Are we shipping? Yes, we are. It’s keeping us all jumping, especially Jewel, who is making her third run to the post office, Fedex & UPS today, although that many trips IS unusual, but that might be changing, in which case, we’ll be yelping for help in the shipping department.
Last night, I managed to finish 13 pairs of sterling silver quarter-sized “Proud Immigrant” earrings, along with a corresponding number — 13 — of sterling silver “Proud Immigrant” Pendants to make the sets complete.
The pendants come ready to hang on a chain. They are made right here in California, and are therefore just a bit more money than something thrown together in China — they retail at $39.95.
You get the entire three-piece set for only $55 wholesale — the coins are a gift.
What’s more, I’ll send you a black velvet “Stormy Monday” Display Bust with one pendant on a solid sterling silver chain, plus a pair of coin earrings, all in solid .925 sterling silver except of course the coins, all for the low, low price of $85.
How do I do it?
I make it up in volume, but you already knew that. Volume is the key — if you can turn three or four thousand of these a day, six days a week, you’ll have just enough money left over to be almost able to cover the new medical insurance premiums you’ll be paying over the next few years.
I can also provide an all-silver set using silver proofs, but I’d rather not use those in jewelry, and don’t recommend it.
I also can put any coin in a 14k gold bezel, and am starting to make those again, for gold coins. I have several solid gold coins in bezels on consignment — they aren’t mine — that will go up for sale at the shop soon, but I’d put my money on high-grade clad coins, and as a matter of fact, on the side of full disclosure, that’s exactly what I have done — all my money is tied up in two boxes of quarters which I’m wading through to find the coins I need for tonight’s order — I have to come up with at least two Mint State Chaco Canyon coins for two pendants that need to be shipped today, and I’m looking for a “Pooping Horses” Nevada quarter that someone wants to buy slabbed.
I’ve found a few more interesting quarter-dollar errors that I’ll be listing on eBay in the next few days, time permitting and photography acceptable.
There still isn’t any coin photo system that’s easy enough for me to use, at least not that I could find.
With the right coin photography, I could sell thousands of high-energy high-grade coins online, but at the moment, don’t have that capacity.
SIDE-NOTE:
Anyone interested in specialized rolls, such as the Nevada Horse? My DNP — “Dang-Near-Perfect” — rolls of 40 quarter-dollars each, are $20 for a common roll of 40 coins, and $30 per 40-coin roll for rare & hard-to-find quarter issues.
I also have a few actual mint roll issues, but they’re very very pricey, not something for a beginning collector, and it might be beyond the collecting skills of most collectors in general.
Trade dollars are just as tricky and just as treacherous for the unwary. Stick with the common stuff until you get your sea-legs, so you can roll with the pitch of the deck.
WHAT NEXT?
The question inevitably arises in the course of CSRMs — Coin Search & Rescue Missions — what to do with the coins you’ve found???
WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR TREASURES:
- MS-68 — Have your eyes reexamined. I’ll bet you’re wrong.
- MS-67 — Send this in for PCGS Grading & Slabbing for use as Healing Deflector.
- MS-66 — Should be PCGS Slabbed & Graded and used as Healing Deflector.
- MS-65 — Can be slabbed & graded or put in capsule for Healing Deflector.
- MS-64 — Can be slabbed & graded or put in capsule for Healing Deflector.
- MS-63 — MONEY LAUNDRY Jewelry Grade.
- MS-62 — MONEY LAUNDRY Jewelry Grade.
- MS-61 — MONEY LAUNDRY Jewelry Grade.
- MS-60 — MONEY LAUNDRY Jewelry Grade.
- AU-57 — Use in Folder or album.
LOWER THAN AU-57 or BU — Bright Uncirculated — gets recycled to the bank, and remember that the more you return for unsearched coins today, the more search fun you’ll have tonight!
So you have several primary Tiers or levels to watch for during an All-Quarters Maintainer’s Search & Rescue Mission:
- PCGS Grading & Slabbing. These are the best of the best and should be the coins you think have the best chance of getting a high grade. Your experience will tell you whether or not your coin can make it to the top.
- MONEY LAUNDRY — This is the most important. These coins in Clear Bags go into your sales packaging, and get placed on your Pegboard for display. They are the basis for ALL the sales of your coin jewelry & collectibles. It is from these coins that your pendants and earrings and other coin jewelry will be made.
- GAME CAPSULES — Coins that are not worth sending in for third-party PCGS grading services can be encapsulated in large or small acrylic capsules as either black or white team members. These are best used as gaming pieces, but can also be carried as Lucky Charms, in pocket or purse.
- “P” or “D” MINT — If you’re on the East Coast, you’ll find it not very easy to acquire your Denver Mint issues for your folders, so you’ll want to be a bit forgiving in grade when you do come across them, and conversely, if you’re Pacifically bound, meaning West Coast, you’ll want to keep any reasonable grade of Philadelphia Mint coins that pop up on your search pad.
- FOLDER GRADE — Coins that have a small scratch or bump on the obverse are okay for folder use, but make sure that the coin is not seriously degraded. A LITTLE ding is okay, but a noticeable scratch or ding or dent or dirtiness is enough to disqualify the coin from consideration.
- JEWELRY GRADE — You might find a rare coin that is under-grade, but might be polished up & look just fine. This is an option, because the coins used in jewelry are profoundly NOT numismatic any longer. They lose that quality when you put them into anything except an acrylic capsule. Polishing the finished product is part & parcel of the jeweler’s craft, and a trademark of a fine jeweler.
- MINT ERROR — This is the Big Prize. You can hit for upwards of $5,000 for a single coin, but of course the condition makes a big difference. The higher the grade of the error coin, the more it will bring on the marketplace, if you decide to sell it. I typically don’t sell all my finds.
- JUNK PILE — The coins that didn’t make it should be stacked into ten piles four quarters high, then gathered into five piles of eight quarters each, placed into the “snake vertibrae” and slithered into a paper wrapper for return to the bank.
By the way, I never get coins from the same bank where I return my coins, lest I end up with yesterday’s discards.
You don’t find that out until late at night, with no other options.
This falls under the general category of instances of “Murphy’s Law”, which states that if anything can possibly go wrong, it will.
This is magically known as “The Law of Irony”.
Irony is the dominant factor of any universe, and it would be well to never forget that fact.
I just remembered that I have a few very interesting coins for sale, things that don’t fit into any recognizable category of coin-collecting or numismatic values, coins that have mystical or magical value.
If you are interested in any of those, by all means, get in touch and say so, thus provoking me into the effort necessary to produce a catalog of Mystical & Magical Coins & Artifacts.
So the takeaway going forward at the end of the day is that if a coin is just too good to make into jewelry, put it in a capsule!
Semper Vigilis — Vigilant Always — was the Battle Cry of the Army Security Agency, and came from Jefferson, who said that the price of Democracy was Eternal Vigilance. There’s always someone wanting to tear down and dominate the masses, and that goes double for coin searches.
You need to develop the skill and habit of keeping the Faith. If you are Vigilant Always, you will spot the drop.
If you remain awake and alert, the Perfect Coin WILL drop. Keep the Faith, but don’t fall asleep in the middle of the search.
THE MEMORY GAME requires that all the coins used on the game board are PERFECT both sides. That means not a ding, not a scratch, no sign of which coin it might be, no “marked” coins, nothing to give away the identity of the pictorial on the reverse side.
Remember that you don’t need to find more than TWO of anything in order to make a Memory Builder!
You’ll need 16 pairs of PERFECTS.
In the case of rare or hard-to-find issues, DON’T GIVE IN!!! Keep the Faith! You will be able to make a set, and if you can’t manage to pull it together, help is here, always available for the asking!
LIMITED BUDGET?
Can’t afford to buy a whole box of quarters? First of all, remember that it is money and that you can bring them back to the bank and re-deposit them after you’ve searched them fully and found all the goodies you’ll want to sell on the open market.
But if you just can’t swing a whole box, try ten rolls at a time. I can make ten rolls last the whole night, depending on how I search and for what, but MOST of the coins will be going back to the bank, because I DO have a limited budget.
One way to deal with a limited budget is to raise the bar.
Limited budget means a limited amount of time to search. You’ll need at least 20 rolls to make a decent night’s search, but it can be done with less if that’s what you have.
Raising the bar means you don’t take in as many coins.
That means that you have more coins tomorrow, because you have more coins to return for exchange.
The more coins you reject tonight, the more you’ll have tomorrow to look through, and there’s always a chance you’ll hit a big money mint error, so the more you don’t need to keep, the better.
Don’t bring in a quarter that you wouldn’t spend a dollar trying to sell.
If you listen to good Search Music, you’ll do better, not just in timing and skills, but in luck — the music can bring magical appearances of coins that weren’t in the bank box, but suddenly appear on your search table.
Mystical appearances of coins CAN and DOES happen.
You’ve got to be willing to “Dumpster Dive” into dozens of boxes of quarters to get the real stuff, and that’s the only way to get quarters at face value, which is what the game is all about — buying circulating coins at face value and finding amazing values within that scope.
It’s a challenge that I hope you’ll take.
The higher you raise the bar on your collecting standards, the more challenge you can create for yourself.
It also pays big when you hit big.
You can’t possibly hit big if you just sit there and think.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby