I had written about the MINT flowing hair silver coins late last year. I had ordered a little over100 coins and luckily hit 9 privy coins. At the time, the coins were going for about $3-$3.5K each. I decided to get them graded and went with PCGS since I had worked with them before. It cost me about $20 to ship the coins to them with Fedex overnight (I did NOT insure the coins, which was a risk I was taking.) It cost me $480 for them to grade the 9 coins, so about $53.33 each. It actually cost $30 each but I had them insure the shipment back to me, so shipping and insurance was the rest.
I got the 9 coins back and 8 of them were graded perfect MS70 coins. Only 1 coin came back with an MS69. This was better than the average I was hearing about 70% perfect. Looking on Ebay today, MS70 coins are going for about $6000+ while non graded are going for about $5000, so the grading premium was $1000 vs a cost of $53.
What do I plan on doing with them? I thought about selling them off, but a buddy of mine said that investing in alternative assets wouldn’t be a bad idea. So I’ll throw them in the safety deposit box and see what happens with them down the road. Lesson learned – for hot coins, it’s worth it to grade coins.
Thanks for sharing this. I have some coins I need to send for grading, and it’s my first time doing it, so can I ask — do you follow all of the shipping instructions such as putting the coins in mylar flips? And if so, do you wear gloves to remove the coins from their boxes to put them into the mylar flips?