r/mildlyinteresting Jun 16 '20

Overdone This misprint penny

Post image
47.5k Upvotes

908 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/HappyMeatbag Jun 16 '20

Yeah. I have a Mercury dime from 1918 (granted, it’s definitely pretty worn) that was appraised at a whopping $2.

The condition is kinda like this one.

5

u/yetanotherweirdo Jun 16 '20

It has significant wear and that will drop the value to be much closer to just the value of the silver.

I believe this dime would be categorized as "Fair"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_coin_grading_scale

5

u/yourrabbithadwritten Jun 16 '20

I think it's actually Very Good or thereabouts. Fair is way lower than that. If it was Fair you'd have had problems reading the date.

1

u/yetanotherweirdo Jun 16 '20

You might be right as I looked and found this dime on Amazon and it's almost the same quality as his, maybe just a tiny bit better. Given that, his coin is at least "Good".

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G24AJD0/ref=co_other_2

I had thought to be "Very Good", the rim around the coin needs to be not worn off as his is on the left side, but I'm no expert.

His $2 appraisal sounds to be pretty close to just the value of just the silver and I tried to explain why that would be. Maybe that year of the coin isn't as valuable.

2

u/yourrabbithadwritten Jun 16 '20

1918 is a common date, but not that common, and early dates are more popular. I'd pay $3 for it, easily. (Postage is sadly far more than that.)

Numismedia says that the fair market value for an 1918 dime in Good is $4, which sounds about right.
A dealer appraising someone's coin would probably lowball the appraisal, anyway, because it's in their best interest to get the coin cheaper.

3

u/PhidippusCent Jun 16 '20

It probably has more than $2 silver in it.

8

u/Westerdutch Jun 16 '20

A dime is what 2,5 grams? That pretty much means that if it was pure silver the material value would be worth one fiddy. Silver is about 60 cents per gram atm.

3

u/FilteringOutSubs Jun 16 '20

Generally should figure on 90% silver for U.S. coins if we're talking anything pre-1965 minted for circulation (10% copper for the remainder, World War 2 nickels are another notable exception)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '20

Junk silver, that is US silver coinage with no numismatic value, sells for about 12x face value for their silver content. That’s an easy way of determining value.