What I found after searching a bank bag of Eisenhower dollars. . . . a few pics and observations
TallahasseeCoinClub
Posts: 2 ✭
First, there was not a single silver example to be found. On the other hand, up to perhaps half the coins would qualify for UNC, though I don't think even one of them would exceed MS-63. I would say approximately five or so were cleaned, almost certainly incidentally and not by someone trying to numismatically "improve" the coins. To my amazement, I found four(!) 1976 Type-1 examples that would each grade MS-62/3, and nine 1976-D type-1 examples, most of which would also go UNC. Without actually tallying dates, I have the feeling that Bicentennial coins were represented to a little higher proportion than expected.
Two other oddities are depicted below.
Official PCGS account of:
www.TallahasseeCoinClub.com
10
Comments
Nice
What am I missing on the first “oddity?”
a VF and a clad proof?
what was written on the outside of the bank bag and the source?
Nice first post!
Welcome to the CU forums. It's also nice to know that Tallahassee has a coin club only 100 miles away from me.
It actually circulated. Lol
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I had a truck driver uncle when I was a kid in the early 70's who loved Ikes. Any time he would see my brother and me, he would give us each a couple or 3 of them to go buy whatever we wanted (mostly BB cards or candy)...Whenever I go to the bank, I always ask if they've had any come in....get lucky once in awhile.
That's an interesting take, I like 👍
As someone mentioned - the unusually low grade! And it appears to be honest circulation.
Official PCGS account of:
www.TallahasseeCoinClub.com
You never worked in a coin shop.
I was thinking that it resembled an intentionally carried “pocket piece” for some considerable time. Just think about how much time has passed since those were minted. It’s either 49 or 50 years now. And the biggest year of SBA’s is 46 years ago. What happened to the time? When I was born, 46 years before that was 1909!
Member - ANA Exhibiting Committee, Membership and Outreach Committee, George Heath Society, PAN, FUN, ANA Qualified Exhibit Judge, Joe Boling Award winner, Glenn Smedley Award winner.
I suspect your bag is atypical in having so many Unc specimens or your grading standard allows a lot more friction on the high points. BU rolls of many dates included nice MS-63's and a few MS-64's. In so large a sample I'd expect to see at least a couple. Bags can become atypical in all manner of ways but in this case I'd suspect a collector or dealer dumped a lot of coins and they were not yet dispersed. There are large buyers who might reject enough coins to "contaminate" a bag or even several. Their distribution could be telling.
For collectors from circulation those MS-62 /3 would be the Holy Grail. Many of these were very poor and they've had very high attrition. A lot of mint sets coins can't even approach such a lofty grade. This increases the probability that these Unc coins just don't belong there. There should be some Uncs with variable degrees of rub all the way down to AU 53.
Additional Bicentennial coins is consistent with an even older pattern of a surplus in the date because not all collectors collect both types. Combined with poor quality preventing their removal from circulation more coins from destroyed sets end up in circulation. And it is especially consistent with a dump made by a wholesaler.
A lot of bags have a lot of Vegas coins in them.
In my coin shop experience, we found lots of BU coins, and a few vf/xf circs (pocket pieces?), in typical hoards. The darn things almost never really circulated.
We had a few customers who bought them to use in their slot machine collections. We sold them for $1.25 each, and tried to buy them over the counter for $1.10 each. But after a while we found that few people would let us have them for a 10c premium.
Finally we changed our strategy - When buying a collection or hoard that included loose Ikes, we would offer to cash the Ikes out at face value.
It turned out that even though very few people thought a dime premium was a good deal, a solid majority thought folding money beat hauling home those clunky Ikes.
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!