cladking

I knew he was sick but somehow I expected him to beat it. He's left some huge shoes to fill. RIP.

I suppose rarity based on date, mint mark, or type is also some kind of contrived marketing scheme. One of the primary things collectors do is to define and collect rarity. Who are you do it for them? Quality is quality whether it's a proof 2022 dime or an MS-68 '72-D dime. The exact same thing applies to 1894-S dimes and 1822 dimes.

You can't print money, redefine "capital", and continually squelch competition through fiat and monopoly without expecting much higher gold. I would expect gold to hit about $3400 even before stagflation strangles our economy. Where it goes from there will be determined by events at that time but if history is any guide I would expect the solution to be a lot more money printing. It's not only interest that will soar with inflation but also hundreds and hundreds of government programs that are grossly inefficient and designed to feed the poor and the cities. These programs will have an even higher inflation than the inflation rate due to their inefficiency. They must be kept going or there will be rioting. So much food in this country is "free" now that the effect of the programs will exacerbate inflation. Inflation spirals. All inefficiency is rewarded with much higher costs and even efficient systems can be more severely impacted causing bankruptcy and lower overall efficiency. Any attempt to intervene by central banks could spark hyperinflation. Inflation always results in destruction and lower efficiency and it will continue until there is a reckoning between the excesses of the past and the needs of the moment. The government wants to get rid of cash so this is almost certain to happen after the utter destruction of the dollar. There are steps that can be taken still to mitigate the problem but no lobbyist will do it and no Congress will vote for it. Every option is politically unsavory. Inflation will prove even worse than the cures but we don't care about anything beyond the next fiscal quarter any longer. I'm more concerned with our ability to lift ourselves out of the quagmire because the educational system has been broken for more than two generations. When we come out of years and years of stagflation our leaders will have come from schools that do a better job of indoctrination than of education. There are some very smart and very capable people who might find some solutions. Also the fact that the economy is so very highly inefficient could be a godsend since even nominal improvements in efficiency could have huge impact on productivity. The future is never set in stone and in the modern world this is even more true. What is set in stone is trillions and trillions of dollars of debt and chickens coming home to roost. Beyond this we'll enjoy the future the old fashioned way, by living it when it gets here.

The mint started making better coins in 1999 when people finally started collecting circulating coins (states quarters). For the last 12 or 14 years someone has been scratching up the coins pretty bad and most are starting to look like this. Maybe it's a new type of coin handling equipment or something.

You might be confusing style and personality for substance and character. We are very two dimensional on message boards so it is very easy to do. I believe I see a lot of substance here.

I agree. They are also the highest quality coins made in modern times and there is continuity in the designs of circulating coinage. I also like it because there are many collectors who just stopped their collections at 1968. The coins are lightly available because mint sets were made. Commems tend to be very attractive.

Yes. I think that's exactly what happened. Logging out didn't help. Mebbe the ranks haven't so much thinned as many are stuck in limbo.

I have to log in three or four times a week and the last time a couple days ago I ran into trouble. It took me to a page that knew me but every time I left the page I was logged out again. A lot of sites are less active. I suspect most sites had a lot of people with axes to grind or who were out and out trolls. Many have left and younger people are absorbed on facebook.

Another culprit is the penny. It became less than worthless in 1974 which resulted in enormous attrition and soaring mintages which remain high to this day. Partly it's that people won't bother to take pennies back to the bank but more is that we won't even bother to retrieve them when dropped; they simply aren't worth the effort so many end up in the garbage stream. Mintages ramped up even higher as the mint converted to zinc and the loss on each one dropped in 1982. These huge mintages necessitated that the mint produce more dies and that they operate the presses ever faster. This speed doesn't allow time for the metal to fully fill the die. When you see a very mushy '66 quarter it is largely caused by the coin shortage and the '80's and '90's issues by the speed needed to make pennies. They could have bought more presses that wouldn't fit in existing facilities or they could speed up the presses. They chose the latter. Not only were the mint sets made with old style presses and new dies but they were made at lower speeds allowing more die fill and more sharply struck coins. What I find truly remarkable is how quickly these dimes from the '80's have been disappearing the last dozen years. Attrition on heavily worn coins is only slightly higher than on brand new ones but the attrition on dimes is soaring. It's largely the fact that dimes have little purchasing power but by weight they are about the same as quarters which are not faring as poorly. Perhaps it's as simple as people knowing a quarter makes too much racket in the vacuum cleaner but a dime gets sucked up cleanly. I just don't know why the rates are diverging so sharply or suddenly. Quarters have always been the workhorse but even quarters are far less useful than they were 20 years ago.

If manufacture weren't bad enough almost every coin was scratched and gouged before it left the mint. Of course mint set coins tended to fare a little better but now days some dates of these are tarnished! There are numerous quality deficiencies and even if you locate a pristine well made coin there can be issues with poor surface quality. There is a tyranny of numbers with these coins because most were poorly made, almost all were put in circulation, and almost no BU rolls exist. Most chBU's and Gems come from mint sets where finding better made coins is like shooting fish in a barrel. About 2% (as issued) of the coins in mint sets were Gem and 25 to 80% were chBU dependent on date/ MM/ denomination. The big difference though between clads made for circulation and those made for mint sets is die wear. Mint set dies were swapped out after 40,000 strikes where circulation dies could be used for as many as 1,000,000 strikes or 20 times as many coins. After 15 or 20,000 strikes coins start showing significant evidence of die wear. '70 quarters and '72 dimes were also very bad for mushy strikes but every date before about 1978 has these and a few after.

It should be noted that every single date, mint mark, and denomination modern appears with very sharp strikes. Indeed, all these changes that have been made will tend to increase the number of sharp strikes or at least to make them more likely but most coins are sloppily and haphazardly made. Instead of making better coins they lowered standards. Some dates are very rare with a 100% strike with the '82-P quarter being the rarest. While the '72-D dime and quarter come with nice solid strikes the "2" of the date is rarely fully formed. In 1965 the mint just wanted to crank out as many coins as possible and this meant cutting corners (see what I did there), and running presses ever faster. To assure the die shops could keep up they reduced pressure and started using dies far too long. When production finally exceeded demand sometime in late-'67 they just never went back and fixed the numerous quality problems that had arisen with the short cuts. They had no "customer" because collectors were ignoring all modern coins and the FED was only concerned that they could go through coin counters and be readily identified by users. Indeed, it was this need to identify the coins that was the chief argument against all the commemoratives including the states coins and starting with the bicentennial quarter. In 1999 when the states coins began the mint finally had real customers and quality began improving. People now days often don't realize just how poor quality was back in 1966. They see a heavily worn '66 quarter without realizing that the most of that missing detail wasn't worn off the coin, it was never there to start with. If that G were well made it would look like a VG or a F. The last part of most moderns formed is the peripheral lettering, often the "LIBERTY". Finding specimens that are fully struck is difficult.

"Never" is much too big a word. "Experience" is essentially by definition the only fact, even if is not yet supported by "science". I will take anyone's experience even over expert opinion every time.

He really should concentrate his attention on clad but, then, shouldn't we all....

Personally I believe that as a class the most important thing humans do is teach the young, and the second most important is research. There's little point to research if it isn't then published by some means. Almost everything else is just some aspect of feeding ourselves.

I'm guessing @Conder101 is right as is typical. The high grade of the coin may be simply that it won't pass as "genuine" in coin acceptors. It has spent a lot of time out of circulation.

Oops. Caught me. I've been reading but wasn't logged in. I'd feel more comfortable if I could see the coin in hand but it appears to be a worn die strike in a condition I call "beaten by an ugly stick". I believe this effect is caused by a very large number of tiny collisions or just low speed collisions. Coins used in slot machines can approximate this but usually they have enough higher speed collisions to leave scratches on the beaten surfaces. This coin might have gotten caught up in a machine of some sort. I just don't see enough clues to make any more guesses but this effect is not extremely uncommon but this coin is a more dramatic example than most.

It's the phone ringing all the time. Even if you don't hibernate between tweets India calls over and over and nobody will do a thing about it. They're not even trying to scam you any longer, they just want to interrupt. How else can you explain current events? ...Mass psychosis.

They certainly never got much respect. A nice MO token (if there ever were any) could kick around in a junk box until it drew flies. The red and bluepoint tokens can be found in Gem but are not common. More accurately only a small percentage are pristine but there are so many of them that you can find most letter combinations in Gem. Tax tokens are another matter and even nice BU's can be very elusive. Some very common issues are hard to find in AU and good strikes are the exception for most tokens. Except for WA I snap up any BU but have few even in my collection. I think they will someday. Right now there'd be little interest even if there were thousands of collectors instead of dozens. The economics is wrong because there are countless millions of these and most are worth the 4c wholesale price only as long as it's a nice mixture and not all garbage. There are rarities but it's pretty unusual for one to trade at even $20. There's no discernable premium for quality though, obviously, advanced collectors are seeking upgrades. But I would expect that in the next generation or two collectors are going to realize these really are US Coins and will at least want a few for type. Some of these sets like IL make a marvelous and impressive collection by themselves. Incidentally IL also has a very impressive set of telephone tokens that were used back between about 1919 and 1941. These could be considered "coins" as well except they were issued by private companies rather than government (state). You can put together sets of about 50 sales tax tokens quite easily before additions start to get tougher. Most of the tokens bought by the pound have about 45 different in several pounds. I've noticed in the last twenty years or so that very cheap tokens like high mintage transit, tax, and amusement tokens are getting harder and harder to find. I actually disposed of a few gallons of amusement tokens a few years back because I couldn't give them away. Good fors were common everywhere until they suddenly dried up and started selling for a couple dollars apiece back in the early '90's. Coal tokens disappeared even sooner. There are a lot of neat tokens out there and some just go begging and others are widely collected. I have to imagine there are lots of tax tokens being thrown away because of the high cost of postage. Most will be corroded MO one mil tokens but there will be some good ones as well. One pound of tax tokens is worth about about $10 and costs nearly as much to mail. A pound of amusement tokens is worth about $3 if you can find a buyer. Of course collections can bring much more and people do trade these tokens. Coin markets are funny and tokens even funnier.

Many tax token collectors also collect the red and bluepoint ration tokens from WW!!. The connection is not apparent except they are often found with tax tokens. Some tax token collectors collect food stamp change tokens which were stopped for the same reason; they were being used as money. I don't know where to find these any longer but a search should turn up 1000's of different tokens. Competing with fiat used to be a crime but now days it's apparently traded on the exchanges because it is "useful" to Congress.

http://www.taxtoken.org/ The Secret Service was the reason these tokens were phased out. They said the tokens were being used as coins (legal tender) and competed with federal coinage. They are a great collectible except for two things. First most are either exceedingly common or very rare and second is that high grade examples even of the common ones are scarce. There are very very few collectors so it's possible to pick up scarcities for next to nothing. Yard sales in the places they were used will turn up one of these from time to time. The ATTS used to be very helpful in helping members and. no doubt, still are. It's a great resource in any case.

You might be surprised at the number of coins that fall through the cracks to be lost in and then fall out of automobiles. One of the reasons for high mintages is to replace the coins lost in millions of recycled cars year after year. Even at car washes there are millions of coins getting sucked up in vacuums or washed into drains. Coins accumulate under conveyors that feed or empty incinerators. Numbers are just staggering. At the auto recyclers the cars are handled very roughly and a few coins often fall out. Most are undamaged or just scratched but many are severely damaged. By various means these coins get back into circulation or they accumulate in buckets at banks. Any time you buy medals, tokens, or coins by the pound you might see these. Now days even a quarter might not be worth the trouble of repairing but you'd be surprised how quickly a lightly damaged dime like this one can be repaired well enough to actually circulate. It's just a couple quick blows with a hammer to flatten it back out and then a file to remove anything protruding outside its proper diameter or above the correct thickness. This coin was done very poorly. Instead of spending half a minute it was just ground down. But this dime did not acquire the filed rims naturally and probably not inadvertently. Someone just wanted to get it in a roll. Maybe he had 49 dimes and was hellbent on finishing the roll. It's not impossible that there are other mechanisms by which this dime appears as it does but the odds are highest that it was damaged inadvertently in a car shredder and then repaired poorly. Freak accidents and misadventure befall coins every day but some "accidents" are to be expected or are commonplace. It is interesting such a late date dime is dark and worn but this is not so unusual. It didn't get the wear after it was damaged and it was dark before it was "fixed".

This coin was really damaged twice. the first time was probably caused by going through a car shredder or, more likely, a crusher and the second time was when it was very inexpertly repaired. Rather than hammering it flat and then filing so it would work in machines it was just ground down so it would pass through a coin counter or fit into a roll. These are finally getting removed from circulation and recoined or disposed of but for many years culls accumulated in circulation. It appears they are even removing a lot of heavily worn coins. Time marches on.

There's less than one ounce of silver for every human being on the planet. It doesn't take many people buying an ounce or two three times a year to put a giant squeeze on available supply. This silver becomes an overhang when prices increase but only when it is actually sold. We're talking about a change in sentiment here. When people lose confidence it might never be restored. Rather than sell some of these people might continue to buy if inflation heads higher and interest rates stay at zero. Infrastructure is grand but we're sitting on 30 trillion dollars of debt and a crumbling infrastructure. It would be like money in the bank if it were sound. Instead it's more debt. We've borrowed from the future for two generations. I believe things are coming to a head and government has decided our direction. If so then a great deal of silver is going to disappear from a system where much of the silver is already owned by numerous entities. Joe six pack is outbidding industrial silver users.

People walk into coin shops and jewelry stores everyday and buy silver and gold. These tend to be small sales of an eagle or two but there are some larger ones as well. Then there's eBay and on-line sales as well. It is a relatively small percentage of the population but in aggregate there is a lot of metal being bought in many different forms. Every such sale reduces the amount of 1000 OZ bars that can be produced and every time a premium is paid it increases the pressure on the flow of material toward the industrial users. The futures markets were designed almost strictly for use by the users and miners. Now days much of the activity is speculators and illegal activity by banks. Miners still use it a little but the users to not do much in the futures markets. If a buying panic were to develop then users would be seeking physical metal because few people will still trust the futures markets. A spike higher would force the market to default because the silver doesn't really exist. This would lead to a broad based demand to real metal rather than paper. The shortage of silver would be extreme but it would not last because the smelters would be overwhelmed. When I say "biblical proportions" I merely meant the demand would be enormous in comparison to the supply. Obviously there are many ways all our macroeconomic problems could play themselves out and nothing in the future is ever a "done deal". It merely appears the government has already decided to double down on decades of deficit spending. They actually believe all they have to do to reign in even hyper-inflation is to reduce money production. I personally believe this would be impossible even if the bond markets weren't choreographed. This is because all money including the US dollar are valued by belief of the users. If people come to believe the dollar has no value bonds will crash. Even a tiny change in perception would set off waves of derivative and computer trading that would cause the collapse of the entire system. Our central planners could probably avert mass starvation until a new currency is invented but it would be highly chaotic and politically expensive for Congress et al. We have a government that thinks they can control an implosion of the dollar just as easily as they are now controlling the markets. I think we're going to see if they are correct. They will try to hold inflation to 8 or 10% but people losing so much money and getting 0% in the bank are going to spend it on land, metal, and inflation stocks. This will be inflationary itself. The die is cast and silver is acting as the canary in the coal mine. There will be more speculation in more markets as money supply continues higher and people lose ever more in their bank accounts. For now it's just silver and there are still government and market actions that can affect how living far beyond our means plays out.

It is imperative to do the opposite what everyone else does especially in a panic. In this case as silver is diverted from the supply chain and prices escalate refineries will start backing up and converting thousands of years of coinage into 1000 OZ bars. There's enough of this metal to eventually stop the run up in price which will be followed by a collapse. The silver exists but isn't available at the current price. The real problem is still decades in the future when the metal won't exist in sufficient quantity for all the new industrial demand. Sell as the price moves higher and buy back after the collapse.