$50.00 bag of 1963P Lincoln Cents

Mercury

In th spirt of Jade's efforts to lure us lurkers out. I will start my first topic.

I have a $50.00 mint bag of 1963P lincoln's. Where can I find out what this might be worth. Should I open it and see what's in there or leave it be?

coppercoins

1963P coin for coin and roll for roll are the least valuable of all memorial cents. They barely bring over face value and are quite plentiful.

With that being said, there are a number of nice die varieties in 1963P cents. I have a few of them listed on my site, but the number I do have listed is far outweighed by the number I do not yet have listed due to time constraints. There are over 75 different doubled dies valued between $5 and $25 each for 1963P cents, many of which come in abundance from original source material such as bank wrapped rolls and bags.

One problem....and the only problem....if you open the bag and find a doubled die in the bag, there's a likelihood that you will find hundreds of that one single die and little else because of the nature of the beast...you have 5000 coins that were minted and bagged together, so the number of different die pairings you will have in the bag will number between 6 to 8 and 10 to 15....you could have 6 different die pairings, 8 different, 13 different, etc. This is unlike a group of 100 bank wrapped rolls which were probably purchased from different sources over different periods and could have as many as 75 different die pairings - more preferable if you are pulling doubled dies.

I hope my babbling has helped. If you want to send a sample roll or two to me for me to pick through for you, contact me by PM and I will be happy to help you.

JrGMan2004

coppercoins knows his stuff...

cladking

All the old bags of coins are a lot of fun to poke through. Many of these are distressingly
common and the typical coin from them will not sell for much of a premium. It's quite com-
mon for bags to have nothing of interest in them and to have lots of coins which are tarn-
ished from improper storage.

There is great interest now days in varieties and high grades. Varieties seem to get in-
creasingly popular each year as books are written about them. Certainly Coppercoin's
"Looking Through Lincoln Cents" will further serve to spur this interest. You can find some
of the varieties in the various books and at Coppercoin's website. High grades aren't very
likely to be found since most of these bags have been kicking around so long, but the same
thing applies to them: If you find one gem there are likely to be mnany more.

There is some chance that some of the pre '65 bags will eventually get a premium. Large
numbers of these are busted up looking for the good coins and then the rest are usually
taken to the bank to reenter circulation. There is some chance that not enough of some
date will be saved. There are also some dates like the '68 which may be universally damaged
by carbon spots.

The best way to understand any series is to put a set together. These are generally pretty
easy even in low grade gem but will be most instructive as a set.