- packs, hoards, estates sitting in SDBs, safes, boxes at home etc. that haven't bothered to look. And there still are a lot of them. We routinely see stuff come in that's still in unopened shipping boxes. 1970 mint sets aren't magically exempt from that. A lot of people simply don't know about the price differential in top grades because they're not diehard coin geeks like all of us.”
Telephoto1- great thesis you have here. So, take the next year AND SHOW US THE MONEY! We’re not going anywhere. Make grading 1970-D 50C in 67 grade and better your pet project and show us all how much money you make. Reasonable way to show you that you will likely make about NOTHING, grow tired of the project quickly and move on (as most classic dealers who devoted time to these moderns has already) - yes? Nothing argumentative here; show us all the soundness of your thesis please.
Wondercoin
Those were the days of customer-wrapped rolls, and some bank-wrapped rolls, so it was highly variable.
A 40% silver half dollar find would yield a gross profit of about 20 cents at the time.
We could often find 100 for each of us in a day. So that was $20 each, which would pay for gas and lunch, plus a tiny bit extra. Some days there was hardly anything. Once in a while there would be a really good find. I went to a bank in Evergreen and got $100 in halves. Out of that $100, only $6 of it WASN'T silver. And most of the other $94 was 1964 Kennedys.
Was really surprised at the amount of commentary in my created thread about the 70-D half. Thanks to all for your viewpoints.
I've many hours sitting in coin shops scanning '70 mint sets and buying anything that was nice solid Gem or very PL. Despite this I've found very few '70-D half dollars in my safety deposit boxes that will bring more than a few dollars. I know I've got a virtually flawless highly PL one that hasn't shown up yet but the odds are good it will be tarnished when I find it and less than a 50: 50 chance it will clean up OK. There's another really nice MS-66 or MS-67 I've yet to find.
This was after years of looking, lots of shoe leather, and gas to get me to coin shops. This was back in the days that any shop might have a couple hundred in stock and they'd all be pristine. This was back when there was no interest in high grades and very little in varieties so most of the sets weren't even cherry picked.
Now it's hard to find more than a few sets at a time and most will be cherry picked unless you can get them from the source; original buyers. It's also getting harder and harder to find sets that are pristine and many will not clean up. The reason there are so few sets now is that most have already been consumed. They are in circ rolls, landfills, and old photographs. They were plowed under the earth in floods and burnt up in fires. They have suffered more than half a century of neglect.
Yes, you can still find an original unopened shipping box because they made millions of sets but you can't find millions of sets today.
I have two 1970 D half dollars sitting in a Dansco album. I picked up these coins in Mint Sets in OGP I searched through.
They both are much better in quality than the numerous other halves contained in other 1970 mint sets I searched through.
I think that at best they would grade 64.
Photos of both coins are attached.
Your thoughts?
Hard to tell from pictures but they sure look better than mine, which I felt slightly above average. I am shocked by the lack of quality of many if not most slabbed 65s - and they do not IMO look better than what I see of yours. Nice job regardless.
Well, just Love coins, period.
@SanctionII
Nice die crack on coinTwo.
And the most photographed counter top. Love it
Martin
When we refer to a MAC sticker-ed coin, with just a MAC label, we are talking about a coin that is spotless. For a coin to be spotless it must exhibit surfaces with no spotting anywhere on the coin or 100% spotless free. Coins can have imperfection in strike which does not affect surfaces. Original toning does not affect spotless coins. This designations applies to coins from 1950 to present.
Our Founder
The history of Numismatics, coin collecting, has evolved over the last 80 years from the introduction of MS grading of large cents in the 1940’s by Marshall Sheldon to the 1970’s with MS grading of silver dollars by Paramount Coins. In 1985 revolutionary changes came about with the invention of coin slabbing, the encapsulation of a graded coin in a plastic holder, invented and patented by Alan Hager.
Mr. Hager has 62 years in the numismatic business, started in 1958 as the Silver Dollar Kid at 9 years old. In 1984, 1985 and 1986 he wrote his 3 Volume Opus on silver dollars, The Comprehensive Guide to Morgan and Peace Dollars Volume-1, Proof-Likes and Proofs Volume-2 and Eisenhower Dollars Volume-3, over 1500 pages on dollars. He wrote books on Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, Golf and Boxing cards from 1991 to 1997. In 2008 he wrote “The Standard Certified Price Guide to Canadian Coins”. This was followed by his major contribution to Rick Tomaska’s book on Kennedy Half dollars in 2010 and the reprint in 2011, winning book of the year in the industry.
When you have PCGS or NGC certified coins like a 1953-S Jefferson Nickel in MS-65 selling for $22.00 and its counterpart MS-65 FS selling for $22,000.00 (1,000 times the price of the non-steps), one realizes the gap is too great. Grade Enhancement is now a must as the price spreads are out of line. You now have a MAC & GE MS-65 (4-FS) selling 20% to 30% of the 5-FS value, it becomes very clear as to the value of grade enhancements. Another example is the 1999 American Silver Eagle in NGC MS-69 selling for $65 and its MS-70 counterpart at $6,500 or 100 times greater. A MAC NGC MS-69 has considerably more value and could be worth 10% of the MS-70 value. These are just two examples of the thousands of Modern, Traditional, and world coins in today’s market that have spreads of four times to 1,000 times the value between the grades.
No time. Too busy flipping BU Morgans at $5 a coin, remember? LMAO.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
This very good nearly ten year old article is more relevant here than at first blush;
https://www.pcgs.com/news/Destruction-of-Mint-Sets/
It maintains that the only thing the modern market really need is for the last of the mint sets t be destroyed. The reason it's so relevant is that 40% silver is the worst preserved of all moderns in mint packaging and the '70 half might be the most universally tarnished of all the 40% coins. The '69 is often uglier but the '69 is seen pristine once in a while. With the '70 the question is how badly tarnished it is more that whether it's tarnished or not.
These sets are being destroyed at a breakneck pace the last several years because owners are trying to salvage the half dollar before it's gone. If they are tarnished too long they will not clean up and they will often retain spots. Indeed, many of those that still survive are probably in the hands of people who just don't care or are unaware of the situation.
As much as I like the '70-D and its historical importance I must point out one other thing; of all the '70 sets being destroyed and all these sets that have been destroyed over the years only a small percentage of the clad coins have been saved. Why would any wholesaler want to sit on rolls and rolls of 1970 quarters when they aren't even worth the cost of shipping. Of course if they sit on them without first restoring them then they are probably ruined by now.
Collectors may be in for some pretty big surprises. There are almost no rolls of '70-P quarters because quality was atrocious and most of the '70-P's from mint sets are long gone. Only about 8% of these were nice attractive MS-64 or better back when there were two million nice pristine sets available. If collectors ever desire these coins there just aren't going to be many available. Always in the past you could easily find a nice attractive VF or XF in circulation but as collectors slept these too have disappeared. They have been worn, abused, and consumed. The few left are mostly culls or heavily worn (usually both). Even the 50 million culls are hard to find among the 75 billion circulating quarters. If you ever do find a VF it's probably a mint set coin that came from a coin dealer's cash register within the last 15 or 20 years.
When the last mint sets are gone collectors will have to buy singles and we'll see just how shallow the supply really is. Instead of buying '70 mint sets to get the half they'll buy a single and dealers who stock them won't get them from sets either. The BU roll market is very very thin.
@cladking
A very timely and relevant dissertation if you ask me.
Pete