A new addition to my 1982 registry mint set
rlawsha
Posts: 1,033 ✭✭✭
Just picked up an addition to my 1982 registry mint set. A very nice 1982-P PCGS MS67 Washington. A pop 12/0 coin. The picture doesn't really show the sharp strike. Usually these 82 quarters are flat but this one is the sharpest I seen so far...
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I also love to go through rolls to find coins.
I've seen a few better struck but overall that's about as nice as you can find for the date.
Many of these being sold as uncs are actually sliders so it's refreshing to see a nice unc.
This one looks a little like the best coins found in the souvenir sets (except for being nicer),
but it doesn't look overly familiar to me.
It was struck by a nice new die. It's a shame the filling wasn't complete. Looks like the die
might have struck some PL's shortly before this one!!!
My Registry Set
<< <i>It is is SOOOO hard to find coins for my 82 mint set. There is plenty of MS63 to MS65 stuff out there but I don't care how much money you have, the good stuff only comes around once in a great while. So far I have done pretty good, but obtaining high quality Kennedy's from that year is close to impossible. There are some out there but nobody seems to put them up for sale. I have been buying rolls and uncirc sets when I can but the coins are usually weakly struck and baggy.
>>
Most people don't realize how tough these coins really are. Only about half a million coins were
struck of the quality of this example and "none" went into the souvenir sets and only a few dozen
went into the privately made '82 mint sets. Rolls are rarely seen and it is rarer still when they
contain any coins that are of this quality or even close to it. I've checked directly or by proxy about
20% of the mintage of the souvenir sets and have to believe that if this coin is from that source,
that it's a fluke and there may be no others like this in the other 8,000 of these. It does look more
like a souvenir set coin than anything else, but one shouldn't expect to be able to duplicate it from
this source. The vast majority of '82-P quarters simply went straight into circulation.
This was a bad year not to make regular mint sets since the quality of the regular issue coins was so
poor. Usually if you want a gem of one of the clad quarters then it's just a matter of looking through
enough mint sets until one is found. With no mint sets it makes finding any of the gem '82 issues ex-
ceedingly difficult.
I obtained a bag of this date in 1982 after asking a store clerk who had just given me two very choice
Philly quarters where the store did their banking. I went to that bank and bought a bag of quarters.
There were hundreds of nice choice coins in the bag (~250) and there was only one coin which would
compare favorably to this one. Of course I couldn't afford in those days to set aside $1,000 worth of
brand new quarters so the bulk of them went straight back to the bank. I saved the best example of
all fifteen die pairs and some of the choicest coins. Probably only about 2% of these made for circula-
tion were even really choice! While the various mint set coins tended much nicer, choice coins are none
too common in these either.
Gem half dollars are much more difficult to find but it's only in recent years that I've been looking very
hard for them. There are a few gems in the souvenir sets.
The inability to find moderns is a common theme for all collectors. There are extremely few collections
coming on the market which is the number one source of most rare or desirable coins. These collections
simply didn't exist until recently and now the number of collectors for them is experiencing huge percen-
tage increases. This has the effect of not only limiting the number of coins available but assuring they
are quickly removed from the market. Since many of these collectors are younger, the coins may remain
off the market for years.
even more is that no matter how much you know about something there will usually be some-
one along in short order who knows something you didn't.