OK, who has bought up all the BU Rolls :-)

[Indie]

Hi, I have been building short sets of BU Lincoln wheats for years now and had no trouble until this year. I can't seem to find good rolls of BU's anywhere. I have pretty much exhausted the two sites I have recently gotten them from. Cheap Slab Store and realoldstuff.com used to have lots of them, now nothing.
Doe's anyone know of other good sites to get NICE rolls from? Kind of getting desperate to get this current set completed let alone start another.
Occasionally there are a couple of good ones on ebay but most of them are junk. I only consider those where they show both sides of ALL of the coins in the roll. Got burned once to often, Not to mention cent rolls with a great flying eagle on one end and a dime on the other lol. Honestly, do people really bid on those things?
Well, enough complaining.. anyone got some help for me please?

[GrumpyEd]

Welcome aboard!

I see the same thing, the big sellers that sold unc wheat rolls (high prices and all) have sort of dried up. The other one is APMEX, in the past they had nice better date old unc wheat rolls at high prices but they have nothing now, not even the common stuff like 58-Ds.

Ebay is hit and miss, some good stuff if you can sort through all the other stuff.

My best luck has been dealers and shows. You need to be relentless with it, visit each local shop a few times a year and each time ask if they have unc rolls, most of the time they'll grunt and say nope but if you keep asking over time eventually you might find one with a bonanza of rolls. It's the sort of thing they don't often have and when they buy a collection with unc rolls they are eager to sell them.

Back to what you said, my only guess is some big buyer cleaned out the rolls, maybe one of the TV outfits is hoarding up to sell unc sets or something. Still seams odd, they even managed to dry up the common dates.

[enamel7]

Welcome aboard!

[makecents]

Welcome to the LCF!! I am new to Lincolns but have noticed similar things happening with other denominations. It's been a few years back now since the big hike in silver and gold and you could find whatever you wanted for a couple years after that, in any grade you wanted. Every year since then though, it has been slowly drying up. I think it is both big buyers and also just a collective of the common person, hoarding and hoping to catch what happened back in 2011 again.

[Indie]

Yes, APMEX had quite a few Lincoln rolls from 2005 to 2010 even though they were almost full blown single piece retail. I think like many dealers back then they were just inhaling profit from the 100 year Lincoln cent centennial . Actually haven't seen any copper at all on APMEX for the last several years. While my two old standbys still have a few common rolls from 1941-58, unfortunately, most of those I do not need and the ones I do are a bit out of reasonable price range.

I have and still do hit every dealer within 50 miles of home and the few coin shows in that area that come up. Most of the store dealers have known me for years. The problem with that is they don't want to sell me rolls, all want is to buy rolls from me for resale :-). That doesn't help my collection much. All that shows me is that they also can't find anything regionally, or nationally.

For some reason I just can't wrap my head around a couple of people or businesses grabbing up all the bu rolls that are out there. While I can believe some of the major dealers out there have mass slabbed the best stuff, that still can't come close to accounting for the hundreds of millions of rolls that exist in that date range.

Not sure where to go from here, hoping for some suggestions.

[Indie]

I kind of agree, at least with the other denominations point. A friend of mine who is big into Roosevelt's says the same thing. To some extent I do agree with lots of non-collectors hoarding for a repeat (which was really based on the centennial thing for Lincolns), but belonging to several coin clubs I have found all of us who do rolls are in the same boat. I am sure some of them are just being cautious in revealing there sources, but many of us work together to expand the clubs resources and all of us are having trouble.

I find it interesting that you can still get any number of singles in choice to gem bu at retail, but not rolls. That tells me they are out there, just getting more expensive to buy. I am beginning to think that the usual greed thing is happening, the same as the PCGS NGC bull. You don't really believe the people who are actually doing the grading of millions of coins a year have a real clue I hope. But, I rant on. I won't go there. Just frustrated.

[Indie]

thanks a lot.

[Petespockets55]

Hi, I have been building short sets of BU Lincoln wheats for years now and had no trouble until this year. I can't seem to find good rolls of BU's anywhere. I have pretty much exhausted the two sites I have recently gotten them from. Cheap Slab Store and realoldstuff.com used to have lots of them, now nothing.
Doe's anyone know of other good sites to get NICE rolls from? Kind of getting desperate to get this current set completed let alone start another.
Occasionally there are a couple of good ones on ebay but most of them are junk. I only consider those where they show both sides of ALL of the coins in the roll. Got burned once to often, Not to mention cent rolls with a great flying eagle on one end and a dime on the other lol. Honestly, do people really bid on those things?
Well, enough complaining.. anyone got some help for me please?

Welcome.
Curious, what years you are you having trouble finding?

[Indie]

having trouble with early 40's and late 40's to early 50's in choice to gem. No trouble with spotted rb and junk bu rolls, I can get them on ebay. :-)
Actually, I can use any other choice to gem rolls in bu also as I donate a few to our local kids coin club for their store ( they sell them at their meetings to raise money for field trips and the club collection).

[willbrooks]

It stands to reason that the supply will dry up. I mean, they aren't making new ones after all.

[Indie]

Not so sure yet they are dried up.. As I said, I have found a few, but the pricing is as high or higher then if I bought them individually and made my own rolls (which unfortunately may soon be what I have to do). After all, its now the golden age of business gluttony (a trillion bucks for a phone company???).

[GrumpyEd]

having trouble with early 40's and late 40's to early 50's in choice to gem. No trouble with spotted rb and junk bu rolls, I can get them on ebay. :-)

Some of them have been tough even before the dry up.

41-S, 42-S, 43-S are priced super high like $10+ per coin so rolls are big $.
41-D is tough, probably should cost more than it does because rolls were always super scarce.
47-P, 48-S, 51-P, 52-P just don't show up much.

The stuff that was so common in the past like 52-D, 54-D, 55-S, 56-P, 56-D, 57-P, 57-D, 58-P, 58-D is less common now but there's no way it's gone.

Another thing might be that the coin market prices are so low now that nobody want to sell. In general, since 2008 the market became very bifurcated, the super expensive stuff went up even higher but the normal "collector coins" have low demand. Many shops sell mint/proof sets like as birthyear gifts and bullion and some graded coins but the old days of collectors coming in to talk to dealers and buying singles to make sets is really dead.

[Indie]

Yep Ed, I agree completely, they are tough and some of them are up super high like you say. However, as I said, I can get them several places online piece by piece. I can get individual pieces lets say a 41-S raw from realoldstuff.com for $6.50. I tried that but they only sell one at a time, sooooo.. i bought 1 and kept going back when they put up another 1. After 3 in a row they stopped putting them up. I contacted them to see if they had more. There answer was yes, but did not put anymore up for over a month. I asked them if I could buy more in bulk and a flat email back said .. NO. I just don't believe that they are as scarce as it seems. You do have a point that they were probably bought in the run up 10 years ago for way to much and can't afford a loss. Then again, I bought rolls back then too. They were not that expensive then if you were not stupid and paid retail show prices. My records for 2008 show I bought 2 rolls of 41's. One for $162.50 at Jake's online and the other for $190.00 on (god forbid) Ebay. Both were true choice rolls.

Still just curious if anyone knows of any online places to look. Prices don't scare me.. you would be surprised how often and offer is accepted.

[BadThad]

I have yet to crack a roll and find all "gem" coins. There are so many BU lincolns in the 60-63 range they always spoil rolls IMO.

If you're working on a roll set, the best thing to do is to build your own rolls. It's very tedious and time consuming but worth the effort. An example is my 1960 small date roll - try finding one of these for sale. I spend probably 10 years making this roll from individual examples of high grade.

[Indie]

I agree, never seen a roll of 60SD's offered online. Have seen a couple at shows that had one but they were cobbled together, as you said, everything from ms60 up.

fortunately, I'm not looking for memorials, just working from 41 to 58. Over the past 50 years have built well over 100 roll sets. In the 70's and even the early 80's you could easily put together a complete roll set at a single show, or from a couple local dealers. Over the years fewer and fewer opportunities. Yes, limited availability as has been mentioned; "they aren't makin em anymore". Sold a few sets which now I know I shouldn't have,. Still have a bunch in my local bank and still collecting to make more.

The problem is everyone tells me they are dried up. Their not. Plenty of them show up everywhere, however they are just junk or outrageously over-priced.
This isn't something that has gradually occurred. Up until this year I had no problem finding dealers online with offerings and local dealers that had a few now and then. It's just that when you want to buy a roll now they act like your killing them or something. And as I said, its not something gradual. Even buying one at a time gets stopped after 2 or 3 orders. I know. I keep trying.

One guy at a local coin club suggested that PCGS is buying up the rolls, grabbing all the better coins in order to increase the slabbing value and dumping the rest on ebay and the like. Personally, I think that's a bit of hogwash but I suppose something like it may be possible.

I did succeed in getting 4 very nice 49's this weekend for less than 2.00 each. Easily grade 66 or higher. Not much else right now, even on (groan) ebay. I guess I will continue to build what I can one by one and grab whatever good rolls I happen to trip across. Even on this forum, no one seems to know where they are being hidden.