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Mintage Figures
stevepk
Posts: 239 ✭✭✭
I took a tour of the Denver Mint a few years ago and saw gigantic burlap sacks piled high with newly struck quarters. It was amazing to see what hundreds of millions of coins really looks like.
Looking at 19th and early 20th century coinage, what does a mintage figure between one and five million coins really look like? As a beginning collector, I thought the 1875-S twenty cent piece was a rare coin, and to a new collector who is lucky to see a seated liberty quarter, it is. This coin still has a fairly low mintage of about a million coins. It is typical to see mintage figures of about five million for seated liberty coins of the 1800s.
If I were to go back to the 1800's and take a tour of the Philadelphia mint, what exactly would five million coins, all of the same year, look like? Even if only 10% of these coins still exist today, it puts into perspective just how common most United States coins are. Desirable coins with original surfaces or mint luster, however, is another story.
Looking at 19th and early 20th century coinage, what does a mintage figure between one and five million coins really look like? As a beginning collector, I thought the 1875-S twenty cent piece was a rare coin, and to a new collector who is lucky to see a seated liberty quarter, it is. This coin still has a fairly low mintage of about a million coins. It is typical to see mintage figures of about five million for seated liberty coins of the 1800s.
If I were to go back to the 1800's and take a tour of the Philadelphia mint, what exactly would five million coins, all of the same year, look like? Even if only 10% of these coins still exist today, it puts into perspective just how common most United States coins are. Desirable coins with original surfaces or mint luster, however, is another story.
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that any come out pristine. In the old days it was much easier for some
coins to escape circulation since there was no attempt to keep all the
coins circulating and some were used as specie or to back paper currency.
Now days (since 1972) the FED and mint make an effort to be sure no
coins get lost in the back of the vault or fall through the cracks in the sys-
tem. Unless somebody actually saves a coin or it gets lost in the woodwork
it will circulate an average of about 15 transactions annually.
Of course the danger of being a coin never ends and even beautiful 1875-S's
20c can meet its fate in any number of ways. In the meantime we get to
care for it in our collections for a time.