Jeff. nickels from 2002,2003 observations!!

Manorcourtman

Hello All,

I wanted to share my experiences from this past week with other Modern Nickel collectors. I have been opening numerous shotgun rolls from 2002 and 2003 in the past days. What a joke these 2 years are for quality. I have never seen such poor quality in my life. Almost all of them look like they were sent through a grinder and then put in rolls! I didn't even use my 16x loupe with 90% of them because the flaws were VERY visible with the naked eye. If you look at the POP reports there is reason none have graded higher than 66!! I bet the best I saw was a 64-65 on a good day!! Many of the 2002's had such poor strikes the letters and dates were almost unreadable. So if you are thinking of buying numerous OBW rolls in these years I would advise against it!! Save your money and buy one already slabbed!!

Chris

GQ

Chris....thanks for the heads up. Have you heard more on the new reverse?

Gary

NICKEL TRIUMPH.....NO STEPS

cladking

I don't doubt your observations and have little specific knowledge of these two coins but
would suggest that when an issue comes very poor that it is sometimes effective to look
at a wider sample. Rather than look at large numbers of the same ol' same ol' try to find
more sources for the coin. This may be even more true now with the jumbo bags which are
not as easily divisable as a pallet of coins was. A whole area can be flooded with substan-
dard coin for a period of time with a few unsightly bags.

Look in various areas for good coin and when you find one then concentrate your efforts there.

Of course some years all the coins really are bad.

itsnotjustme

For 2003-P, there are 15 slabbed MS67FS out of ~150 submitted. I own one of them I thought was a bargain at $89.

For 2003-D, there are 7 slabbed MS65FS out of only 20 submitted.

I have searched ~30 mint sets, and only found one P mint to submit. It got a lowly MS65FS. The 2003-D nickels look like they spent 30 mintutes in a giant rock tumbler.

keets

the numbers you guys are tossing around are actually a good thing. it should stimulate others to look for a perceived scarcity and the gems will surface. it's always a risk paying a hefty premium soon after issue, this seems to follow that pattern.

think about it and someone do the math for the percentage-----100 rolls in a $200 bag equals 4,000 coins out of a mintage of approximately 200,000,000 just to use round numbers.

al h.

cladking

There is obviously real risk in buying pop tops in the modern coins and particularly the
very recent dates. But it should be remembered that there are still relatively few of these
coins being checked for high grade and varieties before they go into circulation and that
few coins will be removed from circulation in high grade once they get there. So the avail-
ability is really more a function of the percentage made in high grade than it is the number
made in high grade. If you check a lot of coins and find no high grade then either the nice
coins weren't made or the few that were went to the same place. This used to be typical
especially with the nickels. Some years almost all the gems came from the same die pair
and then these coins would end up in a localized area like Kansas city or Boston. If you
were in these areas then the gems would seem to be hopelessly common but anywhere
else they were virtually impossible.

There were so few of the older clad coins saved that in some instances there were simply
no rolls or bags saved from the area that recieved the varieties or gems. The '79 small motto
quarter was released right here in NW Indiana and South Chicago. At the time I considered
it a very interesting variety and a great coin but with 15% of the mintage it was far too com-
mon to ever attract much attention. It was only later that the earlier issues of this coin were
discovered (and of course, later issues). As time went by the proportion of this coin in circula-
tion just kept dropping. It now accounts for only about 1 1/2% of the coins in circulation as
they have spread about the country. There are no rolls of 1979 quarters from this area. I
keep my eyes peeled for them, but the few rolls I find are from the supplies that were set aside
in central Indiana or western Pennsylvania or California. I didn't have the knowledge or common
sense to set aside a few rolls at the time so now all I have are a few that I pulled out of cir-
culation at the time because they were gemmy and the AU's and XF's from more recent years.
And this is one of the more common modern varieties! The exact same thing applies to gems.
The only difference is that gems almost always appear in mint sets. But it is not unusual to not
be able to find ANY gems that were saved for the older moderns from rolls or bags because
these too come from the same IN, PA and CA supplies and if there were no gems in these areas
then there are likely no gems other than the mint sets.

It would be a pretty easy job to get a sample of mint sets from different parts of the country and
get a very good idea of the proportion of gems. You can then get a good preview of how rare or
common a coin is going to be assuming that they really can't be found in bags and rolls.