Population diarrhea redux

RYK

This is my version of population diarrhea:

This is the NGC population for 1842-D SD $5's:

MS 112 1 2 17 15 22 8 5 11 21 3 6 1

The number "21" (coincidentally the number of my favorite baseball player of all time) is the number of AU-58's graded. Many other branch mint gold coins have a similar profile with a significant bump up in the number of 58's and a sharp drop of in MS coins. Many of those AU-58's get submitted over and over again as the owner tries to get the big price jump in MS-61. I am sure other series suffer from the same "diarrhea" that has rendered the pop reports virtually useless to collectors of circulated gold coins.

lava

Your version of population diarrhea is rampant in the Morgan prooflike and dmpl sector. I would liken it more to a bad case of stomach cramps, because we all know the true numbers are less due to the crack-out and cross-over games. With moderns though, that is a real case of the runs, because the pops are legitimately jeopardized by submission of previously ungraded material. With moderns, the evidence is in the toilet, but with the older coins, the evidence never materializes, so it is simply a matter of adjusting to having to live with false numbers.

shylock

Roberto Clemente?

I find the pops useful as a general idea of condition rarity but you really do have to learn to interpret them. The inflated grades aren't always the one below the largest price jump, in the Indian cent series the MS65RD pops for common dates are littered with duplicates. People just don't bother protecting their investment at this grade (by sending in the labels) due to their relatively cheap price and already inflated population. For example, the pops for 1906 IH's in 65RD has jumped from 108 to 147 since Aug 2000. This is the toughest common date in 66RD, and I'd bet at least 75% of those new additions to the pops are dupes.

morgannut2

I notice in RYK's grade number sequence that there's a bump at a grade labeled 22. I don't have Ngc pop's but bet there's some kind of price jump like VF to EF. That happens in many circulated Morgan Key dates at these grade/name breaks. Of the Morgan DMPLs, some I know are off big time. My favorite is the MS-63 1892CC Dmpl where I submitted 1 coin 4 times, a New Jersey dealer submitted 2 of them 3 times each, and I know of one other that went 4 times before it "4 rd". That's 10 ghost coins out of an MS-63 pop of 43 total. I wonder how many modern Proofs are actually crackouts compared to new coins? Bet it's not many, even though the pop's just go up and up for moderns and classics alike.

michael

with the wild cowboy prices of the ;ast 1980's for early commems the pops are overstated for many 25% even 35% before the huge jump in price

snd look at the pops for ms64 flyers it is obvious that many where being submitted for the ms 65 grade and a three times just in price or more i think the ms64 pops for flyers 1857 for example are overstated by 45%

but if the tags are not sent back such is life but the pop reports are still great as some pops do not change and within your speciality you can interpret and extropolate the pops and they have increased my knowledge of the availability of many different coins well for some it is a no brainer for others surprises and for others educated guesses but the pops are a great useful tool if you understand the series you are in and read between the lines so to speak

michael