I just bought the 2014 A Guide Book of United States Coins (aka Red Book).
I’m going through my dad’s original coin collection from the late 40’s through early 60’s. For example he collected dimes. He has these cardboard coin albums with slots for the various dimes. 1916, 1916S,1917, through 1958-D. It’s about 90% complete. There’s just a few empty slots that he never found.
Makes it easy to do a spreadsheet with the coin and red book price. I planned to use the lowest grade column. These all look like well circulated coins he collected in the 40’s and 50’s. They’ve been in these coin albums at least 50 years and protected.
I’ve just begun to dig through the box. It’ll take months to catalog everything and look up the red book price. I can already see there won’t be any big payoff. But it meant a lot to my dad when he was a young guy. Just imagining the hundreds of hours he spent searching bags of dimes for his collection is jaw dropping.
But, how close should a dealer offer to red book? If he’s way lower does that mean he’s screwing me? What should I expect to get? Is Red Book retail or a dealer price that I’d get offered?
The melt value of pre-1965 dimes is currently about $1.72. That’s what the dealer will get when he sends them to the smelter. IIRC reputable dealers will pay about 75% of melt value, or roughly $1.29 each.
Ask the ebay seller whether his set includes the 1942 2/1 and 1942D 2/1. If he has them and you don’t, that makes a huge difference in the set’s value. Aside from these and the 1916D, the rest are pretty much worth their silver content . . . you might say they’re “a dime a dozen” (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
The dime collection 1916-1958 (105 coins) is complete except-- 1916-D and 1942 over 41 are missing. 103 out of 105 is pretty good. Just my luck the two missing are the ones that are rare.
This may turn out to be worth saving for the grandkids. The coin album is small and can be easily left in a drawer. If people are melting down dimes for silver then the survivors will just get more and more valuable with time.
Maybe things will work out better with my dad’s other coins. I still need to look through them. He has a little of everything. half dollar from 1908, half cents you name it. He even has a 1963 Dollar bill. No idea why. I see nothing special about it. <shrug> He didn’t just collect random pocket change. Everything he collected was considered collectable.
I’d always heard that Red Book is the Bible for coin prices? Dad has every single year on a shelf right up until the year he died.
I noticed they added a online web site since dad died. I got a 2 month free trial by buying the 2014 guide. I need to activate my membership pretty soon.
If you came into our shop this past week with your book of dimes, I would have figured all of them at $1.75 each and paid extra for the 1921 and 1921-D. Probably $20-40 for the 1921 and $35-55 for the 1921-D.
Oh, and if you’re using Red Book, don’t overestimate the coins’ conditions. There’s a guide to grading . . . it used to be on page 5, probably still is.
I like the idea of leaving them to your kids . . . impressing on them not to SPEND the coins at face value, like I did with my father’s silver dollars (and he hadn’t even given them to me).
Generally, list book prices shown are the price that a dealer will charge for an item on demand. Like, if you call a dealer and say “I want a XXX”, he will find one for you and sell it to you for the “book price”. You can buy it for a lot less than that if it is just sitting in his stock, and you stumble onto it in his shop. If you walk in with one and offer it to him for sale, much lower still.
I remember a few people collecting them in the 60s and 70s. It is a series of coincidences, and assuming you have one of the “correct” ones, it goes something like:
issued from the Dallas Federal Reserve; JFK was shot in Dallas
has the letter “K” seal (which is the code for the Dallas Federal Reserve); obviously, "K"ennedy
was issued in 1963 (when JFK was shot)
IIRC, was issued or signed in November (when JFK was shot)
has the number “11” in several places (11=November, as well as some other coincidences if you start adding elevens together
So, no “value”, but some folks at the time thought they might be worth something someday.
You don’t want to check current auctions for prices unless they have bids. If they don’t sell, it doesn’t matter how much they’re asking. You want to check sold auctions - those will show prices that people were actually willing to pay.
Just my luck the two missing are the ones that are rare.