cladking

I was much more referring to collectors of 1968 -'99 clad rolls and especially those collecting the rolls in and of themselves. I've met or conversed with several individuals who buy rolls but they are cherry picking Gem or varieties. Frequently the castoffs are just put into circulation. The mint has been selling various BU rolls since 1999. Before this there was no demand and today there is virtually no supply. Very few original rolls were ever saved and the attrition on the ones that were saved is extremely high because of their low price and because they get picked over. Fewer than a couple thousand rolls of something a '72-D quarter were saved and the attrition on these is sky high as collectors seek things like DDR's, type h reverses, and Gems. It certainly wouldn't leave many for collectors. I know several people who buy such rolls but I'm aware of no specific individual who collects them.

I've never actually met a BU roll collector since the BU roll market collapse in 1964. In those days there were lots of them and the government greatly overestimated the impact they were having on getting coins into circulation. I'm quite confident there are at least a hundred of them out there and in light of the fact that sellers of BU rolls are proliferating their numbers might well be growing. I just don't know what's happening to most of these coins being retailed as BU rolls. I have no doubt at least some of the rolls will be split up or cherry picked but there are numerous possibilities. Numismatic News in 1984 reported on an east coast vending company owner who had set aside a bag of every date and mint since 1965. They said at the time that after running stories about the scarcity of '82-P quarters for weeks this bag was the only BU coins that had turned up! I believe I've seen coins from this bag and the coins tend to be typical. Ironically the numbers of '82 coins saved in rolls and bags increased substantially in 1982 because it was widely known that there would be no mint sets. But still fewer than 80,000 '82-P quarters were saved and attrition on these is substantial. While there is no doubt that the coins saved out in BU are superior on average to typical coins they are still very poor because these were made so badly and because Gems were released in highly limited geographical areas. Attrition on intact rolls is astronomical because of the high demand for singles. A nice chBU roll of these can be had (in theory) for $235 Greysheet bid and then the coins sold on eBay for $100 each!!! Of course most rolls are typical and will contain only a very few $100 coins. When I started setting aside clad quarters in 1975 I wanted an original BU roll set as well as 40 of the nicest specimens I could find from any source. But I quickly found stoppers to a BU roll set. The 1969 was impossible even back then without sending off for it and by the late-'70's it was too late even for this. Then most of the early dates were just awful in rolls. Many rolls had nothing but very poor coins and I saw no point in saving them and no pleasure from owning them so they were just spent. A roll collection of nice coins with nice end coins or even just 40 nice specimens made for circulation would be a major achievement and source of pride. I do value the Gems I've found in circulation a great deal and have set them aside all along. Many varieties don't exist in mint sets. You might say I'm a frustrated BU roll collector. Some of the most fun I've had collecting moderns besides all the interesting people I've met is chasing down Gems and varieties in circulation. I should have done more of it and maybe a little less time sitting in coin shops looking through their stacks of mint sets.

Of course the implication is the BU roll prices listed by Greysheet might have no meaning at all if the demand for moderns is for nice MS-64 and better coins. Many BU rolls have no coins this nice. Even mint set rolls might have as few as 2 or 3 nice gemmy coins. '76 Ike rolls assembled years ago would have two nice coins and any assembled recently will have one nice coin but it's skunked (needs cleaning). This might explain why common rolls are selling for prices as much as 15X Greysheet. Perhaps I missed seeing the move. It would explain part of the reason prices on eBay are far higher. Nice attractive clad is hard to find and every year it gets harder. Even MS-60 to MS-63 coins are far less common than people believe and almost all clad in such low grade can be very unattractive.

I checked the company's website and was shocked by this; Huge premium prices paid for the above average Unc rolls

In addition to all the running around I did to sample coins I also spoke to hundreds of dealers and collectors to pick their brains and to gain insight into their experiences about moderns. This included a lot of letters and a few phone calls as well. Of course it included major dealers and suppliers of moderns. John Paul Sarosi was one I never did have the pleasure of meeting despite attending a couple of the Monroeville coin shows. But I certainly spoke to enough people to know there was nothing at all unusual about my experiences and observations. Even today most of the big dealers refuse to stock or advertise moderns. They are treated like Crazy Half Heller (https://archive.org/details/terrible-tales-german/page/89/mode/2up) or like the coins cause cancer. The hobby has barely changed since 1965 in many ways. The War on Coin Collectors is still being fought by many old timers. They remember the collapse of the BU roll market followed by the collapse of the entire coin market and rather than blaming the bad thinking and bad decisions they blame clads and all moderns. This was 60 years ago but it's still 1965 in many coin shops.

I checked his site and he lists buying and selling of all BU rolls. I seriously doubt he does much business in clads today. If memory serves he was selling brand new clad back in the late-'70's but was a relatively small figure in that business. I sometimes wonder if those late-'80's and early '90's clads will be the toughest in XF and AU. Some of the early dates will be tough as well but there were people setting them aside and I have run into some accumulations. Unfortunately these don't survive long after they come on the market but I've found varieties in them and pulled out a few rarely seen die pairing in high grade. Thanks. Very interesting. The story is not so unusual. Whitman has sold hundreds of thousands of the folders to collect clads though I rarely see them full or otherwise. Believe it or not I saw a whole case of them in a coin shop about 1995 (these were a different issue than yours and started at 1965) but the owner wouldn't tell me why he had them. It's hard to believe any coin shop could sell more than a handful a year.

I had been all over the country trying to find nice '82-P quarters and had had almost no luck at all. I was able to procure some rolls but the coins would barely even grade MS-65 today (I graded them MS-63). By October I had about given up when I was handed three nice shiny '82-P quarters at my local BMV. Upon enquiring where they got the coins I hurried across the street to that bank which just happened to be my bank. I couldn't beg borrow or steal even one of them and was left no avenue to change their minds. I went home and poured through all my bank receipts for the last seven years. I found eight or ten tiny little errors that added up to me owing them 27c. Most of the errors were in their favor but a larger one was in mine. I went into the bank and talked to the same representative. I set a quarter and two pennies on her desk and asked for a receipt. Suffice to say that in lieu of a receipt she introduced me to the vault manager. I was very successful and was able to glean out a few rolls of nice Gems; no varieties but nice Gems. Being such a tough grader I considered most of them to be only MS-64 at the time. Mebbe I shouldda kept the bag. Virtually every one in the bag would grade MS-65 or higher today. The moral of the story is simple; people did not set aside clad between 1968 and 1999. The only time I was able to get rolls of clads was when a friendly bank teller would look and see if he had any. Once in a while you could even get a bag but most banks just didn't want to mess with it. No demand created no means to supply the coins so most people just sent off $12 or $13 per roll to one of the advertisers. Since there was no demand it is pointless to speculate that there were lots of people who were getting the coins at the bank. No! Oddball rolls surely exist because sometimes people would save a roll they just happened to get at the bank but these hypothetical coins are probably scarcer than the rolls sold by the advertisers. The quality of the average roll is so poor that they have little or no bearing on the availability of MS-64 and better clad.

Responding to a post or the argument contained therein is not the same thing as refuting it. You are merely imagining millions of collectors in the '60's and '70's running down to their favorite bank and buying rolls and rolls of nice shiny well made and pristine quarters. It didn't happen. Few banks would accommodate such special requests and I know this because I was about the only one running around. I had to twist the arm of one bank (usually I just tried somewhere else), and was told by the vault manager that he had never even heard of anyone requesting rolls of clads. He said he even called up a few other vault managers in the district and they hadn't either. Sure there were pesky requests sometimes for cents and nickels but not clad. Remember? People hated clad and they weren't out there looking for them or combing through them to find Gems. So why would there be millions of collectors buying rolls at their local branch? It never happened. I was there and watching it. People who wanted rolls bought them from suppliers who advertised in the coin papers and sold them for a nominal cost plus shipping and handling. In those days shipping and handling didn't cost so much but people didn't want these coins at any price so sales were abysmal. Despite very low sales most of these coins are likely gone or degraded today because they weren't valued by the buyers. By the same token most mint sets weren't valued by the owners either which is why they are gone too. Ask your bank if you can get a box of shiny new dimes and let us know what they said. No, not new quarters, new dimes; accept no substitute! Those dimes they refuse to provide you would of necessity have been '22, '23 or '24 P or D mints because the mint and FED use FIFO accounting practices and always ship out coins that have been in storage the longest. This assures all the dimes of any given date will wear out evenly. There are no pallets of brand new 1975 dimes lost in a warehouse somewhere. The fact that 1975 dimes ARE IN FACT wearing out evenly proves there aren't even pallets of circulated coins lost in warehouses. If you don't believe it find a bunch of '75 dimes and look for yourself. I have and have done so on a continuing basis since before '75 dimes were even minted. My sample sizes are in the millions. If you could find enough'75 dimes to perform an analysis of condition you'd see that the form a nice bell curve centered at F- condition. Of course you can't find enough of these very easily to do such a statistical analysis any longer because they were designed to last only 30 years and it's almost half a century now. It's not only 1975 dimes that are gone now but all of them and the mint sets too. Most of the very few BU rolls that you are still imaging existed are probably gone too. People simply didn't save these coins to start with and the years have been cruel to the few exceptions. This is the way it is. Trying to estimate surviving populations by looking at their price is putting the cart before the horse. People still aren't collecting clads coins in numbers approaching their availability but this number is growing very fast. They will get better at finding the coins they want even as the attrition continues. As demand creates profit markets will begin to appear as they are right now. As markets appear it will become easier to purchase coins. There are not enough nice attractive BU clads to satisfy a mass market so if one does ever begin price will increase to balance the supply. There are not large numbers of ugly Unc clads either. There are even fewer nice XF and VF clads. You have to get down almost all the way to coins in circulation before substantial numbers exist. Did I mention many dates are getting really hard to find in circulation as well? Most are gone and what's left are heavily worn culls.

Yes! There are more than a million of them even though some dates are far more difficult than others. The people who saved them didn't understand statistics or how the world works any better than we do so they weren't efficient in saving equal numbers of each date. So if there ever are any future collectors it will be a mess as they try to sort out who gets what. Luckily they'll have artificial intelligence to even out the rough spots and make the distribution equitable. For 50 years I've told modern bashers these coins were scarce and they told me it didn't matter because there are countless billions in circulation. Now that they aren't in circulation any longer I'm told it doesn't matter because no one will ever collect them anyway. Your twist that they aren't scarce is a brand new one. I'm not sure how to counter this. If I told you to go out and look for yourself I'm sure your experience would not be representative of reality either. I don't know why anyone ever gets out of his cave in the morning if the world is so incomprehensible? Now that we are so close to agreeing let me just observe that a mass market could absorb a million coins in mere days.

Because you erred either in sampling or math then I must be wrong! Do you realize it's far easier to get excellent samples and make good estimates fore current coin than it is to do so for old coins from obscure or lightly collected countries? I was right here where the coins were made and distributed from day 1.

Is observation meaningless only when I do it or does this apply to everybody? Does one have to be a Peer to make observation?!

No. You are repeating the same baseless unsubstantiated claptrap and calling it "independently verifiable evidence"!!!!!! "(The coins are not old and have been – not maybe - saved in volume in “high” quality from “day one” within the lifetime of just those reading this thread. We know this from mint sets alone.)" The coins have been saved neither in volume nor in high quality as I am continually presenting actual evidence in support. In the '60's and '70's very few people even cared about high grades. High grade morgans had a 5 or 10% premium. I know because I was buying them. People didn't save much clad as proven by the fact that one never sees old clad collections come into coin shops. Do you maintain that collecting clads makes people immortal? I ignored your list because items didn't apply, weren't true, were irrelevant, or some combination of these. Clad dimes (for instance) have been in circulation more than three times as long as silver dimes. Indeed, they've circulated longer than mercury dimes. I've told you many times those mint sets are gone. People bought them from the mint or ran down to their favorite dealer to pay double issue price and then when the market was saturated they took massive losses on them and often by cutting the sets up and spending them. Even many of the mint set coins in circulation no longer survive and all the rest are degraded. I try to read your posts closely and respond to anything new and to anything that is strategically appropriate. I don't try to correct errors as the reader can do this.

This isn't a donnybrook. It's barely even a kerfuffle. "Statistics" is the belief that the universe is random and physical law causes order. I took it once but that was half again more than I shouldda. I don't believe nature is beholden to law or that anything is random. We merely pretend it is so because there's no viable alternative.

People collect rarity, quality, history, and importance. People collect things they expect to increase in value as well. I'm actually counting on these things to continue as the world continues shifting through massive changes.

I've probably seen at last one coin for every die used to make '82-P quarters (for instance). I drove around the country getting samples of these coins from many sources trying to find Gems. Of course this was insufficient to see every coin but I've been buying rolls of coins from the bank in the intervening years. I've had people send me circulated coin from various places (especially Boston). I've seen hundreds of souvenir sets, dozens of Numismatic News sets, and more dozens of Paul and Judy sets not to mention myriad other sets. I've bought rolls on the market and a bag from a bank. I've laid eyes on more than 1% of the coins that survive today in BU and seen enough circs (most in XF/ AU) that I've probably seen at least one coin from every die. I've seen hundreds of coins from some dies. I haven't ignored and neglected the coins made in the last 60 years. This is what the entire market has done. I've also sampled many of the coins set aside by the retailers over the years. They account for the lion's share of existent BU rolls. Why would you with no knowledge and no experience doubt everything I've seen. Why would you pronounce all these coins "uncollectible". '82-P is just one date: One mint mark. There are many others as well that are also very tough in nice condition for one reason or another. If you think you can just find a nice coin of every date in circulation you'll need to rethink this as well. These coins were designed to last 30 years and we're coming up on 60 years. Most of the old coins in circulation are in deplorable condition. Even a nice attractive F can be highly elusive.

How many nice pristine 1967 quarters do you think are sitting in someone's change jar. I'll give you a hint. The very last one was accidently spent or was degraded about 1973. If they're in a collection where would you find that collection from 1967? Has it been updated every year since 1967? If there are billions and billions of these collections why are they not seen?

Yes. Quite right. You've told me that. But you're wrong I can't make accurate estimates. There are many ways to do it and I've told you a few of them in the past. Most of them require experience and ALL of them require knowledge and evidence. I love it when you say this. Who knew I didn't know how to find mint sets, BU rolls, and moderns. Did I ever mention I've talked to all the sellers of BU rolls from the '70's and '80's? Did I ever mention they told me how many rolls they sold? I round it off to "zero" because that's all it amounts to; a rounding error.

What possible evidence do you have that shows modern availability is correlated to mintage? Might I remind you that all of the key dates are high mintage and some are very high. I don't presume to tell collectors how to collect. I merely BELIEVE collectors will avoid ugly clad coins but I don't presume to tell them which are ugly and which are collectible. Those who collect clads will make this decision and this evaluation for themselves. i also don't presume to tell them how rare a coin has to be before it becomes collectible. To each his own. But if people start collecting moderns AND want nice attractive well made coins there are not enough to supply a mass market. Many collectors would be priced out of nice MS-64 (gemmy) and better coins. You simply can't sell 1000 of something where only one exists. The price goes up to squash the demand.

[sigh] Are you really suggesting that just because no one has ever brough aunt Bertha's two rolls of bicentennial quarters to the local coin shop it must mean everyone is instead putting them both on eBay or calling up NGC for guidance? NO! The LCS still absorbs most of the coins, dreck, and minor collections that come in as estates. There ARE NO BU ROLLS and surprisingly few mint sets. What does come in usually goes in the cash register. So where would you look for all those BU rolls you are so sure exist?

So because accurate estimates are impossible we're supposed to not do it at all and since they made billions of moderns we're not supposed to do them at all either! You'd be amazed how close some of my estimates are. It comes with experience. Just because I estimate all coins a little higher than others doesn't make me wrong. Many of these estimates are simple proportions derived from a great deal of sampling. My biggest worry is actually sample bias rather than error.

No!!! Between 1931 and 1965 mintage was the starting point but that was more than half a century ago. It's no longer 1965. Nobody set aside coins and this is exactly why you don't see BU rolls of moderns. I believe I addressed all your points adequately in other subsequent posts. If I missed anything I'll look back.

I believe it hasn't resulted in an increase of price for a very simple reason. Even though the collector who wants a nice 1968 dime must look through multiple sets to find a suitable specimen there are still many sets for each of these collectors there is still far more supply than demand. There are several thousand collectors wanting the dime or with one already in their collection and half a million 1968 mint sets. The hobby has been lulled into this situation like a toad sitting on a warming hot plate. Mint sets have been ignored and neglected so long that it is natural for the mainstream hobby. . We have been seeing a rise on the retail side for several years now but it escapes everyone's notice. It's not just anomalies like common 1990's nickel rolls sometimes selling for hundreds of dollars from retail listings but things like nice 'chBU 82-P quarters routinely selling on eBay for $100 which is many multiples of Greysheet. The reason this doesn't show up at wholesale is two-fold; There is no wholesale market and the few buyers of this material know that raising offers has no effect on the number of coins they can buy. In a real market buyers compete with one another by raising prices to get more stock but there are few buyers and no market. This is likely to continue until the supply is completely exhausted and collector demand raises prices like it has for the '82 quarter. So long as the demand is so weak or non-specific there will be very little price pressure. .

Very few sets contain even a single coin that is worth the cost of slabbing. Even if five coins were submitted for every coin worth the cost this would still constitute a very small factor in the drawdown of sets. The typical mint set has about a 50: 50 chance of having a Gem but all moderns have to be in higher grade than MS-65 to warrant submission. Most Gems are common date so finding specific Gems is far far tougher. Only about 1 set in 100 has a coin worth more slabbed. 1 set in 300 has a "special" coin like a PL or an early strike. 1 in 1000 has a coin that sells for more than a few hundred dollars. This is as the sets were made. Yes, that's right; when the sets were new they were this nice. Now days the few surviving sets are all tarnished and need to be cleaned up just to tell the wheat from the chafe. The coins that were removed years ago are still pristine but the ones still in the plastic are tarnished. The fact such things aren't widely known is just further evidence of how widely neglected these coins have been. With no demand there is no price discovery.

There are numerous ways to estimate populations of things. Most of these are statistical and based on relative prices and availability or deduced from interpretation of anecdotal evidence. In the old days dealers had these by the box; vast quantities on display or sitting in back. Of course every single one of them was an early date. Most of the original buyers still lived. They were a lot more expensive but there were millions of them everywhere. Now you go into a coin shop and they have a few on display (maybe) and a small box presented to anyone who expresses an interest. Of course this small box in mostly later dates because... ...drum roll, please... ...most of the early dates are gone now. And people still aren't buying them. The typical coin shop has gone from having 40 or 50 1968 mint sets to only one or two. Since the sets still don't sell the wholesalers don't maintain any larger inventories than they ever did and these are not substantial. Most old time collectors don't have any of these. If they have a few mint sets they will not be 1968. So where are you going to look for them? At flea markets? Among HSN customers? How do you supply a mass market? The sets we see today and seem to be so numerous come on the market just like in the old days; in lots and estate sales. But few 1968 sets come from the original purchaser any longer and are just those removed from the market in the intervening years as most of the '68's were being destroyed due to lack of demand. This flow still swamps the demand not because there are so many of them but because there is still almost no demand. All of the early dates now wholesale much higher than issue price. No, they were not a good investment but they are higher.

Perhaps it would be easiest to address this first. Destruction of mint sets was greater before TPG's. Nobody wanted them and there were so very many around. They weren't only being destroyed because someone wanted one or two of the coins in them but because nobody wanted any of the coins in them. Dealers had to buy them in lots and estates and there were no customers. Some had a little premium and were shipped but most dates were just a cheap means to fill the cash register with coins. These sets have been subjected to horrendous storage conditions where they are prone to destruction and degradation. I'm not saying only 25% of all mint sets ever made still survive, I am saying that as few as 25% of many of the early dates survive. If a real collector wants a nice '68 dime it doesn't matter one whit to him or the market that 80% of 1995 mint sets still exist. His demand is specific and must be met by a coin from a 1968 mint set of which only about 25% survive. The coins from these lost sets aren't hiding in the woodwork or still existing in slabs and rolls. Most of these coins are in circulation or lost in fires and floods.