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.
Create a small pile from which to work at sorting the coins into “High-Grade” and “Junk”, meaning EF-40 or better on the one hand, and anything lower than a full, clear, clean double wheat showing gets shoved into the “Junk Coins” pile.
That’s it, that’s all, that’s the whole of it.
Ultimately, grading the wheatie is all about SEEING the wheats and being able to decide if it’s really full wheats or not, meaning clean and clear, as opposed to “almost clean and clear”, which is NOT what we’re after.
Following this exercise, we’ll be looking for the obvious, among mint-marks, which would be RPMs, and here, it’s important to know where to not bother looking, which means you’ll need the Cherry Picker’s Guide, Volume I, for help in deciding which dates will yield any results at all.
Don’t be thinking “value” here — you’re still in the skills-building stage.
For the money, for the long term and for the consistency and reliability of the income, the small packages of starter packs and training packs will work wonders on any market, and will go far beyond the numismatic market into areas of attention skills, memory skills, discernment skills and much, much more.
It really is all in the reflexes.
You can build your own coin business from scratch, and the way to do that is to get my MERCHANT TRAINING KIT which includes:
- 1 Tube of 50 1910 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1911 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1912 — $100
- 1 Tube of 50 1913 — $75
- 1 Tube of 50 1914 — $50
- 1 Tube of 50 1915 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1916 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1917 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1918 — $25
- 1 Tube of 50 1919 — $25
You will also need a sample of the retail package, which I’ll include, no extra charge.
Your essence-task will be to divide up those coins into little piles of ten coins from 1910 to 1919, then pop those little 10-coin piles into the little clear bag and then pop that into a larger clear bag loaded with YOUR VERY OWN business card printed vertical, not horizontal, then add a price tag, and you’re open for business.
The completed price-tagged package will now hang on a peg, rack or spinner at the retail point-of-purchase or on a nearby countertop spinner or flat-rack.
OR, you can send for my “LINCOLN TEENS STARTER SET” for a mere … lemme think a minute, calculate this with an adding machine for a change, instead of figuring it by counting fingers:
The whole shebang comes to a wholesale cost of $11, so make that $22 retail, which makes it $11 wholesale, and I haven’t even added the dollar it costs for the retail package that YOU get free, as it were.
So on the next higher level, what you’d do is send for an unsearched bag of TEENS which could be had for as little as a couple thousand bucks, if you knew the right people — and I do NOT suggest this route, as it can be very expensive if you end up with a pile of junk and no way to get rid of it.
These bags are NOT crud coin, nor is it “fill” or “cull”. It’s the dump from folders and albums that are bought by the thousands, and are the yield from thousands and thousands of inherited collections, sold by the ignorant to the dealers.
In there, you’ll find high-grade and mint-marks aplenty and, as many of you know, I got horrifically lucky with a few rusty & encrusted ’09-s VDBs last week, but you can’t and shouldn’t count on those “nugget” hits at all, and I surely don’t.
If you really want to test your skills, send $250 and I’ll send you a sealed bag of ALL BAD stuff, almost guaranteed to have no grade whatever, and you can make up your packets from that, if you get lucky with the hard dates.
If you want to do some coin search, there’s plenty of it when you sort coins into dates and mint-marks.
I put several thousand through that particular mill last night.
My whole focus is on getting hold of those BAD G-4 coins that make up the majority of the coins with which I work. The “GREAT” coins I get rid of as fast as I can, into flips and off the table.
Gimme the junk coins every time!
Those GUARANTEED CRUMMY coins, meaning G-4 to maybe G-6 if I let a few go by, will create those STARTER PACKS that make such good stocking-stuffers and party favors at graduations, weddings, bar-mitvahs and other such events.
I also have kits for the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, beyond which I no longer go, meaning no memorials, no shields, no Lincoln early life scenes, nothing but wheaties.
Oh, sure, I have a few hundred Indian Head pennies around, but not by choice. Want a few? I have the below cost just to get the space to put other coins, the sooner the better.
I don’t deal in Indian Head pennies very much because I find the grading much harder to determine AT THE CRITICAL LEVELS, meaning VF, EF and AU.
I should mention that, when I get coins in a packet from my wholesale coin dealers, I get them all in a single baggie — it’s entirely up to me to determine which coin or coins is — or are — the value coins.
As a coin dealer, I’m expected to know my stuff, and when it comes to the Lincoln Cent, I certainly do.
I’ve got lots of delightful error coins, most of which are not for sale, but I have offered a few of them here and there, and they’ll show up in the shop in the next few days.
That’s where my penny collection is going, you know — into the shop, in special coin cases built just for them.
Well, actually, they were built to hold necklaces, but coins display in more or less the same trays, so I think we can make it work.
Regarding high-end collections:
The best collection is low-end.
I have four full LOW-END Lincoln collections for sale right now, all guaranteed correct and authentic, including the 1909-s VDB, the 1909-s, the 1914-D, the 1931-s and in fact every coin called for in the album except the 1922 no-D, ready to ship before Christmas.
I always price the Lincoln Full Set WITHOUT the “22 no D”, which I don’t believe is properly part of the Lincoln issue, but I can add one in if you really really must have it.
Many people prefer not to confuse the issue and thus save themselves a fairly large expense, anywhere from $400 to $2000 to satisfy that bizarre claim that the error coin is part of the run.
On the other hand, for some, they can’t think of the set as complete without the 1922 no-D, so I’ve made efforts to have a few on hand, always PCNG or NGC Graded, which means they come to you in a sealed container called a “slab” — they don’t go RAW into the album, in any case.
With the No-D 1922, it’s imperative that you get a third-party opinion on the veracity of the coin, because many 1922 no-D coins turn out under inspection to have had the D worn off or ground off deliberately to make the coin worth a LOT more money.
In short, beware.
That’s why I deal with professionals and I’m willing to pay the price for quality and assurance. I don’t look for bargains, I look for opportunity.
What I mean by that is, with that unsearched bag of TEEN wheaties, you could make a small fortune, if you can SEE the grade of the coin.
There are about 20% of the coins in these recent TEEN bags that have quality of at LEAST VF-EF and some go a bit past that into the AU and MS levels, but only a few do that.
AFTER you’ve extracted the choice coins in your bag, you’ll want to arrange the crud coins by date, then get them into packages for sale as starter sets.
You might find that you need certain dates, that they just don’t come up enough to make the kits — notably, you’ll be shy the 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1915 coins in any condition, so you’ll have to send for a roll of them, which will run you the roll price, whatever that is on that day.
I don’t make up the roll prices, the coin exchange does.
If you’re interested in any aspect of Coinology, let me know, and I’ll try to cover it in a blog or on a broadcast and, yes, I still persist in calling them “broadcasts” although I know very well the term is long-gone from public usage.
Like I’ve said so many times before, at 76, I’m well into the “screw it” stage. See? I’m so old-fashioned, I tend to refrain from the over-usage of the word “fuck”.
I guess that’s just my way of saying “Pardon my language”, which you no longer have to excuse, with F**K being spelt out on the major news networks when the politicians get frisky.
Speaking of politicians getting nervous, watch what happens next.
When ALL THE MINORITIES get together, they make a MAJORITY, and they’re just now beginning to get that, really GET it.
There’s more than merely resistance in the air.
Work fast, there isn’t much time.
Space, we’ve got plenty. Time is short. Work efficiently and effectively. Make every day, every moment, count.
Remember that Coinology is a chilling meditation as well as a legacy.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby