Tag Archives: cent

Shutdown Victims MUST Read This!

January 21, 2019Uncategorizedbuy, cent, cheap, cheapo, coin, earring, ej gold, gorby, gorebagg, jal, marketing, merchandising, pendant, penny, reincarnation, sell, street sales, swap, tradegorebagg

I am a Shutdown Victim. I’m not a government worker, but I am a Shutdown Victim, and I’ll be only too happy to explain to you in detail how come I’m in this condition:

The First Vibration of the Ripple Effect came from the furloughed government workers, into the marketplace in a variety of ways, some directly — as in they didn’t buy goods this month because they don’t have the ready cash — and some indirectly, as in screwing up the market and buying sentiment of the consumer class, which is us.

Then we got the Second Vibration — the non-furloughed workers started freaking out because they were “Risking their lives and not getting paid for it”.

Hell, that describes my job in a nutshell. I never get paid for my work, but I don’t really have to get paid — I have an endless supply of Shakti-Pat, and that translates into money, in my world.

Of course, if you’re not living in the Western Realm, and you find yourself in a government job, which means these days, “working and not getting paid for it”, you still have to come up with money for food, gas, parking, migraine headache remedy, tips, spare change and more, not to mention the tons of alcoholic drinks you’ll need to toss down while at work, in order to be able to take the crap without actually snapping the boss’s head right off.

If you’re drunk, you’ll be all right. Continue reading →

Sneak Peek

January 12, 2018Uncategorizedalbum, cent, coin, coin search, coinology, collection, ej gold, gorby, gorebagg, lincoln, money, penny, reincarnationgorebagg

Not too bad for something that turned up in a pile of junk, eh?

Here’s a sneak peek at just one of the many hundreds of really cool and very richly rewarding coins that popped up in last night’s “Barf Bag” search — the coins were discards from other searches, deemed so miserable that they ended up in a bin and eventually in a bag, which I opened and am currently in the process of searching.

I’ve found a few 1924-d, some 1909 VDB and two 1909-s that have seen better days, but they’re readable enough to sell, although in this case, I’m not offering this grouping for sale — it’s intended as an example of what someone can accomplish in a single night, armed only with coin-knowledge and a taste for punishment.

Finding the goodies among the trash is sort of like dumpster-diving, and in a way, it bears some resemblance to it.

One thing that happens in a search like this, you never know what’s going to turn up.

It doesn’t matter whether the source of your search coins is a personal collection, institutional collection, just a bunch of coins that piled up in a jar somehow, or you bought them as a grouping of folders, or as a bag or box or rolls.

The end effect is the same — there’s some searching to be done. Continue reading →

Level 1 Lincoln Set

December 25, 2017Uncategorizedcent, coin, coinology, ejgold, gorby, gorebagg, jal, key coins, lincoln penny, lincoln set, money, semi-key coinsgorebagg

These Strange & Unusual Lincoln Pennies are only $5 each in the gallery.

You get the basic building blocks for a Lincoln Set, 1909-1929, which fits into the Littleton Green Folder.

When you’ve built the collection far enough, it will be transferred over to a Dansco album for resale, minus the key dates, but with all the semi-keys in place, but that’s not for now, not until you understand the medium AND the message.

So, here’s the rundown — prices are approximate and will vary SLIGHTLY, based on coin condition, but at this level, it hardly matters whether it’s a nickel or a dime more or less.

These are the basic coins you’ll need to fill in first: Continue reading →

Coin Search Step-By-Step

December 17, 2017Uncategorizedcash, cent, coin, coin search, coinology, coins, ej gold, gorby, gorebagg, jal, money, penny, reincarnation, sortinggorebagg

Here’s a rundown of what specific actions I take with a new bag or box or roll of wheaties to be searched. It’s basic, and of course doesn’t contain “The Moves”, which are derived from Magic in the Mirror — MiM — in order to handle the coins efficiently and effectively. I’ll assume that the coins are already separated out into decades. If not, they’ll have to be separated out before beginning a search, because you can only compare coins with other coins of the same decade, when grading, or you’ll get entirely baffled by the sudden changes in quality, so the general rule is ALWAYS SEARCH BY DECADE.

So, you’ve got a bag of TEENS, TWENTIES, THIRTIES, FORTIES or FIFTIES coins. Let’s begin a search on them. Put the bag nearby on the floor or on a very strong table.

FIRST ACTION — Open the bag.
SECOND ACTION — Reach into the bag and scoop out a handful of coins.
THIRD ACTION — Place the handful of coins on your right on the velvet search pad.
FOURTH ACTION — Put on your Opti-Visors. I use #7, fairly strong ones, these days.
FIFTH ACTION — Arrange the pile of coins on your right into piles of about 10 coins each.
SIXTH ACTION — Take the first pile of ten coins and FAN or SPREAD them out in front of you where the light hits them perfectly, so you can see every detail.
SEVENTH ACTION — FLIP or TURN OVER the coins so they all face downward, wheats up.
EIGHTH ACTION — FLIP your Opti-Visor down so you can see the coin’s surface through them clearly and easily, and CHECK THE COINS for any sign of “quality”, meaning that there are some lines still in the wheat ears. You want to take out anything that isn’t TOTALLY FLAT — absolutely every sign of value or quality.
NINTH ACTION — Place any GRADABLE coin FACE DOWN, WHEATS UP, on the velvlet pad, to your LEFT, in a separate pile.
TENTH ACTION — FLIP the remaining coins in the spread FACE UP, to reveal the date and mint mark, if there is a mint-mark. Remember that coins produced at the Philadelphia Mint never carry a “p” mint mark, although in other denominations there are exceptions to this rule, notably the wartime nickel.
ELEVENTH ACTION — PLACE the coins in the correct piles, starting with the lowest date on the left. All mint-mark coins should be stacked FACE UP in the far center, slightly to the right, building stacks of about 15 coins.
TWELFTH ACTION — Scoop up the stacks of coins into tubes and label each tube as you fill and cap it.

Now all that remains is to store the tubes in boxes until they are needed. I’ll now do a step-by-step rundown on how to handle the coins from search to sale: Continue reading →

Gorby’s Best Grading Skill-Builder

December 13, 2017Uncategorizedcent, coin, coin grading, coin hunt, coin search, coinology, ej gold, gorby, gorebagg, grade, jal, lincoln, lincoln set, penny, reincarnationgorebagg

If you ask me, what’s my best grading skill-builder, I’d have no hesitation in saying that it’s my 1940-1958 “s” mint-mark pennies, that range all the way from G4 to AU-57 and sometimes MS-60 BN, which is common enough to make mention of it.

The BEST GRADING SKILL BUILDER comes in packs of 100 coins at $25 per package, just a hair below my actual cost of acquisition of those coins.

Sure, I lose in the short run, but I assure you that I DO make it up in volume, and it’s not about net profit, it’s all about cash-flow, as any accountant will tell you.

If you’re planning on using these coins to help others gain these skills, you don’t sort or pre-sort these coins, except to build your own skills — they should be poured out onto the table for the trainee just as they came to you in the plastic ziplock baggie. Continue reading →

How To Turn a Penny Into Dollars

December 10, 2017Uncategorizedcash, cent, coinology, coins, ejgold, gorby, gorebagg, money, past life, penny, reincarnation, soul group, soulsgorebagg

Okay, you have a bag of “wheaties”, which means a bag of Lincoln Wheat-Ear Back One Cent pieces from one of three U.S. mints — Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco.

Of the three, you could always count on the mint in San Francisco to develop lots of mint errors, notably involving the mint-mark.

In the Philadelphia coins, there are no mint-marks, but on the other hand, there are lots of opportunities to strike it rich with DDOs, which is to say, “Doubled-Die Obverse” errors, which means that the die got struck twice during the creation of the die from the HUB — it’s all very complicated, but you can find out about the process by reading the Mega Red coin book, which I think you’ll find surprisingly good reading, if you’re at all interested in the history of the coins and the mints that made them AND the horses they rode in on!

You’re dealing here with circulation coins, not special coins issued by the mint to make money for the politicians, such as the “proof sets” and “eagles” and special issue “collectible” gold coins, and other equally miserable excuses for collectibles.

If you mark something as “collectible” and everybody collects them and keeps them totally intact and pristine and mint-condition, guess what? They’re not collectible at all, because scarcity is a powerful driver in the collectibles market, and that’s just not there when everybody has one. Continue reading →

Salt the Mine

December 4, 2017Uncategorizedcash, cent, coinology, coins, ejgold, gorby, gorebagg, money, past life, penny, reincarnation, soul group, soulsgorebagg

Okay, here’s my entry into the coinology marketing field:

GORBY’S PENNY PROSPECTOR

It’s a packet, pouch, box or clear bag with a bunch of ordinary wheaties pennies — a carefully calculated mix of teens, twenties and thirties Lincoln Wheat cents.

Please note that I have avoided the nicer-looking but generally worthless later Lincoln cents, the forties and fifties. You can buy them by the shovelful in mint condition for very little, so why muck about looking for and through them for the coins you really want?

My thought is that the price would be slightly different for a bag of 1910’s, 1920’s and 1930’s pennies, but like a crackerjack box, each bag is GUARANTEED to contain at least one, and sometimes two or three, PREMIUM COINS. Continue reading →

Gorby’s Penny-Picker Cash Cow

November 21, 2017Uncategorizedcash, cent, coinology, coins, ejgold, gorby, gorebagg, money, past life, penny, reincarnation, soul group, soulsgorebagg

What is a “Gorby’s Penny-Picker Cash Cow”, and why would I want one?

Okay, fair question, and here’s the best answer I can give you at the moment — a Penny Picker Cash Cow is a fair booth. Of course, it can be applied anywhere, in a store, apartment or traveling bus.

First of all, don’t bother to register the concept — it’s not new, but it might be new to you, which is, technically, new.

So, of what precisely does a Penny Picker Cash Cow consist?

First of all, shouldn’t you be asking whether this Cash Cow is a Work Thing or a Business Thing?

Well, it’s both. You earn a livelihood from your Bodhisattva work, and it takes several very specific forms — obtaining coins, sorting coins, searching coins, grading coins, packaging coins, selling coins and teaching coin search to others.

When you send in your $450, I buy a bag of wheaties and search them to cherry-pick anything EF and above, and put those in a different container. The lesser quality coins are placed in your “Search Bag” or “Go Fish Bowl” in your fair booth or shop or waiting room. Continue reading →

Turn Your Shop into a Place of Initiation

November 3, 2017Uncategorizedcash, cent, coinology, coins, ejgold, gorby, gorebagg, money, past life, penny, reincarnation, soul group, soulsgorebagg

1941 BU Walking Liberty Half Dollar Magic Coin in capsule, $225.

Most silver half dollars run from about $35 for something decent all the way down to crap coins at $8 bucks apiece, if you don’t mind the fact that the coin is unrecognizable and basically worth the silver scrap price and not a lot more.

Even cheaper is the half dollar you get from your local grocer or bank clerk. You’ll need a half dollar in order to learn the very first trick a performing magician learns, which is called “The French Drop”.

The French Drop is the Very First Trick You’ll Ever Learn, if you learn from a pro, and learning The French Drop requires a specific and very serious and very official Initiation into the Order of Performing Magicians.

I’ll give specifics in a moment, but first, let’s examine the concept of coin magic itself:

One of the most natural and easiest tricks for which to find a prop is a coin trick. Almost everyone has a coin of some kind or another. The most common coin for the French Drop is the U.S. Half Dollar, but there are plenty of other coins and plenty of good reasons to use an unusual coin. Continue reading →

Quantum Coin Magic

May 7, 2016Uncategorizedcabala, cent, coin, coin magic, coinology, coins, ejgold, formula, gorby, gorebagg, kabala, kabbalah, lincoln cent, magical, numismatics, pennies, pennygorebagg

Take an “ordinary” penny and put it into a high-energy static electrical field, encapsulate it and surround it with a permeable foamy material, and you have the start of an improvised magical weapon, which can be set up and activated with a Cloud Chamber or any imbuing device.

Let me give you an example… Continue reading →