My Pants Are Cold
28th July 2009, 14:52
Fair food for thought IMO.....
If you search rolls of circulated 90% silver coins you may find a few coins that historically have been "keys" or "semi-keys", and finding any of these would be like "Merry Christmas!".
Personally, if I had any 90% coins and was going to search them, I would firstly invest in a red book that lists the number of all coins minted at all mints in all years. And I wouldn't care whether the book is current-year (new) or (say) 5 years old, because the mintage numbers that are listed will most generally be the same. If the mint has revised a number it will be up not down, and so infrequent that I wouldn't worry about it.
I'd conduct the search because it's fact that because of the huge melts over the years, the repoorted mintage numbers mean nothing relevant to the number of coins of each particular type, mint, and year, that exist today. Nobody knows how many of the coins still exist so some coins that were never considered keys or semi-keys actually now may be....but nobody knows what particular coins they are because nobody knows how many of each type/date/mint have been melted and subsequently no longer exist.
Anyway, what I would do is get the book, look at the mintage numbers of (say) Roos. dimes, determine a "cut-off" number and then sort and separate-out for the long-haul, all the coins I find that have mintage numbers at or below that number. I would put them in tubes and mark 'em "Save - comaratively low mintage coins".
Down the road as dealers begin to identify specific coins which are now infrequently seen, a person just might findthey have some real key dates.
You can bet any coin dealers who take in silver coins know the key dates in memory and pick them out before they leave their shop to be sent anywhere as junk. It's their living, they would be fools not too....
...and these would be put up for sale at much higher prices then run-of-the-mill 90%, thus alerting everyone to their "scarcity" so I'd have to agree with akak:
Given the large mintages for almost every post-World War II US silver circulation coins, it seems statistically very unlikely that any one particular annual mintage of dimes, quarters or half dollars would have been melted in any greatly disproportionate degree. Sure, the theoretical possibility exists, but I have yet to hear or read of any practical or actual reason why any particular circulation-strike US silver coins of a given year and mint mark should or would have been melted in any vastly greater ratio than any other.
If you search rolls of circulated 90% silver coins you may find a few coins that historically have been "keys" or "semi-keys", and finding any of these would be like "Merry Christmas!".
Personally, if I had any 90% coins and was going to search them, I would firstly invest in a red book that lists the number of all coins minted at all mints in all years. And I wouldn't care whether the book is current-year (new) or (say) 5 years old, because the mintage numbers that are listed will most generally be the same. If the mint has revised a number it will be up not down, and so infrequent that I wouldn't worry about it.
I'd conduct the search because it's fact that because of the huge melts over the years, the repoorted mintage numbers mean nothing relevant to the number of coins of each particular type, mint, and year, that exist today. Nobody knows how many of the coins still exist so some coins that were never considered keys or semi-keys actually now may be....but nobody knows what particular coins they are because nobody knows how many of each type/date/mint have been melted and subsequently no longer exist.
Anyway, what I would do is get the book, look at the mintage numbers of (say) Roos. dimes, determine a "cut-off" number and then sort and separate-out for the long-haul, all the coins I find that have mintage numbers at or below that number. I would put them in tubes and mark 'em "Save - comaratively low mintage coins".
Down the road as dealers begin to identify specific coins which are now infrequently seen, a person just might findthey have some real key dates.
You can bet any coin dealers who take in silver coins know the key dates in memory and pick them out before they leave their shop to be sent anywhere as junk. It's their living, they would be fools not too....
...and these would be put up for sale at much higher prices then run-of-the-mill 90%, thus alerting everyone to their "scarcity" so I'd have to agree with akak:
Given the large mintages for almost every post-World War II US silver circulation coins, it seems statistically very unlikely that any one particular annual mintage of dimes, quarters or half dollars would have been melted in any greatly disproportionate degree. Sure, the theoretical possibility exists, but I have yet to hear or read of any practical or actual reason why any particular circulation-strike US silver coins of a given year and mint mark should or would have been melted in any vastly greater ratio than any other.