My first Mercury dime - 1923

[Jack Bee Nimble]

I normally stick to silver bullion and I like the Ike dollars and Kennedy halves, but I've been eye-balling Mercury dimes lately. They are a beautiful coin.

I see prices vary wildly on these coins, by year and condition. When buying, I don't need perfect, but I like to purchase AU if possible.

I found this '23 on eBay from a seller with high feedback and 100%. He was asking $18 and I offered $16.85 and he took it. I paid $3 to ship it, so I have just shy of $20 in it. He sold it to me 'raw', which is fine. On the listing, I could blow up the reverse photo, but the obverse wouldn't show the photo any larger. I missed a pretty good ding after the "In" in 'In God We Trust'. The reverse looks pretty sharp. Not full bands, but decent bands. The wings on Liberty's cap (or do they call her Mercury?) are pretty decent. I've seen worse in photos.

Considering this coin only contains about $1.76 in silver, I feel I 'ponied' up and paid a pretty good price for it. I've only got about 200 times face into it! But, I like it and I wanted it! I didn't buy it for silver stacking. Not that I plan on selling it, but being into this for nearly $20, will it ever be worth more than that or have I paid top dollar for this? I'm just curious. I'm thinking about an older quarter and half-dollar next.

Would any of you coin sellers call this an AU coin? One thing the camera has a hard time catching is the luster, which is fairly good. It's nice and bright and when I move it, I get the light to pinwheel some. Not as good as new, but it's still there. It weighs 2.45 grams.

[Paul]

hugeeyes :thumbsup:

[Daniel]

It has nice details but has been cleaned, so I would always do an ebay sold item search to determine your offers and bids on coins like this.

[Jack Bee Nimble]

How harshly cleaned does this one appear? I did a search on eBay's completed and the price was all over the place. I was trying to determine what grade mine was based off of photographs from here and PCGS, etc. I did miss the gash mark on the obverse. I was looking at the details of Liberty's hair, the fasces on the reverse. They looked to have decent detail. The lettering was fairly good, the E on the reverse looked a little squished, but I saw photos of others with the same sort of squishing.

It doesn't bother me that it is cleaned because I'm not in the business of buying and selling, but if I paid way more than it otherwise would be worth as a 'problem' coin, then I'd like to know. I do want to get a Standing and Walking liberty quarter and half in the near future, and I would rather not overpay, but would like to get them with as much detail as this dime. I am not attracted to these old coins in worn condition, but again, I don't need them to be 'perfect' for the purposes of resale down the road.

[Earle42]

Going through eBay's sold items will aid in telling if the price you paid was too much. Personally, for cleaned coin, I think the price paid was 10.00 or so more than I would pay.
Another decent online source to get a feel for prices is, numismedia.com. The following link for Mercury Dimes shows an AU50 at 15.00 and the prices go up through 31.00 at AU58.
https://tinyurl.com/y2ttpmv6

[Daniel]

Problem is that some ebay sellers manipulate lighting and sell coins like this as MS or BU and problem free. It takes experience to buy raw coins at ebay.

[Paul]

Problem is that some ebay sellers manipulate lighting and sell coins like this as MS or BU and problem free. It takes experience to buy raw coins at ebay.

:agree:

[Jack Bee Nimble]

Yep. I just watched your video on that.

I cannot physically get to a coin shop. The nearest one to me is 90 minutes away and I'm not in good physical health. I buy a lot online.

I want to have a nice Mercury dime, which I think I have a nice one now. I want a Standing Liberty Quarter and Walking Half, but I don't want to pay a high price, but I'd like to have nice details. I'm not a serious collector. I'm not in it for buying and selling purposes, at least not for the coins that I want. I want them because I think they are beautiful. But like anything, I don't want to be a chump and over pay. I'd rather have a raw coin that I can handle a little. I guess it doesn't bother me if the coin has been cleaned as long as it doesn't damage the details of the coin or make it look like it's been acid-washed. I kind of like the AU look. I'm not into toned coins. They look to me like someone has taken a blow-torch to them and heated the metal up and let it cool. I don't find that appealing. What is a guy like me to do? I'm learning as I go. Daniel, I do find your videos very helpful.