Hello! Have a coin question from my kids
Rofles
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Hello everyone!
My daughters (12 & 11) have recently got into coin collecting, and have a blast doing coin roll hunting (I’ve quite enjoyed it too, lol 😊) which brings us here! They came across this 1961 penny that, when compared to others from the same year, stands way out in overall terms of like, everything. I asked about it and the answer I received was that it’s a coin that just hasn’t been circulated very much. Which makes sense. So we went to the PCGS site and looked at the photos, and here’s where the questions come in. I’ve submitted plenty to PSA over the years, but nothing to PCGS.
The questions were:
-Should they send it in? It will be for the PC.
-Do we need to specify a classification? ie red red/brown?
-Are errors of any kind identified if found?
-Anything else we should be aware of for submitting?
(First thing I taught them, based on coin collecting research, is never, ever, clean a coin lol)
If there’s a forum I may have missed, or need to move this post to I’d be happy to do that.
From my daughters and myself, thank you for taking the time to help us out with this 😊
(Edit to add:
It’s just the shiny coin in question; the others in the pics only there for comparison purposes).
Comments
Do not submit your daughter's coins; they are only worth face value.
A fun project they can do is to pick out the nicest looking examples they find roll hunting and put them in a Whitman folder.
So the penny with no mint mark wouldn’t be worth the grade? I thought it looked really good compared to others lol. I’ll look up the Whitman folder, thank you! 😊
Correct. The PCGS CoinFacts website is a good place to look up values. Here is the page for 1961 Lincoln cents:
https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1961-1c-rd/2872
It costs $24 to submit the coin at the cheapest tier (Economy), plus shipping, plus insurance. That means the coin would have to grade at least MS66+ RD to be worth submitting, and even that is only marginally worth it. The real value starts at MS67 RD. The point is that for anything that grades lower, you are spending more on fees than the coin is worth.
Listen to @IkesT. The coinage you have shared is worth face value only. If you submit the coins you might as well light a stack of twenty dollar bills on fire and watch as the smoke blows in the breeze. At least you would get a few moments of mild entertainment from that.
Good luck with coin collecting and have a blast with your daughters.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Just because a coin is shiny doesn’t make it worth more than face value.
It would cost you $50-60.00 to have it graded and that is if you have a
membership and it would still be worth 1 cent. It is a nice album coin.
Unless a coin is worth around $200.00, it is not worth getting graded.
@Rofles please read carefully the responses that others have already given.
Do you understand how much it costs to have a coin graded?
How much do you think this coin is worth (a) as it is, ungraded and (b) after you pay the fees to get it graded?
Ultimately it's your choice what you do with your money. But most people here feel that it's not a good idea spending more money on grading than a coin is actually worth.
You can probably buy a few similar cents in various grades already slabbed for not too much money. (Someone else's mistakes). Then your daughters could use those as an educational set for comparison to coins they find.
There's no real chance of finding a common circulating coin in rolls or circulation in high enough condition to justify having graded. It is a nice coin to start a Lincoln cent set though, get an album and let the kids start searching for dates and mintmarks to fill it! That is the most satisfying aspect of collecting, especially for younger collectors.