I’m currently creating a bunch of $50 1000-Coin Family Christmas Specials for about a dozen folks who took me up on my offer to pre-clean the batch of coins, meaning I’d take out the obvious crud and coins beneath grade, leaving only those coins that would be okay in an album. What you end up with is the same bank box of pennies, minus the crud. Whatever you were going to get is there for you to get. Nothing of value is removed, no matter what it might be, even a 1909-S VDB.
That’s right. You can’t imagine how little interest I have in in-game money anyhow; as for coins, when I’m searching Lincoln Memorials, I feel like a level 99 who somehow got roped into magic-finding low level gear to outfit a Level 1 character in “Normal”, the Easiest setting in any game.
My coin-search skills are really in the high-level coins, and I’d much rather be searching a bag of Indian Heads or Wheaties for you, but I’m always willing to lend a hand to those who need a leg up to get started, and that’s what my $50 for 1000 Pennies Family Christmas Starter Pak is all about.
What you get in the Pak is what you’d have gotten anyway had the box not been pre-searched, but you’d have to wade through a ton of crud to get there, and you’d have to know your grades to know which coins are worth taking in, and which are not worth bothering with, no matter what they are.
My theory is that the first album you build will have medium-grade and low-grade high-grades, if you dig what I mean, down to brownies and in some cases, downright crud until you can figure out how to do better. That’d be in your 7-key 1982 spread.
The $50 Christmas Special Family Pack comes with a special elegant archival coin folder to help you understand which coins to put where. You can upgrade them as you find better ones in your Christmas Family Pack, or find them from additional boxes you get at the bank after the Holidays.
I hope you develop your skills in searching coins by handling the ones I ship you. Oh, shipping, by the way, is an additional $11. It was just pointed out to me that I ship back to you $10 face value in pennies — that is, in effect, a ten-dollar rebate, I am told. Gosh, adding in the listing and closing fees, I guess I’m charging too little. Oh, well, the listing’s already up at $50 bucks, and that’s a nice friendly price, so I’ll leave it at that. You’re actually paying about $36.15 for the Hoovering Service.
Since it usually takes anywhere from 2 to 4 bank boxes to yield enough of the right dates and mint-marks needed to complete or almost complete a Lincoln Mem collection, that works out to about 37.5 cents an hour, but I get to take a tea-break anytime I want, as long as I get out two and a half tons of pennies a day.
You’ll typically receive at least 3 or 4 1970-S pennies in various grades, depending on your luck — it’s your Karma that’s being acted out here, and your results would normally make a great feedback picture, but I correct results from my end, by supplying more coins from another search, if your search doesn’t yield enough coins in an area such as the seventies, or you might not have enough wheaties.
You get wheaties if your box has ’em. Last order I processed yielded wheaties for all 1,000 coins! You simply get the next 1,000 good coins that come through my hands.
I’ll throw in some 1960 and 1960-D and a few 1970-S pennies if your box didn’t happen to have them, but I don’t check them for large or small dates; I frankly don’t care, and it’s well that I don’t. It gives the search an impartiality that is very good for Magic Find.
I’m sort of an editor in the sense that I’m exercising choices here, balancing a more complete collection of coins that might be slightly “under the wire” for grade but at least you’ll have something in place, versus having just plain great coins, disregarding their dates and mint-marks.
Frankly, I’d go for the latter, and when you order you can ask for the harsher scouring, but you will receive fewer, but far, far better, coins, most of which will be boring dates and big-deal mint-marks … however, you will know a good coin from a flashy shiny coin when you’ve waded through a few hundred of my super-finds.
If you want that, specify “super-finds, any dates & mint-marks”.
If you want only super-finds and all dates and mint-marks needed to complete a Lincoln Memorial Set, send for my “Complete Lincoln Memorial Set” in the super-finds grade, which will cost you $300 and comes pre-mounted in a beautiful Dansco Album with Dust-Cover Book Box. You don’t want to have to wear the white gloves and dingle these puppies into an album yourself, would you?
Because if you would, you can save a little money by sending for the Super-Find Do It Myself Kit. That will only set you back $150, but I don’t guarantee the super-grade as I do in the kit I make for you, which is photographed and registered in the coinology database and which has only high-grade coins XF-BU including the 1970-S small date!
There will of course be a lot of duplicates in the $50 Christmas Special, no matter how hard I try to keep that to a minimum, but you should have enough dates and mint-marks between 1000 coins ($10 face value is what you get) to get pretty far or all the way through a Lincoln Memorial Set, from 1959 through 1998-D. Most or all of the coins you need ought to be there. If not, send for one, and I’ll ship it to you, excepting the following coins, which are the tough ones in the set:
1960 small date, 1960-D small date, 1970-S small date, 1982 small date, 1982-D small date in either copper or zinc. Those are the Key Dates of this series, and they will all cost you — either time to search for them, or money to buy them on eBay or from a dealer or strategy, if you decide to trade for them, at a coin show or coinology party.
All the other dates are readily available for super-cheap, should you need it to complete your set. Generally a few cents plus postage will do it, to cover my costs, if any, to find and ship the coin or coins you need for completion of the set.
So far, there hasn’t been a Christmas Special that left here without at least four 1970-S pennies; hopefully one or more of them will be a “small date”, but I don’t check them! I don’t have time, and I certainly have no interest in “Level 1” magic drops, as I said before, including the infamous ’09-S VDB.
Well, then, in what coins am I interested?
I hate that question; my answer is bound to sound horribly arrogant, but it isn’t meant to be a sarcastic answer, and here it is:
“At this level, you couldn’t possibly understand my answer.”
I’m really sorry, but that’s the honest, simple truth. It’s like asking an advanced question about a specific biochemical process when you haven’t even got hold of inorganic chem and basic physics plus the math languaging with which to speak about such matters with those who also speak plasmoid.
I’ll try to answer this question at a workshop, where there’s time to develop the WHY and HOW of my advanced coin trading and, yes, they are the result of a search, but a very advanced and difficult one, fraught with risk.
What I hope to accomplish for you right now at this beginning level is to “break the ice” for you and your family, to help you to see and understand the wonderful magical world of coinology.
With this “starter pack”, you’ll be able to actually put a collection together as a family, each one helping with their part to make the collection a joy.
Sometimes it helps to pause a moment to discuss something that happened during a particular year. Often, you’ll find yourself connected to events from your own past, and some that aren’t from you, but from the coin itself, a result of its passage through time and space, from hand to hand and pocket to pocket, all collisions and impacts and handling creating a whalloping amount of Quantum Entanglement, and that means contact with many worlds all at once.
Hopefully, you’ll be learning the basic language of coinology, the methods of handling coins and treating coins and looking at coins and recognizing special coins when you see them.
It’s all part of the training.
“What training?” you ask.
I thought you’d never ask!
Contact me about our upcoming Thanksgiving Weekend Workshop. You can attend online if you can’t come in person, and you can drop in and out of the workshop for family events as necessary, come back in, and we’ll fill you in on anything you might have missed while chowing down the turkey and cranberry sauce.
Me, I’m having my usual Thanksgiving Dinner.
Then it’s back to coin search and Orb Level BlueLining.
Send today for your $50 Family Christmas Special! Don’t wait for the last minute, because I’ll be busy!!!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby