A Disappointing Coin Investment

I had seen the ads for the "Treasure Chest of Historic Coins" for several months. A wooden chest containing "at least 50 old and intriguing coins" piqued my interest but at $39.99 I decided to wait for a better price. My patience paid off recently when I was able to purchase it at a 25% discount. Soon the chest arrived (pictured at left) with 51 old U.S. coins which consisted of: two 1936 Mercury dimes; a 1920 Buffalo nickel; a 1943P Jefferson nickel; a 1943 steel penny; a 1903 Indian Head penny; a 1901 Liberty Head V nickel; and 44 Wheat Ears pennies.

As a former salesman of precious metals, maybe I'm too critical but here is my analysis of what I received. First let me say that what I received was consistent with the description of the product on the sales page. The vast majority of the coins were Wheat pennies and the majority of these were from the 1950s (Wheat pennies were minted from 1909-1958). Nothing very special or intriguing

about these. The Buffalo nickel was so well worn that the date was barely

legible (a total of 3,093,000 nickels were minted in 1920). The Liberty Head V nickel was so worn the V on the reverse was barely legible (a total of 26,478,228 nickels were minted in 1901). The two Mercury dimes, both minted in Philadelphia, were in fair condition but it would have been nice to have two separate dates (a total of 87.500,000 dimes were minted at Philadelphia in 1936). The Jefferson nickel, a WW II silver alloy nickel had decent detail but was the dirtiest of all the coins in the chest (a total of 271,165,000 nickels were minted in 1943 by the Philadelphia mint). The Indian Head penny, minted from 1859-1909, was in fairly good condition (a total of 85,092,703 pennies were minted in 1903). The steel penny (actually zinc coated steel) was in excellent condition (a total of 684,628,670 pennies were minted by the Philadelphia mint in 1943).

So the face value of the coins received was/is $.81 cents. Even though they are historic, the actual value isn't much better. The silver melt value of the two merc dimes is worth about $1.20 each and the 1943 nickel is worth approximately $.93 per www.coinflation.com. The steel penny's value is maybe $.25, the Indian penny about $2.00 and Buffalo nickel and V nickel about $1.50 apiece.

There are about a half dozen sites offering this product and if you were to search on "Historic Coins Wooden Treasure Chest" you would  see them. After viewing the various prices it looks like I got  a real deal. All of the sites use pretty much the same description - some using rare, others using intriguing or historic to describe the coins. But they all use the same picture of the 4-3/4L x 3-1/2W x 3H chest overflowing with coins. It just ain't true! The 51 coins cover the bottom of the chest and not much more. Just for the hell of it, I took a bucket of pennies and filled the chest to closely match the picture. It took between 350 and 400 pennies to fill the chest.

The chest itself is kind of neat but I am less than satisfied with the coins I received. Old coins do not necessarily equate to rare coins. And you can see the non-wheat coins all have high mintages plus most are not in great condition. If I were to take these coins into a coin shop and tell them I want to sell these rare coins, they would laugh me right out of the store. Maybe I just got a bad batch. Some of the reviewers stated they were "thrilled with their purchase". But others evidently had the same experience I did. So that's my story on the Historic Coins Wooden Treasure Chest (and I'm sticking to it).

One final note: both of my books, The Last 90 Percent Silver United States Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide and A Guide to Buying and Selling Peace & Morgan Silver Dollars  are now available in hardcopy (as well as in eBook format). You can find them here and here.

Thanks for reading.

JA

Turning Dollars Into Nickels

Unfortunately, I have this knack of turning dollars into nickels at our little local casino. Nothing big, mind you, just a little entertainment in an area that doesn't have much else to offer. Limiting my entertainment dollar at the casino lets me spend money on the meaningful stuff such as food fuel, silver, etc.

 More often than not, the slot machines turn nasty so I cash out, visit the redemption machine for whatever dollars and coins (mostly nickels and pennies) are left, stick them in my back pocket and take them out when I get home.

On a recent trip, my little pile of nickels presented me with a nice surprise. A 1917 S Indian Head (Buffalo) Nickel in decent shape. Now if you know a little about U.S. nickels, you know there were very few years that nickels were minted with any amount of silver in them and 1917 wasn't one of them (see my article on US Silver Coins). So this nickel is probably worth about five cents, right? Not so fast. Here are the stats on this nickel...

The San Francisco mint produced 4,193,000 Indian Head nickels in 1917, less

than half of the Denver mint's production of 9,910,000 and less than 10 percent of the 51,424,019 produced by the Philadelphia mint. After consulting the latest Coin Dealer Monthly Supplement Newsletter (Greysheet.com), I found out this coin has a bid/ask price of $15.50/$17.00 if graded as just "Good". But I think this coin would grade higher than that. A "Very Good" (VG) grade coin would be worth $30.00/$33.00 and a "Fine" grade would be worth $60.00/$66.00.

The only other Indian Head nickels I have are in this mint set pictured at left. The set contains a 1930 S (mintage 5,435,000), a 1936 D (mintage 24,814,000) and a 1935 Philadelphia (mintage 58,264,000, no mint mark) and would all probably be graded "Good" as they show a good amount of wear. In that grade, the 1930 S is worth $1.00/$1.10 bid/ask, the 1936 D $.065/$0.75 and the 1935 Philly nickel $0.75/$0.85. Only in the higher circulated and Mint State grades would these coins be worth much more.

So the lessons I was reminded of from this little experience are: 1) you never know where you might come across an old coin worth more than its face value so keep your eyes open to that possibility; and 2) when you find an old coin, you can't just assume the coin has little or no value over its face value so refer to reputable resources that will let you know a coin's value.

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After enjoying a record year in which 44,006,000 were sold in 2014, the American Silver Eagle is off to a strong start with 5,127,500 being sold so far in 2015. Typically January is a strong sales month for ASEs as a crowd that grows larger every year wants to get their hands on the 2015 coins. Have you got yours yet?

Thanks for reading and keep the faith.

Silver Investing - Silver Nickels

In the fall of 2008, less than 30 months ago, the price of silver was $8.79 an ounce. Yesterday the spot price was over $36.50 at one time but today dropped back and now sits at $35.12. How many other investments can brag about those types of gains? If you invest in silver, you have to understand that silver is very volatile and these ups and downs are to be expected - especially with the world events now going on. Some very knowledgeable people are saying $50 silver is yet ahead so keep the faith.

The U.S Mint is taking quite a breather on the metals this month. So far in March only 717,000 Silver Eagles have been produced. This is after February's total of 3,240,000 and January's whopping 6,422,000 reported Silver Eagle production. I don't think this an indication that demand is slowing down because from everything I hear, demand is still sky high.

One of the things that caught my eye while visiting a coin shop in Laughlin was this Buffalo Nickel Set. The Buffalo Nickel was produced from 1913-1938 by the Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco Mints (in 1938, the Jefferson Nickel took its place). If the design looks familiar, it should. The design was "borrowed" to produce the pure gold (24k) American Buffalo.

As you may be aware, there is no silver in the U.S. Nickel. The composition is 75% copper and 25% nickel. The only exception was during WWII when nickel was deemed a critical war material. So from 1942-1945, the nickel was composed of 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. After the war, the nickel returned to its original composition. Even though the nickel contains no silver, because of the metals it does contain the value is approximately .068 cents (not its .05 cent face value).

I have listed many of the common U.S. silver coins' compositions on my silver investing site. If interested, you can read it at Silver Bullion Coins. Thanks for reading.