Confusion on PCGS series for 1971 Canadian specimen dollars...

coinpictures

Either my brain is on TILT or there's something cornfoozling about the PCGS series numbers for 1971 Canadian specimen dollars.

According to Charlton, there are 2 types of 1971 specimens: one in nickel (flowered reverse design) and a slightly larger one in silver (coat of arms reverse design).

Looking at the PCGS population reports online yields the following under the category of SP:

Series 160583, designated "Brit. Columbia". 14 total coins certified (no clue if this is nickel or silver).

Series 173210, designated "British Columbia". 390 total coins certified (ditto).

Then there's the mystery series:

Series 1003889, which comes up as an invalid series number online. Problem is that I have 2 of them sitting in front of me, labeled "Canada Centennial Ag" on the holder.

Now, logic would dictate that 1003889 is the silver coat of arms reverse (hence the "Ag" in the label designation), and 173210 is the nickel flowered reverse... so what is 160583? All 3 are specimens.

To confuse things even more, I have a silver coat of arms reverse dollar in a 173210 series holder, labeled "Canada Brit.Col" on the holder, which would imply that both 173210 *AND* 1003889 are the silver coat of arms design, which makes no sense at all. Then there are only 14 of the nickel flowered reverse coins certified???

I suspect that 1971 dollars are being randomly assigned to one of 3 series when there should only be 2 series to begin with...

Which makes the population data utterly useless.

Anyone have a clue on this?

1960NYGiants

Yep - PCGS has revised some of it's coin numbering for the Canadian series. I have a couple of older slabs that the coin # on the slab is different than that shown in the Registry.

Send BJ an email, she'll be able to tell which # is most correct (aaah current).