Collectable Nickels in Circulation (or define cheap)
cladking
Posts: 28,701 ✭✭✭✭✭
I was just asked to define cheap in the raw moderns thread!!!
I did a sample on nickels today for the first time in many years. I knew that they were getting beaten up and lost but it's somewhat worse than I figured. Disregarding nickels from the last 20 years more than half are culls and most have been lost.
In a sample of 200 coins the oldest was a '58-D in nice F. There were five coins from the BU roll craze era including "2" '64-D's but only one coin was not a cull and it was a '61-D in VG+. There was only one other coin in the '60-s and these are coins that don't exist in BU rolls. Apparently some 95% of production no longer exists. The one coin represented is a well worn and very cull '66.
'70's issues are little better. More than 80% are missing and there was only one nice F+ collectible coin among the ten.
'80's are much better with "4" nice coins and 20 others but still a lot are missing. '90's are little better than the '80's!!
After 1998 a nice set of XF and AU nickels can be assembled with little effort. The '80's and '90's will take a lot of effort just for nice XF or VF.
Forget the '65 to '78-D because these will show up very infrequently and will almost always be culls.
There are a few nickels in hoards of cu/ ni a few have been saving since the LME default in 2008 but these will not be separated unless prices of better dates go higher. Even in 2008 really nice '60's era coins were hard to find.
Comments
I don't think your sample was large enough to make too many assessments. I can say that I have pulled lots of AU coins out of circulation for some Whitman folders with coins from both the 1970s and 1980s in addition to earlier dates. Now I can honestly say that I have not done it in a couple of years, but I would say a whole box worth of nickels would give tons of AU coins.
I have to agree with @erwindoc I am always looking at my change when I buy stuff and often times I am seeing a wide array of Jeffersons. I can honestly say that there is no date in the 1960s that I have not gotten in change over the last 6 months. I am not certain of your definition of cull, but when I think of cull, I think of a coin that is heavily damaged and/or cleaned. Is this what you are seeing on the coins you saw?
As for your sample size, I think erwindoc is correct in that it is not large enough. I would be willing to partake in a survey of Jeffersons if others are interested, too.
"I have to agree with @erwindoc I am always looking at my change when I buy stuff and often times I am seeing a wide array of Jeffersons. I can honestly say that there is no date in the 1960s that I have not gotten in change over the last 6 months. I am not certain of your definition of cull, but when I think of cull, I think of a coin that is heavily damaged and/or cleaned. Is this what you are seeing on the coins you saw?"
I certainly expected to see a lot more older coins in nice condition. There was no evidence of any sort of contamination of the sample except for an excessive number of '21 coins in BU or AU-58. Since this is consistent with a very high attrition rate I didn't mention it, I suppose I should have. It's possible that there are an unusually high number of people setting aside all nickels in this area but that still wouldn't account for the sparsity of older nickels or the abysmal condition of most.
It's hard for me to believe chance alone could account for this.
A "cull" to me is any coin that has enough trouble as to be a mere space filler in a collection. Any staining, tarnish, bends, gouges, or corrosion would turn a coin into a hole filler. A lot of coins now days are covered in little scratches and I consider these culls as well if they are bad enough. I saw only ten coins from the 1970's and the only really nice one was a '72-D in nice high end F. If this is typical then finding a nice '71 in AU is a virtual impossibility. Even a VF would be improbable in an entire box.
This is a little worse than I expected and a lot worse in terms of incidence of the older coins. Perhaps the sample was contaminated. They came from a counting house, were tightly rolled and there was one penny in three of the rolls.
I don't know if I'm out two pennies or 13c.
If a very large batch of nickels picked over for nicer older dates was mixed in then this might explain the count.
I'll try it again in a few weeks.
Nickels have always circulated so slowly that a few higher grades have been around. But there were none in this sample until after the turn of the century.
I pulled 4 Jefferson nickels out of a Coinstar reject bin two days ago and one of them was a 1947 in fine or very fine.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
I guess my opinion is that a sample of only 200 nickels seems awfully small for the quantity in existence. If a group of half a dozen of us around the country got together and each sampled maybe 500 or 1,000, maybe the results would be different.
I think it's more important to know what samples to toss out than to have a larger sample size.
Up until about 1999 I tracked nickels very very closely and always knew what was anomalous and usually would know what to throw out to make the sample conform to expectations. But now it's been about 20 years of no sampling at all and just looking at my pocket change. This sample seemed to be mostly consistent with that though it was heavy in 2021 issues. Tossing these out wouldn't change the fact that so many of the older coins just weren't there and those which were were very poor grades.
A broader sample would be very beneficial and a larger sample certainly wouldn't hurt. It is always possible for any sample to be contaminated because of the way they are rolled. Most of the coins going in the hoppers are from bags of coins returned from the banks. These tend to be rich in later dates and culls. There is some tendency for there to be more high grade coins as well but this might not be as prevalent in such a low denomination as it used to be. If a collector returns a a large number of rejects and they all go into the same bag and then into an empty hopper the result would be extreme contamination and my lack of recent experience might not pick up on it. In light of Erwindoc's post perhaps this is exactly what happened.
One thing certain and that is these nickels today did fit a nice clean pattern that was exactly what I expected. Pre-1965 nickels were nicer and more numerous and later nickels were more heavily worn the older they were.
I sampled dimes today as well and there are some surprises here too. I keep closer tabs on clad so they aren't too surprising other than a huge amount of road kill.
The older coins exist in huge numbers because they are saved by millions. A few get released from time to time assuring a steady flow of nice higher grade old Jeffersons.
I have a gallon jug of nickels...pocket change accumulated over a couple of decades....(my wife makes me put the change in jars, rather than on top of the bureau
).... I should look through them one of these snowy winter days. Cheers, RickO
Regardless of how old these common date non-silver Jeff nickels are, MOST still have little or no additional value over face. That being said, I have hundreds of the older Jeff nickels picked from circulation over the years.
I assume you mean pre-'65 nickels.
These are very common because so many are saved out by collectors and the public. When they are found in circulation they are usually in much better shape than the nickels from the '60's and '70' because they've sat in collections and rolls. You can even sell them for about 12c apiece because they are in demand. There are probable three 1947 nickels in circulation of average grade VF for every 1971 with an average grade of F and many of them culls.
But there's no demand for the post-'65 coinage. Nobody collects it and very little was ever saved at all. Oh sure, some dates like the '74 exist in the millions but most were saved in much lower numbers than the '50-D. If the sample here is really indicative of what survives there are barely more '71-P nickels in all grades than there are '50-D's. Indeed, There are definitely fewer '71-P's in chBU than '50-D'd but where there are about half a million '50-D's in circulated condition virtually all of them are XF or AU. Most of the '71-P's are culls and severely worn. But nobody collects '71 nickels so they have no premium even in AU. In a sense this doesn't matter since there are virtually none in AU anyway. If the price went to $100 they wouldn't come out of the woodwork; people would wear down BU's.
The old nickels exist in rolls and bags and the bulk of many of the mintages survive in F to AU condition. The nickels from the '70's are largely gone now if this sample is any indication. The few that survive are in poor shape.
Ironically most modern collectors collect in BU anyway so where the loss of the population matters most is with varieties. As collectors find it impossible to collect 6these from pocket change more will purchase BU's goin forward. Who knows when this will stress the supplies of tougher coins like the '73 or '75.
I believe that in the long run modern nickels will have just as much demand as the early coins. And they are already in lower supply and in some cases, much lower.
I really enjoy your well thought out and well researched posts. They are very educational and quite interesting.
I need a break from the halves so I could get a bank box and sort them out. I am in SoCal. Cheers.
I’ve really enjoyed trying to fill a complete Dansco album with nickels pulled from circulation/roll hunting. My only rule is that I can only add what I find while searching. I’m at the point where my remaining holes are proving tough to fill (39-S and d and 51-s). Every now and then I find a nice upgrade. Some dates I find all the time but they are always very worn. I save all the pre 1960 nickels I find and save all the BU 1960’s nickels. Maybe one day my daughter will have a good time putting together her own Dansco from the gallon bag I’ve accumulated. I haven’t been able to search nickels in some time however as the local banks do not have adequate supply to allow me to get a box. Here’s my current progress (note, I’m picky on the 1960’s going forward so the holes are not for lack of finding any, just none that are nice enough):
Or maybe they're being hoarded. The metal value of all non-war nickels is about 6 cents each.
My Adolph A. Weinman signature
Don't forget about all those 60's and 70's nickels preserved in Mint Sets. Nickels have a small enough intrinsic value that many are saved. I have a pretty good hoard of Jefferson Nickels myself. Probably twenty BU sets in Dansco's I tossed back, 500-1000 Bu Rolls, and thousands upon thousands of circs. I'm also sure I'm not by myself. Larry Briggs offered to sell me his hoard which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 pieces!
Face value on a hoard like that is 5k, that's a lot of nickels.
This post almost makes me want to get a few Whitman folders and start modern sets from roll searching.
@amwldcoin "Don't forget about all those 60's and 70's nickels preserved in Mint Sets."
Yes. I noticed back in 2008 when the LME defaulted on their nickel contracts that the nickels in circulation started getting "newer". This is indicative of hoarding. The vast number of brand new BU nickels implies the mint is having some difficulty keeping up with the hoarders. This dilutes the numbers of older nickels but it shouldn't affect their relative ages. Of course it's been going on since 2008 and this will have some effect on the relative ages since older coins have a higher probability of having been hoarded. But, even the mixture of pre-'08 coins looks unnatural and seems to be the result of either a very high attrition (higher than I had believed) or collecting from circulation. There is so little anecdotal evidence of collecting from circulation I am forced to believe the attrition that was only 3% the last I looked back in the '90's has crept up to well over 4%.
The hoarded coins have a high probability of being destroyed enmasse when the melting ban is lifted. This typical historically for modern and classic US base metal world coins. There are few surviving mint sets and the majority of them have tarnished nickels. While most are easily cleaned it is improbable many will be because of the lack of demand.
No one can predict the future because it is dependent on things that haven't happened yet but at the current time finding something like a nice attractive 1975 nickel in any condition is tough and finding a Gem raw is most improbable without spending a great deal of money and effort and then you'll still need to clean it in alcohol.
Predicting the future is hard. It never occurred to me nickels could get so scarce and even I didn't really notice. There's still some chance my sample was contaminated, some chance all those nickels set aside since '08 will be separated out for good dates, and some chance the surviving mint set nickels will be saved, but I doubt it. Mint sets are coming out of the woodwork because of higher prices. When a dealer gets any sets back from buyers because they are tarnished his first reaction certainly isn't going to be to clean the coins. He's going to put them in the cash register just as most dealers have been doing for nearly 50 years.
The circulated Jefferson nickels was probably the most cheapest set I had ever seen on eBay as well as the LCS with a complete set in Whitman album being sold for as low as 25$
It sort of looked like the following one currently on eBay
https://www.ebay.com/itm/115138014427?hash=item1acec2acdb:g:EuoAAOSwC-5htVos
Edited to add link.
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/u-s-coins/quarters/PCGS-2020-quarter-quest/album/247091
I see. The set was assembled in the past. It certainly seemed strange someone found a chAU 1973 nickel anytime recently.
Collectable "values" are set almost solely by demand and as little demand as there is for BU nickels (especially post-'64) there is far less demand for circulated coins.
It's a nice set and the later dates are especially attractive. I like the earlier ones but they're pretty common even in BU. The later dates are scarce in XF/ AU apparently.
This thread is inspiring me to actually get out and LOOK at my Jefferson set collection, all from circulation and going back to my childhood. To be honest, it has been at the bottom of my list for interest too, as the series has never much impressed me.
That’s saying something, that this thread could generate that much curiousity and interest!
Either my mental faculties are failing, which is certainly a possibility given circumstances over the past couple of years, or the series really MAY have more to offer, which I’ve overlooked, and has been enlightened through the above discussion?
In any event, thank you! It entertaining either way ;-)
And I have LOTS of them laying around to look at and potentially upgrade into my old folders!
Cheap entertainment!
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
I find all the coins in circulation very interesting. Only right now have I found the nickels interesting though since I thought there were still plenty of every date still around in nice condition. Lots of the older ones were poorly made and lots of the newer ones are gone now so sets are difficult enough to make them a challenge.
The pennies are kindda an enigma. The attrition is staggeringly high but I still see some old ones in high grade. Meanwhile "common dates" like the 1966 are rarely seen at all and then will be badly worn or cull most of the time. Some dates are are really tough in gemmy condition. Even though lots of 1984 mint sets survive the half of Philly cents that remain untarnished are usually very unattractive. I've seen only a few nice Gem of this date without tarnish.
There's a lot of wheat among the chaff in circulation but I sense it won't be there much longer and this especially applies to the nickels.
Skyrocketing prices on halfs and dollars are getting all the attention but most of the true "scarcity" is in the lower denominations. Where are people going to get nice attractive VG '72-d type "d" quarters when you can't even find '72-D quarters in pocket change?
It's going to be rainy here in SoCal for the next few days so went to my bank and picked up a $100.00 bank sealed box of
Nickels sealed 12/06 from Brinks. 15 years old so will report on what I find by each decade and condition. Cheers. In looking further at the enders found some 2021, 2020, 2016 and a 2005 D SMS Bison. So that Brinks date must be some type of code number, not the date it was sealed. Cheers.
Anywhere else in the country I'd guess you'd be missing three coins but in S California, only one; the '67. The best '66, '68-D, '69, '71, '73-D, and '75 will be in heavily worn or cull condition. There will only be four or five nice VF/ XF coins from before 1982.
I don't think they'll be even one nice AU from the last century unless there's a pre-1965 in AU.
It will be very interesting whatever you find.
Interesting read! While the survey continues, I suggest taking a count of 2009 nickels, P and D.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
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There were none in my sample.
Ya good luck.
Hoard the keys.
I just got $20 in nickels from my local bank to look at.
All were bank-wrapped and marked "Loomis" (the armored car company).
There was not much of anything notable in the batch.
Only one pre-1960 coin, a decent 1958-D in AU.
It was apparent that some brand new production coins were mixed in with older coins.
The new ones could be easily spotted by the bright shiny edges.
I was able to put together one decent-quality BU roll of 2021-D coins by picking out the best 40.
All of the coins from the 1990s and before were in somewhat rough condition (none worth saving).
Out of all the nickels I have looked at over the last dozen years or so, I still have found only ONE 2009 coin and that was about 10 years ago.
When I was CRHing in late 70's thru mid 80's I found multiple rolls of all of the dates.
Sold off a couple thousand War Nickels. Never found the first 1950-D nickel. Nada,
not one .
I've got many rolls of nickels from the 30s, 40s and 50s collected over many years from circulation. I haven't found much in the last few years. I can go many years or even decades without getting a silver war nickel in change.
Teaser. 20 rolls in and found more silver than the last 3 bank boxes of halves! 1943, 1944 P. Also 1940 D, 42 p, 49 D.
Found 2 2009 Ds which double the amount I have.
Feel like a dullard, the 12/06 was This December. Cheers.
OK Ladies and Germs the count is in from the rainy day's search. 1 bank box of nickels, 1998 coins (one penny, one dime in place of the two missing nickels).
1940's, 8 each includes 3 wartime nickels, best was 49 D, 49 S both VF.
1950's, 6 each best 54 D in EF.
1960's 52 each (33 each 64s), best was 1 1960 P MS 64/65.
1970's 91 each, need to sort.
1980's 202 each, need to sort.
1990's 250 each, need to sort.
1 each 1971 D, VF
4 each 2009 (1 P, 3 D).
7 each 2010.
85 each 2004/5 evenly spread out, most Denver's, condition mostly ok, just a few low MS.
2000 to 2020, 307 each, all in BU, need to sort.
2021 175 each, all in BU, two only with FS6 the rest have tiny nicks on the very bottom step, all have some sort of cuts/gouge/clash/nick marks. The two best coins are the two with FS6.
21 Toner's, from just starting to two pink/blue hues front and back, 2020 Ds.
Ended up with 13 Sintered Coins (sorry Joey).
Break down for the last 13 rolls, average amount each roll, 17ea., 1938 to 2004 traditional Obverse, 23 each 2005
to 2021 new Obverse. Average BU in the newer obverse was 10 mostly 2021 Ds.
All the rest to be spent or returned to bank.
Found a old new stock 5 cent Whitman in my closet, so might fill some holes and release the rest into the wild.
Cheers. Oh, by the way it's still raining.
>
This is very close to the other samples. I'm guessing most of the other '60's are pre-1965. I'm also guessing there are only five or six nice attractive '70's coins in F or better which aren't culls. They are likely all common date. There should be plenty of nice '80's of almost every date.
The '71-D sounds like the best of the box.
I'm impressed how many of the '09's made it to circulation and are still there.
Because people save the older nickels and many get back into circulation you can find a nice 1939 but the higher mintage 1969-S has simply been allowed to wear away and no longer exists. Millions of the '39 exist in circ and in BU rolls but the '69-S is gone. The '39 is worth at least 12c in any condition but a nice chBU roll of '69-S will bring only about the same.
3 war nickels is quite remarkable and is a "contamination". It is probably isolated and caused by a small batch being redeemed inadvertently. The '49-S is remarkable as well since these were pulled out even before 1960. Low mintage S mints weren't seen much even in 1957. I found nearly as many '38-D's as '49-S's. '38-S, '39-S, and '51-S were the other underrepresented S mint coins I found.
Did not know about the 69s. Just checked them. 3ea. Ds, 2ea. with the S mint mark, one looks to be AU 50/55, for a total of 5ea. This box just keeps on giving. Cladking, was this a really unusual box? May try to pickup another one tomorrow. Cheers.
Jeesh, I don't know. I haven't been looking at nickels for so long all I have to go by is the other two samples mentioned here.
You certainly have more '69's than I'd expect but these aren't rare in circulation and the sample size is small enough simple coincidence can account for it. The war nickels are so rare that finding three in the same box goes beyond mere chance and constitute a contamination. The MS-64 '60 nickel is quite unusual but lots of the older coins get into circulation even after 56 years and someone has to encounter them within the first few weeks before they become AU. A '69-S in AU is also quite unusual since very few post-'64 coins were ever saved. Indeed, it's so unusual that it's entirely possible that it sat in a piggy bank or something most of its life. Usually I'd automatically ascribe it to a roll or bag that was spent but there are very few such coins. The most likely scenario is that it came from a mint set within the last three or four years. Lots of mint set coins are substandard or tarnished and they get spent. Unfortunately by the time they are AU the tarnish will be worn off. But only about 10 or 15 thousand '69 mint sets are being busted up per year so the chances of finding an AU are low. Is it well struck? Are there any distracting marks or strike deficiencies?
Every box will have at least a few surprises in it which is what makes rolls searching so much fun. I enjoy looking at the coins in good condition or bad and imagining what they've been through before getting to me. There are lots of pattern to wear, distribution, and modes of circulation to provide clues for many coins. Every coin is unique and this is even more true for the ones in circulation. If they aren't unique enough yet they likely soon will be because by the time you see it again it will have a lot more wear. Well, realistically the odds of getting one back drop very rapidly as time goes by so most of the ones you get back are not much changed.
The '69-S is an outlier just like the '60. The '71-D is the best of the box. The war nickels are "unnatural" and didn't occur without "help".
I'd say it's a pretty good box.
There's a high probability of getting another war nickel if you do. "Contaminations" tend to reverberate in change. Of course most people will pick out silver if they see it so unless there were a lot of war nickels going into circulation you won't see any. I certainly wouldn't go to the trouble for an increased chance of finding another war nickel. The next box is likely to be back to normal with one or two different outliers and they will probably be pre-1965. Of course there are lots of things to look for and the more you look for the more anomalies you'll see.
I guess I miss searching nickels. Quarters are fascinating but nickels are more "dynamic" in that with so high attrition more coins will jump out at you. Quarters have become mundane over the last ten years with more evidence of sorting and a growing number of culls and low grades. "Outliers" do not lie as far out. Mebbe I just need a larger sample size.
There are also more '40s nickels in the sample than I'd expect. They might be part of the contamination with the war nickels but, again, sample size is too small to rule out coincidence.
Are the '40's coins in better than VG?
Same here on large time gap searching nickels so had no expectations with this box.
Here is the break down on the 40s, used photo grade as a reference.
G-40D,43P,47D
VG-44P
F-42P,43S
VF-49S,49D
As luck would have it the 47D and the 49D will complete the 40s in my old Whitman folder. All from CRS.
4 more holes to fill for the 50s. Only one hole filled for 38/39.
Cheers.
I worked in a coin shop in the early 1980's. We had a large stock of BU rolls of all denominations, but nickels were poor sellers. Rolls of clad dimes and quarters were seldom seen. We had accumulated far too many late date nickels, and they were just taking up space. The owner was going to take about 100 rolls to the bank. When I expressed an interest in taking some of them, I was able to buy them at face value. I took 15 to 20 rolls, ranging from 1956 to 1971. Off the top of my head, I know that I have 1956-D, 1957-D, 1959-P (another tough date), 1960-D, 1962-D, 1964-D (above average quality), 1965, 1967, multiple rolls of 1968-S, 1969-D and S, and 1970-S, and one roll of 1971-D. Over the years I have resisted the temptation to spend them or cash them in at the bank, but now I'm more inclined to cherry pick them, and sell the remaining coins on the BST board.
Until recent years, I would save mint marked nickels from the '40's, S mints from the '50's, and current dates that appeared to be MS. I cashed in the lowest grades a few years ago. War nickels were common in the '60's. I began saving them around 1962, when they were worth 7 cents, and cashed in most of them during the 1979-80 silver and gold boom. I have found no more than 5 of them in the last 10 years.
This thread has been a good discussion regarding the possible merits of a long-neglected series.
Shops used to let me take their common BU's at face as a courtesy. I'd pull out Gems and varieties and haul the rest to the bank. It was mostly cents and nickels but there would be rare roll of clads.
The war nickels were the last silver to disappear from circulation even though they have more silver per dollar than any other US coin. Nobody wanted them and when the bulk of the other silver was gone in 1968 nearly half the war nickels in existence were still circulating.
Don't know about you guys, but I'm always looking for Henning nickels popping up in rolls or circulation.
The counterfeits are worth more than most any circulated nickels!
Especially the rarer dates Henning produced other than the 1944.
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
These used to turn up in accumulations of war nickels but I haven't seen one in a very long time.
That's surprising in a way, because they are missing the big mintmark above Monticello. I guess just thrown in there by date
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
In the old days there were always a lot of dark or cull nickels in mixtures.
I only found a couple so it could be coincidence too.
When I sort war nickels I tend to sort by either side and only flip them over to check the date. If the date were on top and I wasn't familiar with the Henning nickels I'd just toss it in.
I mostly roll search cents and I find my best coins in customer wrapped rolls vs fed or armor. Of course over half of the time I’m just searching previously searched coins. But the other half is a sampling from personal hoards and you can always tell the difference right away. And even when I do luck into the good clean stashes there is still varying degrees of mint state. An upper limit for any one stash might be MS65 whereas the next one might yield several 68’s.
Threads like this remind me that l need to go back to where I scored well on cents and load up on Jeff’s.
I'll probably bring this thread up at least once more when I get another sample but for now just a few tentative conclusions.
I believe it will require searching no more than 7,500 coins to put together a nice attractive F and better set from '65 to date. Most of the common dates will be VF with a few XF's.
VF sets are still possible with intensive searching but the problem as it always has been is that the key dates suffer selective attrition especially in high grade. Collectors almost invariable save the nicest coin they can find which means the keys which are already scarce are drawn down in higher grades first. Most of these were getting tough in VF even before collecting started (probably around 1999).
Everyone has always said that it doesn't matter if the '75 nickel is tough in BU or not because collectors can always get one out of circulation. But here we are in 2022 and this date will be effectively non-existent in circulation in only a few more years and is already almost invariably beaten up if you can find one at all. When you look at the BU's you find several interesting things. First off you'll find that this is one of many dates that was very lightly saved. This means that most collectors have no choice but to get one in a mint set. The '75 mint set Philly nickels aren't too much worse than other dates of the era for tarnish but they aren't as easily cleaned. More importantly though is that two years ago you could buy all the '75 mint sets you wanted at close to face value and just spend everything that wasn't a nice '75 nickel. A lot of people did just this. But now these sets retail at as much as $18 and spending the coins in them looking for a nice nickel will quickly get pretty pricey. This coin is simply a lot tougher in chBU than the '50-D and now it's also a lot tougher in AU, XF, and VF. In five or ten years it will be tougher than the '50-D across the board and the beat up culls and G's will be hard to find in circulation. Where most of the '50-D's are in Unc or chBU, most of the '75's will be in F or VG.
It's really a remarkable situation. I never imagined collectors would ignore these coins until they were virtually gone. Maybe they'll continue to ignore them but I have to believe the mint set market is telling us that collectors are not looking at moderns but rather putting together collections. Or, perhaps, it's merely telling us the mint sets are gone. The retail demand suggests a broader base demand because the drivers of the bid increases have stopped surging. Two years ago the '75 set contained $9.25 worth of coins at wholesale and was worth $4 wholesale. Go figure. Now it contains about $10 wholesale and is going for even more. The coins in these sets aren't better than they were so I suspect a lot of the increased demand is for the tough nickels and dimes. There are nice gemmy cents in a lot of these also.
I believe we'll see that a lot of the best modern nickels won't be the early dates as in clads but rather the mid dates. Nickels were inexpensive to set aside so most were saved in significant quantities but when you start getting to the mid-'70's rolls were saved much more sporadically. Some of the higher mintage issues will be the toughest. Sure there are lots of '77 nickels in circulation and VF's shouldn't be too hard to find but a lot of new collectors will be using the internet to find their coins and everyone might be surprised what happens when lots of collectors start competing for the same rolls, sets, and coins. Dealers don't even stock any of these. There's not even a real wholesale market so no one can tell the best dates from the worst. This situation is in most ways unprecedented but if you want a great collectible and a huge challenge just try to put together a VF set of nickels from circulation. You might get lucky. See how many nice attractive nickels you can find from before 2004.
I have two Dansco albums (1938-1964) containing only those Jefferson nickels I find in change. After examining countless 1938's and 1939's found in change I finally found a 1939-D in 2021 (F to VF condition) after 55 years of searching. 1938-D, 1938-S, 1939-S and 1950-D continue to elude me, perhaps on account of my East Coast location.
On occasion I will search rolls of nickels. Pre 1960 coins are now scarce in circulation.
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/gold/liberty-head-2-1-gold-major-sets/liberty-head-2-1-gold-basic-set-circulation-strikes-1840-1907-cac/alltimeset/268163
I searched extensively in the mid-'70's for several years and used to pull out '39'D's "frequently" but they were all much more worn than any other date. The best was a VG. The only '50'D I ever found was in '64.
I could put together rolls of things like '46-S in XF/ AU.
I saved out four rolls of nice attractive AU '71P's. I wish I had kept them.
I got another sample and this one implies a far lower attrition rate. It's going to take a few more samples to determine what are outliers and what are not. The first one was so surprising I have to believe this one is more reflective of what's really in circulation. I'd wait to get more samples but this one shows a fascinating pattern that is consistent with the first.
N=300
1940 VG cull
1951 VF very nice
1954-D F+ nice
'60-D bar nickel (been a long time no see) VG+ nice
1961-D F nice
"4" '64 VG (one cull)
'64-D AU50 nice
"3" '69-D Fine (one XF) (all cull)
'70-D F cull
'71-D VF cull
'72-D VF cull
'73 VF+ cull
'76 VF cull
'76-D VF cull
"2" '77 VG cull
"2'77-D F cull.
It goes on this way with 13 more coins through 1985 and they are all cull.
Somebody might have gone through a large number of coins saved out over the years and pulled out all the culls. Normally only about 60% of coins from this era are culls and most of them because they are all scratched up. But note that the older coins are only 20% cull in this sample.
I'm not sure what's going on but both of these samples are probably heavily contaminated. I believe attrition on '65 nickels is probably no higher than 65% and no lower than 55% but this is based on old trends. There is a massive buildup of culls in circulation and much of this damage is quite recent. This is apparently not being caused by low velocity and and more machine counting as was my working hypothesis for years.
It might be noted that most identifiable contamination is caused by collectors and sorting. There are no natural ways for coins to be sorted by date though old coins do sometimes get back into circulation. This is far less common than people think because the mint and FED rotate their coin stocks on a First In First Out Basis. But coins can go into storage in one district and stay there for years sometimes before they are the first out. This second sample could be evidence of exactly that except that an old sample shouldn't contain only cull moderns.
More info to absorb.
Thanks
Wayne
Kennedys are my quest...