The Great Washington Quarter circulation-distribution-experiment thread-----Part One.
keets
Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
First, the disclaimer, just so I don't get myself in trouble with anybody who thinks there's an agenda or point I'm trying to make. We all remember the NTC Experiment, don't wanna go there again....................
Anyway, to the point!!! A while ago, maybe late October-early November, we were having the usual U.S. Coin Forum roundtable disagreement about some facet of Moderns and the point was being made by the Modern Champion, 'ol Cladking, about the scarcity of some Washington Quarters and the mistaken assumption of many skeptics that there are so many of the coins available because there were so many struck. I decided to make an attempt at assembling a Whitman collection of BU's from bank rolls.
I thought about it for awhile, being the slow study that I am, and it ocurred to me that it might be more telling if I just did a random sampling from change with no focus on grade and no effort to obtain what might be skewed results from picking through bank rolls. What I did was just drop my daily change in a water jug like I usually do. Nothing systematic about it, sometimes I'd drop it in daily and sometimes I might go a couple of days with change in my pocket or laying around on a table getting grabbed up for a run to the store. For reference, I live in Northeastern Ohio. Some of the change came from vending machines at work, which may have been an inadvertent collection of bank-roll change, and some came from here-and-there as I conducted normal transactions in businesses from the local market/convenient store to Home Depot to Damons, just average daily change.
Today I sorted everything out for a trip to the bank and came up with a little over $50 in quarters. For simplicity, and being on the lazy side today, I lumped all the States Quarters together as one and didn't seperate the rest by M/M, just by date. Here's what I ended up with:
1965---2.
1966---4.
1967---5.
1968---1.
1972---1.
1973---2.
1974---4.
1977---2.
1978---1.
1980---3.
1981---3.
1982---3.
1983---3.
1984---5.
1985---7.
1986---3.
1987---2.
1988---2.
1989---1.
1990---3.
1991---3.
1992---3.
1993---2.
1994---6.
1995---12.
1996---4.
1997---1.
1998---5.
States Quarters---53.
dates where I found no examples are 1969, 1970, 1971, 1776-1976 and 1979.
The grades ranged from some fairly well worn F-VF coins all the way up to the expected lightly circulated AU's from the State Quarters. Surprisingly the 1965-67 dates were in good shape with a couple being nice XF's. Overall I'd say the average grade was XF from the whole population which seemed to be a good indicator of the clad composition's durability. Possibly some of the better coins are the result of releases of coins through the years at regular intervals as old stock is moved from the Fed. I'd like to do a distribution graph and continue with the little project to see if the peaks and valleys of this initial effort are true, since there seem to be noticeable periods where no/few coins were found despite the numbers struck. The bicentennials come to mind since I used to notice them rather frequently. I was surprised to find a couple of nice early 80's coins and wondered about the peak for 1984-85 and then again in 1994-95.
Thanks for looking and give any comments you have about what I found in this truly unscientific project. As an added observation, though I didn't pay close attention to the other denominations, I was surprised with how bad the Cents looked. With the new plated coins since 1982 they seem to stain easily instead of darkening with grace as the old composition coins did. With Nickels, I noticed very few of the new reverse 2004's despite the huge mintages. I suppose they have almost all been hoarded and/or are still in the vaults. The release is nothing like the State Quarter program which actually tried to get the coins in circulation. Also, I found no Half Dollars, received not a single one in change over the last couple of months, although I did spend several along with some Ike Dollars which seem to be a great curiosity!!! For you tone freaks, Sac Dollars take on beautiful color with light circulation. I found a couple of blue-gray AU's that made me pause for a moment. Could they be tomorrows sleeper??
Al H.
Anyway, to the point!!! A while ago, maybe late October-early November, we were having the usual U.S. Coin Forum roundtable disagreement about some facet of Moderns and the point was being made by the Modern Champion, 'ol Cladking, about the scarcity of some Washington Quarters and the mistaken assumption of many skeptics that there are so many of the coins available because there were so many struck. I decided to make an attempt at assembling a Whitman collection of BU's from bank rolls.
I thought about it for awhile, being the slow study that I am, and it ocurred to me that it might be more telling if I just did a random sampling from change with no focus on grade and no effort to obtain what might be skewed results from picking through bank rolls. What I did was just drop my daily change in a water jug like I usually do. Nothing systematic about it, sometimes I'd drop it in daily and sometimes I might go a couple of days with change in my pocket or laying around on a table getting grabbed up for a run to the store. For reference, I live in Northeastern Ohio. Some of the change came from vending machines at work, which may have been an inadvertent collection of bank-roll change, and some came from here-and-there as I conducted normal transactions in businesses from the local market/convenient store to Home Depot to Damons, just average daily change.
Today I sorted everything out for a trip to the bank and came up with a little over $50 in quarters. For simplicity, and being on the lazy side today, I lumped all the States Quarters together as one and didn't seperate the rest by M/M, just by date. Here's what I ended up with:
1965---2.
1966---4.
1967---5.
1968---1.
1972---1.
1973---2.
1974---4.
1977---2.
1978---1.
1980---3.
1981---3.
1982---3.
1983---3.
1984---5.
1985---7.
1986---3.
1987---2.
1988---2.
1989---1.
1990---3.
1991---3.
1992---3.
1993---2.
1994---6.
1995---12.
1996---4.
1997---1.
1998---5.
States Quarters---53.
dates where I found no examples are 1969, 1970, 1971, 1776-1976 and 1979.
The grades ranged from some fairly well worn F-VF coins all the way up to the expected lightly circulated AU's from the State Quarters. Surprisingly the 1965-67 dates were in good shape with a couple being nice XF's. Overall I'd say the average grade was XF from the whole population which seemed to be a good indicator of the clad composition's durability. Possibly some of the better coins are the result of releases of coins through the years at regular intervals as old stock is moved from the Fed. I'd like to do a distribution graph and continue with the little project to see if the peaks and valleys of this initial effort are true, since there seem to be noticeable periods where no/few coins were found despite the numbers struck. The bicentennials come to mind since I used to notice them rather frequently. I was surprised to find a couple of nice early 80's coins and wondered about the peak for 1984-85 and then again in 1994-95.
Thanks for looking and give any comments you have about what I found in this truly unscientific project. As an added observation, though I didn't pay close attention to the other denominations, I was surprised with how bad the Cents looked. With the new plated coins since 1982 they seem to stain easily instead of darkening with grace as the old composition coins did. With Nickels, I noticed very few of the new reverse 2004's despite the huge mintages. I suppose they have almost all been hoarded and/or are still in the vaults. The release is nothing like the State Quarter program which actually tried to get the coins in circulation. Also, I found no Half Dollars, received not a single one in change over the last couple of months, although I did spend several along with some Ike Dollars which seem to be a great curiosity!!! For you tone freaks, Sac Dollars take on beautiful color with light circulation. I found a couple of blue-gray AU's that made me pause for a moment. Could they be tomorrows sleeper??
Al H.
0
Comments
Interesting experiment, scientific or not.
pre '79 coins are slightly scarce in you sample. If you examine the '65 to '67
issues you'll see that the reverse lettering is worn into the rim making them
technically AG's. However you grade these though they are pretty smooth.
Of the 22 pre '79 issues there are likely six or seven with extreme problems like
corrosion or damage. Some coins like the '69 will require you to find several ex-
amples before a nice well struck one is found with nice even wear. And usually
the coin will have significant wear when it is found. With few rolls of these ever
saved and the mint sets being greatly reduced in number it's apparent that some
of the finest coins of the date are actually worn and in circulation.
I go through about $50 in quarters every week or two so these look pretty fa-
iliar to me. Completing a set of regular issues is not much of a challenge but
finding them all in nice well made and lightly used condition is virtually impossible
and not getting any easier. Whitman and Harris are selling a lot of folders for
these coins and indications are that at least some are getting filled up.
the coins are as i described them and not as you think they should be.
al h.
Quarter Spreadsheet
<< <i>Here is a link to dakra's results of a similar experiment. He posted it over on the NGC boards and asked if someone would transfer it over to your thread...
Quarter Spreadsheet >>
This is a great spreadsheet and very instructive. I'm guessing that somehow about
ten 1967 coins got mixed in with an otherwise good sample. This used to be rare be-
cause there was no mechanism by which quarters could be segregated by date but
more and more people are collecting the coins and people do separate coins. They then
get back into circulation in discreet packets until they are dispersed.
If you rearrange the data some other interesting information emerges:
..............N...........M...........N%...........M%
'60's.....080......04.78......11.4%......10.3%
'70's.....095......07.39......17.6%......12.2%
'80's.....270......11.98......28.6%......34.7%
'90's.....332......17.79......42.4%......42.7%
The first column is number in sample, second is mintage for that decade (in billions),
third column is the percentage of sample of that decade, and last column is the percentage
of mintage for the decade.
The '00 and later coins were tossed out because these coins are usually greatly over-rep-
resented or under-represented in a sample due to the way coins are introduced inti cir-
culation.
The older coind are always greatly underrepresented because as they wear and age, they
are also lost and destroyed.
It takes about 35 to forty years for half of a date to be lost at the current rate. This rate
has been increasing in recent years.