cladking

Yes. Same here. Virtually every Gem made by the mint since 1964 has been specially produced. They probably make a few million per year for circulation but the odds of these being saved out is exceedingly low. Even intensive searching in the year of issue would rarely turn up any nice coins and back before 1999 there wasn't really much searching. People were grading nice Morgans and old coins and no one had time for new coins. I have found my share of Gems made for circulation but as nice as these are they usually don't have as crisp of strike or the new dies of coins made for collectors. Every year I find a small handful of these and sometimes a few rolls.

Thank you. I was not aware of this. It was not at all uncommon in those days to reuse either obverse or reverse dies to strike circulation issues. Dies were at a premium especially during the coin shortage.

I think most mint set collectors knew this way back in the '70's or even earlier but the first time I remember it in print was a a story in Coins magazine back in the '90's. I don't recall the mint admitting these coins were specially made until it appeared in an advertisement for 1996 mint sets in Coin World. I've read only about half of the mint reports since 1964 so may have missed it. I should have suspected the coins were produced at lower speeds but didn't know this until the mint finally came clean. The mint is set up to produce and release Gems but the reality is that things go wrong at every single stage of production. so virtually no coins at all come out of the mint as well struck coins by good dies and minimum marking. This has been even more true in the clad era and for most practical purposes 1964 really included in the clad era. There is even a 1964 coin struck on a clad planchet. Any Gem 1964 coin is highly suspect of being specially made and merely using new dies is quite insufficient to assuring the production of a Gem. With some coins everything goes wrong so a coin can just be a piece of junk struck by a brand new die.

I love finding these sets with swapped out coins. A nice 1967 non-SMS quarter is quite valuable today. It was worth 25c in 1966 and the SMS at least a dollar but today you can't get more than 50c for the SMS and even an MS-60 is worth $5. Gems get quite pricey. Be this as it may I've seen only a handful of SMS's with any coins at all swapped out. There are far more rumors of cheating than there are instances. As far as the low relief '66 quarters are concerned it's very difficult to believe they are examples of this chiefly because the worst I've ever seen is virtually mark free. Circulation issues of that time were not only poorly made by worn out dies but they always had marking and usually excessive marking.

The coin shortage was much more easily ameliorated than had been predicted. Not only was the mint churning out vast numbers of coins but silver prices had been in a gradually decreasing trajectory for years dampening the demand of hoarders. Some of the moves made to recirculate coins might have helped a little and the silver hoarders finally got arounds to taking their pennies and nickels back to the bank. The mint was working overtime and their job by this time was more to replace all the silver in circulation rather than solving a coin shortage. So, yes, they used some capacity to invent and make SMS's which were sold at a significant profit to the mint. I had sent in cash for a 1965 proof sets and they had to return it with an apology. No doubt my order wasn't the only one.

This is from observation and experience. Based on the characteristics of the coins in the SMS's they obviously used numerous different techniques and processes to produce the coins. Coins range from what are probably technically proof specimens (struck multiple times on polished planchets) to virtual garbage. The most dramatic example is a 1966 quarter that shows up in ~.4% of sets that is well struck by very low relief dies and usually appears virtually flawless. Even the '67 sets show some variation but the '65 and '66 are far more extreme.

This is hardly an easy question. Not only are most dies far more uniform than older ones but they are also far more numerous and barely studied at all. It's difficult to even trace the same die over the course of a very long life because it changes far more than the tiny differences with other dies. Tracing hundreds of dies sometimes with few or no specimens surviving in Unc is quite impossible. There is a small handful of identifiable 1964 quarter dies but none would necessarily be very likely to have been used on the particular group of coins that are called "SMS". They did a lot of experimenting with different techniques to make the '65 and '66 Special Mint Sets and the '64 coins "look" like some of these. Perhaps it is largely this, their matte appearance, and their unique source as much as anything that led to them receiving a "SMS" designation.

I don't know How I missed this! But between the login problems I used to have and my new computer (that still doesn't work right) it's a wonder I caught anything. Congratulations.

I've always been interested in circulating coinage. If I were alive in the 1840's I would be studying the coins actively circulating. The task is virtually impossible and perhaps not worth the effort to even format or begin but the greatest possible task would be to understand how all coinage circulated since the first coin was minted. Failing this (and it is a fool's errand) it would be nice to understand one country's circulating coinage at one time. It would be nice to have actual numbers for for things like attrition and its rate of change. It would be nice to know about regional and temporal differences in circulation patterns. I would love to know some of the reasons that some coins are almost universally worn out or destroyed and others receive little or no wear. Why are so many more bicentennial quarters in circulation since the states coins were introduced? Of course they don't stand out as much any longer so fewer are removed but why are they being released? Why are they still almost all in high grade?

I mostly just dumped junk and traded it for some of the good stuff going to the melters. Why hold a VG and low grade mercury dimes when I could trade them for AU's and Uncs for a few dollars in postage or transaction costs? Even if they end up having to be being sold for scrap they provide some protection against low prices.

I believe they'd have melted a huge amount if not for the fact it was so brief. It started building in late-summer and by December the refineries were going full out with huge backlogs. I believe it slowed dramatically shortly after the price peaked. Of course coins are being melted on a continuing basis. In the old days most silver coin was melted only when it wore out. Now days a great number of base metal coins are melted when they become obsolete.

I was able to go through a lot of the silver being shipped off to be melted in 1979. There were lots of things that broke my heart to not be able to save. I saw rolls of things like 1955 Gem quarters but I never saw any better date stuff unless it was cull. A lot more '32-S quarters would have been melted in the treasury melts of '68-'70 but even here numbers are quite nominal because there were very few in circulation. The coins circulating when the FED removed circulating silver were picked over and heavy in things like XF to AU 1964 quarters. Older dates and higher grades had been picked out by coin collectors since 1942. Many of these coins like '49-S half dollars in less than XF were then melted in 1979.

The reports won't do you any good if you assume equal percentages of 1864 and 1964 quarters were melted.

This is actually very easy to estimate if you read the reports for the last 75 years.

I said the vast majority are worn out and lost; not all of them. 90%+ of the cents and 70% of the nickels wore out in circulation and were then lost. The survivors are in horrible condition though it's not too unusual to find the '64 5c in grades up to VF. Both of these exist in large quantities in chBU and Gems are not unusual. The '65 nickel also wore out and was lost in circulation but there are very few in chBU and Gems are very uncommon. Except for the date it is identical to the '64 Philly otherwise. "FS" was added to the obverse in '66 (which is even tougher than the '65).

No. The vast majority of '64 pennies and nickels have been worn out and lost. Due to the many large meltings only about 60% of the quarters survive. Most Ike dollars are sitting in sock drawers in VF-AU condition unless the FED still has some in storage which they may or may not. None of these coins that might be in FED storage are likely to be UNC but if any are they are most probably dated 1976 or later. There is enough demand for BU Ikes to cause an $80 per roll wholesale price. While 1964 quarters have been melted in large quantities this does not apply to any of the old silver coins with a numismatic premium. A very low percentage of '32-S quarters have been melted.

Paul Green reported on a great number of world moderns that are highly elusive. He didn't report as much on countries where the demand could soar as the economy created more and more middle class with the finances to build collections. So far most of the explosive growth has been in countries with lots of new collectors but in the longer term there will be countries where the coins are just that scarce. People have always assumed all moderns are common but the reality is some moderns are excruciatingly common and most others are scarce or rare. Most of the '50's era Greek coins have ended up in poundage but try finding these in XF. They are not at all common in grades higher than F.

There is insufficient supply for a "mass market. It is just this simple. The last of the available supply is disappearing through sale or tarnish and the demand continues to grow year after year. The current situation is unsustainable.

I love anecdotal evidence but this is more akin to hearsay until such time as they provide some sort of corroboration that these are unlikely to be mint set rolls. I've seen thousands of BU rolls of older moderns and they are nearly invariably mint set rolls. Even original rolls have little bearing on the market for moderns anyway because original rolls are rarely nice enough to sell as chBU. All buyers want nice choice rolls and most original rolls look pretty awful. There are more varieties and a few Gems and not all moderns appear in mint sets so original rolls are "important" without having much effect on supply. There are even some dates with more Gems than mint sets but this is the exception. Most rolls are awful and most dates don't appear in rolls.

I've never really understood the motivation of most mint set buyers. Of course many sets were sold because people knew if they got early delivery they could sell two sets and keep three as profit. But thew ones they kept are barely better than the ones they sold. Sure they kept cameo SMS's but unless there was some striking difference they seemed to just select sets randomly to sell. Some bought because it was the only game in town. The biggest reason was that collectors wanted to keep their half dollar collections current but there were also sometimes cents, nickels, or dollars. You almost never see a mint set with the dime or quarter missing. I might never understand how the mint sold two million of these each year but they did tend to be very inexpensive in the old days. Many people simply had no access to brand new coin unless they bought a set from the mint.

I've been in many dozens of coin shops all over the country. I've talked to the proprietors and workers. I've kept close tabs on several shops. Why would you assume I have no experience after I said I do? You know you can also look at the used albums and folders in the shops. Most of them are for older coins. There are many ways to get information f you just keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground.

If there are so many of these coins then where are they? You don't find old US or Swiss in high circ grades. Most of those you do find come from change hauled home by tourists.

Of course I know. It is just a bunch of simple proportions. I watched the coins disappear from circulation over many years. The very first was the '69-P quarter which approached 0% in AU and better by mid 1981. The data suggest it is disappearing in F right now but I can't get a statistically significant sample to show it. Thee are that few left and most are pretty chewed up. Of course there are always stragglers. These coins come from childhood piggy banks or mint sets. They come from old washing machines in laundromats though most of these are badly corroded. No matter how few coins sit in change jars there is always a finite chance that a coin can just go from one change jar to the next. Change jars are simply irrelevant because the number of coins that sit in one place for more than 20 years is insignificant. I believe most coins that sit so long are in the safes of stores which are intended as emergency change though this is probably less common in the era of credit cards. Very few quarters sit anywhere ever for more than 3 years. This is how long it takes the FED warehouses to rotate their stocks of coins. The Fed usually has around a billion quarters where most of them are brand new and minted in the lasty three years. These coins can sit for several years but rarely do. Clads were made to circulate and do so very efficiently. They wear very evenly because the government and mint rotate their stocks. Lots of people tell me they've had jars of quarters for decades but when I look at them there are rarely any BU coins more than three years old.

No. I am saying the demand for moderns circulating clad coinage has been growing since 1980 and accelerated markedly in 1999. it is still growing and the supply of "retail friendly" mint sets is virtually gone. This is most highly unsustainable. When mint sets are unavailable or overly pricey would-be buyers will turn to singles and old collections. There are no singles or old collections. UNSUSTAINABLE!

How many 1909 to 1964 cent collections have to come in with no later dates before you admit there are few modern collections? Why do you discount experience. As a rule I don't care as much what people think they know and am far more interested in their experience.