2 questions regarding an OBW Roll of key date coins.

SanctionII

I have two questions regarding an OBW Roll of key date coins (no I do not have such a roll, wish I did).

The questions are:

#1 - Has anyone owned, seen or heard of a OBW Roll of any key date coin (i.e., 1914-D cent, 1921-S nickel, 1916-D dime, 1901-S quarter, 1916-P quarter, 1932-D or S quarter, 1921-P, D or S half, 1889-CC dollar, et. seq.)?; and

#2 - If one had, has or in the future acquires such a roll and desired to sell same for maximum dollars, what would be the best way to go about doing so?

The first question is more fun in nature and allows for story swapping and bragging (by anyoone lucky enough to have owned or to have seen such a roll).

The second question is more educational and thought provoking. Hearing from collectors, investors, speculators and dealers on how they would go about selling such a roll definitely has go me curious.

My own thoughts on possible ways to sell such a roll include: selling the roll unopened and intact; opening the roll and selling the coins individually; selling the coins raw; having the coins slabbed first and then selling same; selling same on e-bay; selling same via consignment to a major auctionhouse; selling same to other forum members via the BST forum; selling same via consignment through a dealer; selling same through advertisements in hobby publications; sell same on the bourse floor at a regional or national show; sell same privately to other collectors that you know. I am sure there are other ways to sell.

Each of these ways to sell would have different impact on the goal of maximzing the sale price received by the seller and it would be interesting to read your comments on same. Thanks in advance for your comments. SanctionII.

JadeRareCoin

Has anyone owned, seen or heard of a OBW Roll of any key date coin

Well, I am not joking, but I have had that recurring dream for years.

The person who could probably address your question is Oreville. I think that he collects OBW coins.

Steve27

I believe Mitch (wondercoin) collected a complete set of silver Washington quarters by the roll, which should have included the 32-D/S.

Coppernicus

An old freind of my father's had an OBW roll of 09-S VDBs. He was a jeweler and avid collector. He is still alive but I'm not sure if he still has the roll. My guess is he broke it up and sold the coins individually, probably in the 60's.

Mike

mayor1

If memory serves me right, Blackburn & Blackburn had a BU roll of 1914-D Lincolns about 30 yrs ago when they were located in Carmel, CA. I was in the A.F. and stationed in Monterey at DLI and worked part-time for them for a short time. I remember a full page ad in Coin World they had but do not remember if/how the roll was dispersed. Bill.

oreville

Someone rang?

Jay Parrino's favorite story was that during the silver craze of 1979-1980 that at least one roll of 1932-D quarters went through the coin counting machine when it seemed that all dealers did was to buy and sell coin silver. The 1932-D quarters were ruined with the severe scraping of the quarters.

He also showed me a roll of 1856 FE cents that was purchased from the Beck hoard years before and when he went to sell it (mostly low grade circs) it was gone in less than a hour with multiple buyers.

As far as obw rolls of key dates; I know of two mint bags of 1983-P quarters of which one bag was sold over time and the other bag was ruined due to mildew within the last 3 years. Other than that, I have not heard of any obw rolls of key dates in at least the last 30 plus years.

I have seen a nice uncirculated 1932-D quarter roll in an old family collection but it is not obw.

My earliest obw roll is from 1919. I am only a part owner of that roll. The paper is in bad shape so it hardly qualifies as obw anymore. The earliest obw roll that I own outright is from 1940 (nickel 1940-P, quarters 1940-P and 1940-S) A 1938 obw cent roll I had finally broke open since the paper disinigrated.

By the way, if anyone has an obw roll of 1940-D quarters, please pm me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bob Z. has always had a wonderful source of Washington quarter rolls but even they are now drying up.

haletj

I've heard of someone with 5 32-s original quarter rolls (her late husband worked at the S mint). I've heard of someone who has 10 original rolls of every date and mint mark penny through quarter, 1965-1985 so including 83-p quarters.

JadeRareCoin

.......and what about the danger of "fake" OBW rolls of coins?????

TomB

I know of at least one OBW, and perhaps two, of 1916 SLQs. The roll(s) were broken up and sold slowly over time, if I recall correctly, to maximize the return.

My earliest roll is an OBW of 1932 Washingtons and they had to be transfered to a tube. The roll is intact and the coins are wonderful.

elwood

I know of an original roll of 12-S Liberty Nickels, a 16-D & an 18-D or S Roll of Buffalo Nickels. Also an original roll of 18-S Walkers. Don't think any are in the origunal paper though?

JadeRareCoin

We have all heard the story about the roll of uncirculated 1796 quarters that walked into a coin show. I doubt that they were OBW, though, since I doubt that banks rolled quarters that far back.

Shamika

<< <i>We have all heard the story about the roll of uncirculated 1796 quarters that walked into a coin show. >>


Uhh... NO! I've not heard this story. Do tell!

Shamika

What's so special about 1983-P quarters?



I had a classmate in college whose father owned an OBW of 1931-S Lincolns. This is a Key Date, but when he sold the roll intact in the late 80's, he did quite well.

eyoung429

Yes, please tell us!!!!!

dorkkarl

yes, a roll of 1796 quarters in unc.

K S

Pennycase

I had a couple who inherited some coins, they came in wanting to know prices on earlier wheat cents, when I got done, they said they had a complete roll of 1909 S vdb's .... But, once they came back, they were all just 1909 S, still a nice catch, they would only sell me one though, which I sold 3 months ago for a very small profit.

oreville

Just buy a roll of 1983-P quarters in solid BU condition or better yet, an obw roll of 1983-P quarters and then you can can report back to us what you discovered!

First, get some serious money together!

SanctionII

So far 16 replies to my original thread of about 4 hours ago. Most of the replies respond to Question #1 and provide good stories of OBW Rolls of key dates. Keep the replies coming, except put on your thinking caps and take a stab at answering Question #2. Exactly how would forum members (collectors, investors, speculators and dealers) liquidate and OBW Roll of a key date coin to maximize your sales price?

To lure him out of the bushes to toss in his insights and wit, I waive my magic wand and have 40 1964 AH PF69 DCAM Kennedies appear on Russ's desk. How would he sell same (in this hypo he has no choice but to sell)?

eyoung429

If I were in Russ's shoes, break the set, put 2 on ebay a week apart, 2 on yahoo a week apart, etc........ after the first 20, wait about 3wks and do it again.

JadeRareCoin

Depending on the date/denomination, I would NOT break open an OBW roll. For example, I would never open an OBW roll of 1925 Lincoln Cents or an OBW roll of 1944-D Mercury Dime. Sell it as a roll.

nwcs

I remember a story of a guy who had an OBW of 1877 indian head cents about 12 years ago. It kept being sold by the roll. One guy finally opened it and found that most were horribly corroded from storage. It dramatically went down in value as you can imagine.

nwcs

<< <i>If memory serves me right, Blackburn & Blackburn had a BU roll of 1914-D Lincolns about 30 yrs ago when they were located in Carmel, CA. I was in the A.F. and stationed in Monterey at DLI and worked part-time for them for a short time. I remember a full page ad in Coin World they had but do not remember if/how the roll was dispersed. Bill. >>

I haven't heard about them in a long time. I got a lot of my first coins from them. Little did I know they sold me some questionable stuff at the time.

cladking

<< <i>What's so special about 1983-P quarters? >>



This roll sells for only about $1,200 retail but the price is nearly meaningless for a roll that
can't be found. It's not a rare coin only because there were some 15,000 souvenir sets and
another 25,000 or so privately packaged sets (most of them made by Numismatic News as a
subscription premium). The few original rolls in existence were packaged in plastic by this date
and not in bank wrapping. Complicating the search for such a roll is the fact that there are very
few choice coins of this date and sufficient demand to cause rolls to be searched for better ex-
amples.

Ironically this is one of the more common clad quarter rolls but most of the others are available
more widely from other sources so the demand is more highly focused.

Demand makes this roll virtually impossible to locate.

I busted up a roll of '41-D cents not long back because they had all tarnished. I haven't seen any
of the old key dates since the mid-'70's except for a few dollar rolls. I didn't realize they had become
so scarce.

TomB

I'll give more details than I had in my first post. To maximize your profit you should-

1)Make certain you do not tell anyone about the roll
2)Have the coins certified only one or two at a time
3)Maintain a gap between certification cycles so that folks who study the pop reports might assume that the increasing pops for your coin are due to resubmissions instead of new coins
4)Do not sell the coins to the same circle of people
5)Do not sell all the coins yourself, have someone else act as an intermeidary at times
6)Consign a number of pieces, over time, to major auction houses
7)As the coins enter the market, maintain your sell price
8)Have patience

nankraut

OK, here we go: A long time ago, I bought an OBW roll of "specimen" 1804 silver dollars from an old lady who lived in a trailer behind the US Mint. But, I had to open it and spend them all to buy groceries!

haletj

<< <i>...maintain your sell price >>



It really annoys me to see a few dealers on ebay, who say make a bunch of pop tops of a certain date... and then sell the first for $250, the next for $125 and then the next for only $75 (all fixed price sales within a week or two). The first one to buy one really got ripped off. It would be more fair for the dealer to just stick to one price.

100proof1957

Gee whiz,i know a guy that has a roll each of 69S and 69D Linkys.
While maybe not a key date,high grades are scarce.
i would send em to PCGS and disperse them slowly.

TJM965

Hi everyone. This is a true story. My father got me collecting coins in the mid 1950's. We lived in a small village in upstate New York. In 1963 or 1964 my father received a call from the local bank president. During an audit they found a bag of silver dollars in the vault and wanted to get rid of them. My father went to the bank and it was an unopened $1000 bag of 1885 S dollars. He could have any or all at $1 each. They opened the bag and he bought 2 rolls (40) . I do not know what happened to the rest of the bag. My father sold them off in Florida in the early 1980's for $400 - $500 each. That bag probably would be worth at least 1 million today. Yes, I had a chance to buy some also with my birthday and Christmas money, but I bought 100 1957 proof sets instead. That was my 1 shot at wealth which I made the wrong choice. Yes, I think about that bag of dollars all the time and how I would have sold off the lesser grades raw and then slabbing the rest with the 64's first, then 65's, then 66's, and I would keep the 67's and 68's.

cladking

<< <i>Yes, I think about that bag of dollars all the time and how I would have sold off the lesser grades raw and then slabbing the rest with the 64's first, then 65's, then 66's, and I would keep the 67's and 68's. >>



Welcome aboard. If it's any consolation, unless you know otherwise, there probably wasn't much over MS-65 in the bag.