Storage of U.S. Mint bags?

Don wrote:

Hello,
I have been collecting the State Quarters since the program started, getting
them from the mint in the U.S. Mint bags, removing them from there
box and stacking them in a safe and leaving them alone.
The other day my brother came over with some extra pennies for one of
my books and saw how I was storing my quarters and told me that I needed
to get them out of the bags and into quarter tubes for proper storage.
Is this correct, am I damaging the quarters by leaving them in the bags?
Not that resale value is my primary reason for collecting the quarters but
if I were to remove them from the bags and put them into tubes would they
then be the same as circulated coins and lose value for not being in the
Mint bags.
Thank you in advance for any advice on this.
Don.

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Yes! Get them out of those bags. The coins that are in contact with the bag will acquire a hazy spotty toning. I've seen this happen to coins, in these bags, in just a couple of months.

JAM

told me that I needed
to get them out of the bags and into quarter tubes for proper storage.
Is this correct, am I damaging the quarters by leaving them in the bags?

Your brother is giving you the correct advice. Mint bags rank at the bottom of
the list of storage media because they not only do not prevent contact with
pollutants in the air, but they also allow the coins to scrape against each
other every time the bag is moved. The packaging has no connection to the value
of the coin, which depends on the grade, not the packaging. When you open the
bag you will find at least some coins that are badly damaged enough to drop out
of the uncirculated class. You could also find very valuable minting varieties
or coins that would grade above MS-65 if properly conserved. Inert plastic
tubes are the best bulk storage media.
Alan Herbert
The AnswerMan

Alan wrote: the packaging has no connection to the value of the coin.
snip Then why is the US Mint charging $49.95 for the 2004 Thomas Alva
Edison collectors set? the BU coin is only worth $35, could it be the
packaging?. Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it. I totally disagree with you Alan. Ed

"Edward McGrath" wrote in message
...
Alan wrote: the packaging has no connection to the value of the coin.
snip Then why is the US Mint charging $49.95 for the 2004 Thomas Alva
Edison collectors set? the BU coin is only worth $35, could it be the
packaging?. Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it. I totally disagree with you Alan. Ed


I totally agree with Ed ..

If you want an Edison coin to submit for slabbing, or stick in an album,
you'd be nuts to buy the $49.95 Collectors' Set and pull the coin out of it.
Just buy the coin by itself in the capsule without the additional fancy
light bulb packaging.. It's up to the individual to decide if the packaging
is worth a $15.00 Premium over just the coin without the packaging.. Yes,
it's a gimmick package, but it's an interesting one, and a unique one, so
far, in the history of the US Mint. I already had both Edison Dollars, but
decided that with only 25,000 of these Light Bulb sets made, it was worth it
to grab one while they were still at issue price. Earlier, I decided it was
NOT worth $120.00 to me to buy a Lewis and Clark dollar in a fancy package
with a little leather pouch included. Since those Pouch Sets are selling for
radically different prices, depending on which Indian made the pouch, or how
many beads it has on it, or other reasons I can't fathom, and it was a total
crap shoot as to which of the ten artisans' pouch would be in the Set(s) you
ordered from The Mint, and at the time they were on sale, there were no
aftermarket prices, and you couldn't choose, much less even KNOW which ones
would be worth more when they sold out.. well, draw your own conclusions.

Same goes for many other specially packaged Commemoratives, with a very low
mintage (of the packaging (although "mintage" is probably the wrong term to
use when referring to a packing option)).. if they have lthe typical
authorized limit of 500,000 Proofs and Uncs. total , and only 25,000 of them
come in this special package, which is the case with Edison's, then the
packaging most definitely has added value.

Maybe someday down the road, years after this thing sells out, someone with
just a plain encapsulated Edison Dollar will want one of these fancy
packages to put it in, and maybe someone else who bought the coin in the
fancy package for some reason took the coin out of it and had it slabbed, so
there would be a market for the fancy package without the coin in it - to
sell to people who have the coin in the capsule without the fancy package,
because the coin and the capsule are exactly the same, whichever way you buy
them, and the capsule is not cemented into the fancy packaging.. and if that
sentence makes any sense at all, I'd be amazed..

Take the scarce 1995 Civil War 2 and 3 coin Proof Sets that came in both
plain packaging, and in the very limited edition replica "Union Case." (For
which I have been trying for years to find out how many were sold in that
case, and absolutely no one knows..) .. I have seen people selling the Union
Case with no coins it. Or a 3 coin case with the Gold coin missing. If you
have the 2 or 3 coins bought back then in the regular non fancy packaging,
by putting them into the Union Case you would increase their value
dramatically.. BECAUSE that fancy little plastic box is worth a lot of money
to some people.

I have a 2004 Vatican Proof Set sitting here.. these are selling for about
$400.00 to $500.00 lately. How much do you suppose I could get for the eight
coins if I took them out of the fancy schmancy red velvet and white satin
case and threw the case away??.. Maybe that's not a valid analogy since it
was the only way that Set was sold.. Okay, let's take a US Mint 1999 Silver
Proof Set, now going for about $275.00, originally $29.95. Take two of those
sets and list them on eBay. Sell one the way it came. Take the other, bust
it apart, put the coins in flips or 2x2s and sell them as a 9 coin lot. See
if the packaging is worth anything. Of course it is. You'll get around
$275.00 for the packaged, intact set, and probably far less than half of
that for just the 9 raw coins..

On the other hand, if you want to remove a Buffalo Dollar from its Coin and
Currency Set, you literaly have to destroy the Set's cardboard holder to get
the encapsulated coin out, because of the way it's mounted in that cardboard
holder. However, the price on those sets has dropped so dramaically, that
they are selling for roughly the same price as the coin by itself, the
market having determined after a buying frenzy in 2001 when those sets sold
out in four days, that three years later, the set as become a "who cares"
item and the additional packaging has basically NO premium over just the raw
coin in a capsule by itself.. The 1995 Union Cased cased coins keep going
up. The Buffalo Dollar Coin and Currency set went way down. Explain that.

And to carry this to the ultimate extreme, what's a slab? A slab is fancy
packaging with a little label in it made by some company who pays some guy
to assign a grade to that coin, the grade being his opinion.. People have
decided that that guy's opinion makes the coin worth more.

Depending on which company's guy put it in a slab, it can be worth a tiny
bit over the raw coin, or one Helluva lot more. The market has determined
the same identical coin is worth more in Company X's slab than in Company
Y's slab, even if they are exactly the same grade.
The coin hasn't changed. It is what it is, in either slab.

Take a PCGS MS70 or PR70 ANYTHING and crack it out of its slab and watch it
sell for less than 10%, maybe less than 5% of what it'd sell for if it was
in that 70 slab. Nothing's happened to the coin itself. It is what it is.
It's a 70 without the slab, right??.. You will pay an extreme premium for
someone's opinion of it.

Even if you include the broken slab and say "this coin used to be in this 70
slab" no one is going to believe you because there's absolutely no way to
prove it. They'll believe PCGS when the coin is in their slab. They won't
believe you when you take it out of the slab..

So after barfing out this long diatribe, it just comes down to this.. IMO,
in many cases, fancy packaging DOES increase the value of a coin or set of
coins.. sometimes a little, sometimes dramatically, and that fact can't
simply be shrugged off as irrelevant..

Harv

--
"I'm hovering like a fly, waiting for the windshield on the freeway.."

"Harv" wrote in message
...

"Edward McGrath" wrote in message
...
Alan wrote: the packaging has no connection to the value of the coin.
snip Then why is the US Mint charging $49.95 for the 2004 Thomas Alva
Edison collectors set? the BU coin is only worth $35, could it be the
packaging?. Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it. I totally disagree with you Alan. Ed


I totally agree with Ed ..
Harv


I agree with Harv :-)

Dale

I totally agree with Ed ..
Harv


I agree with Harv :-)

Dale

I wholeheartedly embrace the views of Dale.

Another piece of relevant packaging is the US Mint box that the uncirculated CC
Morgans were sold in. The packaging was so desirable that NGC started grading
the coins with the packaging intact.

Regards,
Tom

Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it.



So, you would say that a coin in a plastic flip is worth more - or less - than
the same coin in a 2x2 paper envelope? My answer covers 99 percent of packaging
and yours represents one percent.
Alan Herbert

"AnswerMan2" wrote in message
...
Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it.



So, you would say that a coin in a plastic flip is worth more - or less -
than
the same coin in a 2x2 paper envelope? My answer covers 99 percent of
packaging
and yours represents one percent.
Alan Herbert

Alan, I was talking about, and I think Ed was also talking about specially
packaged US Mint coin products, like the Coin and Currency sets, the 1995
Civil War Proof Sets in the "Union Cases", even regular yearly Proof and
Mint Sets, and the latest example, the Edison Commemorative in the light
bulb package.. You can also toss into that mix the occasional very expensive
sets they sell in Cherry wood cases, and various other special sets they've
sold over the years. Classic Commemoratives command some real premiums if
someone kept the funky little old tab card the coin was sold on at some fair
when it came out. And I'm sure you've seen things like the 1915 Pan Pacific
Expo Commemoratives set holder ALONE sell for over a thousand bucks with no
coins in it at all..

Sure there are far more coins sold in flips and 2x2 evelopes than there are
in these limited edition US Mint fancy packages.. but it's my opinion that
the coins in these special sets are worth more, with few exceptions, when
they stay with all the fancy packaging, than if taken out of them and put in
ten cent holders.. And why anyone would buy, say, a Modern Commemorative in
a fancy set package at extra cost, and then rip it out of that fancy package
and send it in for slabbing, or put it in an album, when they could buy
exactly the same coin in plain packaging from the US Mint at a lower price,
if all they wanted to do was to have it slabbed or put it in a cheap holder
and in an album makes entirely no sense to me at all.. but there are
probably some people out there who do it..

"Look at this cool Edison Light Bulb set. See? You open the lid and the
light goes on."
"But what's that round empty hole?"
"Oh, the coin was in a capsule there, but I took it out and put it in a
plastic flip."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I like to have all my Modern Commemoratives in an album. See?
Here's the album, with all the coins back to 1982."
"So why didn't you just buy the coin in the plain package and save $15.00??"
...
"I wanted the fancy packaging."
"Yeah, but there's no coin in it."
"So what, there's the coin in a flip in my album, see??"
...ad nauseum

Or maybe I'm missing your point entirely ..

To me, and I don't think I'm alone, fancy, limited edition packaging around
a coin enhances that coin's value and potentially creates the opportunity to
sell it later, if you want to, at a higher price, sometimes a wildly higher
price, than if you had exactly the same coin in the cheaper packaging, or in
a flip. Hell, in other collecting fields that I dabble in, like Vintage
Lesney Matchbox, if someone has a Mint model with no box, they will often
pay as much for the little empty box as the model is worth, and I mean
literally $50.00 and up just for the little cardboard box. It doubles,
sometimes triples or quadruples the value of the model when it has an
original box around it. Although this is sort of apples and oranges because
ALL old Lesney models were sold in a little cardboard box, but the boxes
were ephemeral and most of them were thrown out, often on the way home from
the toy store back in the 50s and early 60s.. they were fifty cent toys
whose boxes were never designed to last 40-50 years, so these days,
collectors who want those boxes pay dearly for them. And the boxes changed
styles over the years, some had extremely short runs, and are ridiculously
difficult to find.

Or (and then I'll shut up) look at something like a $25.00 sealed US Mint
mini-bag of Delaware State Quarters. Look at the premiums they still bring,
way down from the thousand bucks they were a few years ago, but still many
hundreds for $25.00 worth of coins that no one has ever seen.. while the
aftermarket for those mini-bags collapsed, a couple, like the first two,
still bring very healthy premiums. Yeah, maybe it's crazy to pay that kind
of money for a little canvas bag of probably beaten up coins that no one has
ever seen, but people do it. And in a case like that, the packaging is worth
far more than the 100 coins inside it..

Harv

Edward McGrath wrote:

Alan wrote: the packaging has no connection to the value of the coin.
snip Then why is the US Mint charging $49.95 for the 2004 Thomas Alva
Edison collectors set? the BU coin is only worth $35, could it be the
packaging?. Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it. I totally disagree with you Alan. Ed

The packaging has NO influence on the value of the coin.

What is being paid extra for is the packaging.

JAM

In article , "J. A. M."
wrote:

Edward McGrath wrote:

Alan wrote: the packaging has no connection to the value of the coin.
snip Then why is the US Mint charging $49.95 for the 2004 Thomas Alva
Edison collectors set? the BU coin is only worth $35, could it be the
packaging?. Packaging has a definite influence on the value of a coin if
you ever decide to sell it. I totally disagree with you Alan. Ed

The packaging has NO influence on the value of the coin.

What is being paid extra for is the packaging.

JAM

You're splitting hairs over a senseless technicality. It's obvious from
the context that Edward is talking about the value of the coin with its
associated packaging, the whole thing being sold as a unit. The market
place offers more money for such units as much as you may rail against
that.