Which series are the hardest to find?

Boosibri

Putting aside coins pre-Seated period and the dollar denominations which are all obviously extremely rare to find, how would you rank the coins in order of hardest to easiest to find?

The Contestants:
Seated Half
Seated Quarter
Seated Dime
Seated Half Dime
Barber half
Barber quarter
Barber dime
Walking lib half
Franklin half
Standing Lib quarter
Washington quarter
Merc dime
Roosie dime

Early_Milled_Latin_America

Would it not depend on what mint they were minted? I would think some mints would be much tougher due to lower mintages. Just a guess I would imagine lower denominations lay around much more than say half dollars.

Or maybe you just mean in general.

Bayard1908

Franklin half is tougher than any of those halves, other than Seated.
Barber quarter is the toughest Barber coin.
Seated dime is more common than Seated half dime and all other Seated denominations.

BlakeWest

Great list! I'd say rarity climbs with age and denomination.

johnny9434

The older quarters seems to be the most elusive to me in finding, right place right time, fwiw

CharlotteDude

For me, Franklin, Barber, and Seated halves and Seated quarters all represent empty blanks on my finds list.

Boosibri

@CharlotteDude said:
For me, Franklin, Barber, and Seated halves and Seated quarters all represent empty blanks on my finds list.

Aq it’s funny, I found both a barber half and a seated quarter, but I’ve never found a Washington quarter.

CharlotteDude

@Boosibri said:

@CharlotteDude said:
For me, Franklin, Barber, and Seated halves and Seated quarters all represent empty blanks on my finds list.

Aq it’s funny, I found both a barber half and a seated quarter, but I’ve never found a Washington quarter.

But have you found a Frankie?? At this point, I feel like I’ll find half a dozen barber halves before I find one Frankie.

Boosibri

@CharlotteDude said:

@Boosibri said:

@CharlotteDude said:
For me, Franklin, Barber, and Seated halves and Seated quarters all represent empty blanks on my finds list.

Aq it’s funny, I found both a barber half and a seated quarter, but I’ve never found a Washington quarter.

But have you found a Frankie?? At this point, I feel like I’ll find half a dozen barber halves before I find one Frankie.

Nope. They hardly circulated I would guess

Dockwalliper

I dug my first Franklin a couple years back. I’ve never dug a Barber half. As far as hardest to find in that date range, it has to be seated 20 cent piece.

pcgsregistrycollector

Seated half. And gold pieces. Has anyone found a gold piece while metal detecting?

Bayard1908

@Boosibri said:

But have you found a Frankie?? At this point, I feel like I’ll find half a dozen barber halves before I find one Frankie.

Nope. They hardly circulated I would guess

I think it's more likely that Franklin halves were easy targets for detectorists in the 1960s and 70s. They could find the shallow Franklins, but, left the deeper Walkers and Barbers for us. If you've ever bought junk silver, you'll see that there's no shortage of circulated Franklins.

Göttinger

@pcgsregistrycollector said:
Seated half. And gold pieces. Has anyone found a gold piece while metal detecting?

In my 5 years of detecting I haven't found a gold coin so far.
Of the many detecorists I have met during this time (a couple hundred I suppose), only four of five were fortunated enough to find a gold one. Only one of them found several ones, the rest had found only one.

(In my county gold coins were used continuously from ancient times onwards, but only really started to be heavily circulated during the 1870's. Although they were legal tender until 1938, they practically vanished from circulation in 1914 and were replaced by banknotes).

HiBucky

I would say a 20 Cent coin....I have all the items listed including gold coin and a silver dollar and 3 seated halfs but no 20 cent coin.