1901-O Barber Quarter, Same mintage-Higher value?

fivecents

Why does the 1901-O Quarter have a much higher value than other Barber Quarters with about the same mintage?

Trime

Close on the page to the key date 1901-S which for you change searchers, I found in a roll of quaters a long long time ago.

Dog97

The number of coins remaining from that mintage affects the value as many of them were lost to normal circulation.
Similiar mintage Barbers have a ngc/pcgs pop of almost double the 01-O because for some reason more examples were saved & not lost to circulation wear & tear.

MFH

What Dog97 said.

ARCO

Mintage figures are not always a determinant of scarcity. In the Barber series(as well as other series) some dates were saved more than others. There is no one specific reason for this, but much has to do with the area of the coin's originating mint, in this case New Orleans which was in a more economically depressed area of the U.S. at the turn of the century.

Also the placement of the date within the series, Middle dates tend to be ignored by collectors back when people were saving coins because they were more accustomed to the designs, while first and last year dates tend to be saved more. Just check the population numbers of any beginning and ending dates within any series to confirm this.

New Orleans coins at the turn of the century in all three series of barber coins exihibit this disparity between higher relative mintages and lower survivorship ratios. Some dates may not have as high of a retail price, but good luck finding them all the same, IE the 1904-O and 1905-O quarters as additional examples.

Tyler

Dave99B

Tyler said it well. Mintages mean very little. Nice O-mint material is hard to come by. There are monster sleeper quarters from that mint --- check out David Lawrence’s book. Original VF, XF & AU material is SCARCE.

I also think there is extra pressure on New Orleans material, just for the fact that it only operated until 1909 (or so). It opened in the 1830s, but was also shut down for a large part of the war (Civil). They did crank out a lot of material, but for a full blown US Mint, it wasn’t around long. That adds to the “curb appeal”. I mean really, when was the last time you found an 0-mint coin in your change???

My 01-0 example (ANACS XF40) was purchased from Dave Lawrence in 1997 for $315.00. Money well spent. It is indeed a toughy.

Dave

Conder101

There is some speculation that the survival of the early S coins may be lower than normal because they were in circulation in the San Fransico area and sufferered a high loss rate during the 1906 earthquake and fire.

MFH

The 1901-O quarter is extremely hard to find in upper grades. I bought a group of AU 58's from a dealer four years ago, and sent them off to ANACS for holdering. Mine came back AU-55. I was more than pleased with this purchase.

The New Orleans minted coins are notorious for weak strikes on the Barber series, and cherry picking well struck coins is a monumental task. They just arn't out there.