Lincoln Memorial Cents - Hot items?

[Burks]

Anyone see the PCGS price guide for the Lincoln Memorials? Wow. There's a lot of green going on there!

 

Any idea as to why the rise in these is so great compared to the wheat variety? Is it just the market adjusting itself? Catching up?

 

I know I'll be looking for high grade memorials Sunday at the local coin show. Both for my Dansco and possible resell.

[tommyd]

They bore me -- who can get real excited over a very high grade memorial with little regard for date?

[Scottishmoney]

They have been an ignored series, since they are relatively young compared to wheat cents, then they are also a current design. But then factor in that the oldest ones still found often in circulation are the 1959's and you come up with a 48 year old coin. In my box searches I have turned up quite possibly hundreds of them, all circulated of course. Some of the dates, for instance the 1960's are commonly found in BU, but not in the highest grades. I like the pre 1982 bronze cents, the ones afterwards are splotchy spaghetti haired nuisances that go back to the bank like the bubonic plaque.

 

So far I estimate that I have about 12.000 of them accumulated from box searches.

[Burks]

I find a lot of 1968 and 1981 cents in UNC condition during my roll searches. Why those two years I'm not sure of.

 

We'll see how the prices are at the show. It's been a while since I went to one.

 

I'm hoping the guy who had all his stuff 50% off will be there again. Bought two really nice Lincolns (1909/1910 which I lost). I want some more.

[Mark Stilson]

Either there is some adjustment or PCGS saw they could tap another coin group if they inflate prices.

[just carl]

Numerous reasons I think for the value increases. Example there are way more coin collectors than ever before due to advertisements, TV, the internet, coin magazines, etc. Now with 300,000,000 people in the USA alone and many more in other countries, the amount of coins minted is meaningless. And with the resent melting down of coinage for the metal, again the prices of Copper coins is sky rocketing. Then naturally there is books on just that coin alone and with web sites like coppercoins.com, more and more people are grabbing coins and saving them. Price and demand.

[Burks]

The show today was really bad. Barely anyone was buying and what dealers had to offer was almost all lower quality silver. A few Lincolns here and there but most had carbon spots or some nasty scratches. Sat down at numerous tables going through book after book only to find not one Lincoln I wanted, even if I couldn't afford it.

 

Maybe their inventory got wiped out over the holiday season. Or they just don't see the need in bringing high grade Lincoln Memorials with them.

 

Good points carl. Right along what I was thinking. Lincoln's are probably the most popular thing to collect. Easy to get and cheap. We may see more people collecting Morgans on the forums but overall, I'm sure Lincolns are top.

[Art]

This is a good place to find some singles of high grade coins, especially some modern proofs/uncs. You might want to try a "Want" list for a few of the Lincoln dates that you need.

[cladking]

I've been asking about the same question but haven't found a very

satisfactory answer. There's no doubt that nice examples of many

dates are quite difficult to find, but why the increases at this time?

Demand for memorial cents has always been tiny compared to de-

mand for the older coins. POerhaps collectors are thinking this coin's

days are numbered and think it's time to start a set or these increases

are just pent up pressure caused by slowly increasing demand.

 

While none of the regular issues memorials are tough in unc or even

scarce in gem, there are many dates far tougher than most collectors

realize. Some of the very common dates are really much more diff-

icult to find in nice choice condition than is always assumed. There

may be plenty nice '84-D's around to satisfy a small niche market but

there certainly aren't enough for a mass market. There are lots of

gem '79-D's around only so long as there are only a few collectors

looking for them.

[cladking]

"Maybe their inventory got wiped out over the holiday season. Or they just don't see the need in bringing high grade Lincoln Memorials with them."

 

 

I think this is the one thing that is going to be most surprising to see

over the next few years. Dealers don't have high grade Lincolns!!!

They've really been ignoring moderns even more than collectors have.

 

This is going to be pretty complicated and I'm not very knowledgeable

about where to find high grade Lincolns since I've paid much more at-

tention to the cu/ ni coins, especially clad. All the memorial cents have

been saved in rolls and bags but after 1964 the number set aside crashed

precipitously. Some were saved in quantities as low as about 1,000,000

and there may be as many as about 10,000,000 1975 cents set aside.

Large percentages of some of these were checked for varieties and gems

and put into circulation over the decades. This is almost independent of

the number saved and is more dependent on the existence of good var-

ieties to search since most searched coins have gone into circulation.

With some dates you can find a good percentage of high grade coins

among the survivors but other dates were very poorly made and you'll

have to look at dozens of rolls to find a nice example.

 

Mint set cents tend to be much easier to find but attrition on these sets

has been very high. To complicate matters there are some dates like

the '79-D that come very poor in these sets. In 100 sets you'll find only

a couple low grade gems or nicer. The 1968 cents in mint sets are gone

because they all have carbon spots now. More than half the surviving '84-D

cents in the sets are tarnished and ugly now. Thise which aren't tarnished

almost always have rough or otherwise unattractive surfaces. It'll take a

couple hundred 1984 sets to find a nice gem with good surfaces.

 

The traditional source for old coins has always been old collections but we'll

see that there almost no old collections of memorial cents because people

didn't collect them. Don't look for hoarders to have these either because

it has long been too much work to find such coins. I toss them aside as they

appear but it's not like I have large quantities of anything.

 

Don't take this wrong. Some dates come nice and can be found in some

quantity but there will be a few real condition rarities. Those who have been

looking at rolls over the years will have a better idea of which are available

then I but it's a safe bet there will be some big winners among these. Those

which are very tough in mint sets will mostly be quite scarce.

[Burks]

Nice reply clad.

 

One example of Memorials that are easily found in high grade is the 1981-P. For some reason I find those at shows and in rolls all the time in UNC condition. I have no idea why just that one date comes up so much.

 

You are right about finding certain dates that are well struck. I'd rather have an AU well struck coin compared to a BU weakly struck coin. They just carry the "pop" that I want. I'm really picky about what goes into my Dansco's so that makes the search even more difficult.

 

But that's why we collect right?

[Art]

I have to agree with Clad's info. Of course, since I agree, it makes the search for modern sets that contain acceptable coins all the more urgent. The sets are being scoffed up at an alarming rate. I believe the reason you see so many PF68/69 coins slabbed is that submitters are trying for "moderns" in MS/PF70 and so lots of sets are being broken apart. I also think that these tend to be the nicer sets out of what's available.

 

Ditto for mint sets.

[Burks]

And the coins they don't submit are chucked into a junk box.

 

The Ohio State Coin Expo is next month. Missed it last year but I hope to attend this year. Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for. Afterall Toledo's show is really small, maybe a larger show will bring better luck.

[Vfox]

It's funny I musta missed this post. I picked up 140 UNC rolls of lincolns from 1953-1971, most are memorials, and all are great bright reds. Of course you get the occasional carbon spots, and the dark edges on coins stored in paper before the plastic tubes, but only the rims are dark. T

 

hey were part of a real "old timers" collection, he passed away and his wife sold his collection to my dealer, which I promptly put like $600 worth of it on layaway lol, but the lincolns were in the old school softer plastic tubes so long that the plastic shrunk around the coins, making quite a challenge to remove them lol.

 

I don't have time to search them though, so I'm probably going to sell 90% of them, if anyone is interested I'll probably post them in the advertising forum, or PM or whatever. But regardless, yeah, I was very pleased to get them from my dealer, and he also has a 50-60$ face value tub of 60-80's bright UNC lincolns he is going to sell me for a lil over face.

[syzygy]

Anyone see the PCGS price guide for the Lincoln Memorials? Wow. There's a lot of green going on there!

 

Any idea as to why the rise in these is so great compared to the wheat variety? Is it just the market adjusting itself? Catching up?

 

I know I'll be looking for high grade memorials Sunday at the local coin show. Both for my Dansco and possible resell.

 

Looks like a pretty good selection at Cheap Slabs. Not sure how the prices are as I don't follow that area. I have purchased from them before though. Problem is, most of these lower priced items have tiny pics or no pic. Slab or not, I would like a good pic....of both sides!