Relative rarity by population

FC57Coins

Does anyone know if any studies have been done recently as to the rarity of different series by grade and population? It seems that something like this would be extremely useful.

Regards,

Frank

mrdq

2 limiting factors are that most of the raw coins wouldn't be counted and if they were who could agree what the grade is and the "crackout game" skews the pop counts of slabbed counts sometimes horribly.

tom

p.s.
99% of the collectors I know personally have zero slabbed coins

BSqr

I've produced a simple analysis along these lines by dividing the grade population by the mintage to come up with what I call the rarity quotient. I have only done this for modern gold commems however. At some point I will probably try to expand on the formula to take other factors into consideration but I just did it quickly too satisfy my curiosity. Other factors one might include would be: a grade weighting and date correlation. It's fairly interesting to compare market value against this quotient.

roadrunner

I conducted surveys of many series back in the late 70's and early 80's. The same problems existed with trying to weed out duplicates that bounced from dealer to dealer. But there were reasonable ways to keep the errors to a reasonable level.

Over a 2-3 year period I tracked all the appearances of better date seated coins (half dimes through halves.....I did the dollars later on) and as the common dates proliferated I eliminated then from contention (recording their multiple of another scarcer date). After recording 250 appearances of 1853 Arr and Rays quarters in just a few months, it was pretty clear why that was the most common quarter.
For many months I recorded every single seated coin in every grade by the selling dealer and date appearing in Coin World as well as dozens of price lists and every major auction catalog over many years. And the real value of the survey is that linked all the series together with respect to relative rarity. Now I could compare an 1840-0 WD half dime to a 70-cc half to an 1802 half dime.

Ultimately I ended up with a sizeable list of underrated and underpriced dates. For comparisons, I also did surveys on some bust material so I was able to compare appearances of 1804 dimes and quarters for example (or 1794/1801/1802 halves) with all the seated dates. I continued the surveys into the 80's only tracking UNC's of better dates and the rarest dates in circ. While it is certainly true that the results today would look different there would be many basic similarities. I published my UNC seated dime and quarter survey results in the Gobrecht Journal in the mid 80's. I think it stands up very well what the pops say today. And I was meticulous in tracking every UNC rare date quarter for years and knew when the same coin was reappearing. The pop reports don't have any way of controlling that. The circ data was never formally put out as many others did similar surveys in that same era and published them.


roadrunner

LanLord

Roadrunner, that's quite an undertaking. Looks like I may have to join the Seated Liberty Collectors Club in hopes of accessing back issues of that journal.

roadrunner

LanLord,

The LSCC prints compilations of several years of articles every so often (Collective Volumes). These are a good deal for their cost considering the wealth of research contained within. A web page for "Liberty Seated Collectors Club" will give you the necessary contacts. Happy hunting.

roadrunner

FC57Coins

That's quite an undertaking and quite a feat roadrunner.

And I agree with you MrDQ that there would be an accuracy issue with respect to the real numbers of coins out there - raw, slabbed by other companies, etc. But you'd think that NGC or PCGS, by issuing some sort of report by population report would be able to compile a thumbnail sketch of what's out there common and not so common by date and mint. One would think that since all of the data is available, it would be a matter of merely re-sorting the data into a different format. Just a thought.

Frank