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Orphan Annie Dimes of 1844?
oih82w8
Posts: 11,916 ✭✭✭✭✭
I was doing my usual looking around at some of my usual haunts and found this "Orphan Annie Dime" at Northeast Numismatics and did a little google search as to it's description reasoning. I have not heard of this story before and thought that I would share with the forum. Apparently this is a "not-so-common" coin. Here are a couple of similar articles from the past, there are others just "google it";
http://www.numismaticnews.net/flipside/the-mysterious-orphan-annie-dime
-and-
http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ArticleId=2712
edit: removed "Little" from the title and body.
oih82w8 = Oh I Hate To Wait _defectus patientia_aka...Dr. Defecto - Curator of RMO's
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Cool story
Good Stuff
Steve
Those authors got it mostly wrong. But to the typical reader it does make a nice "story" even if there's little truth to it. Rather than a "not-so-common" coin, it's a "lot-more-available-than-you-think" coin in all but the higher grades.
With a mintage of over 72,000 coins, the 1844 dime should be a LOT scarcer in all grades than it really is. Someone stashed them away at a sizable rate within a few decades of being minted. Since they were a Philly coin, they were on the collector's radar. Had that been an "O" mint, they would have flown under the radar and the coin would be a major scarcity today (the 1843-0 is 2X the mintage of the 1844 and much scarcer). It's possible the 1844 dime mintage figures are wrong. Why so few dimes and yet so many half dimes, quarters, and half dollars were minted in 1844? Don't know. The US Mint did the same thing in 1846 with very few dimes and lots of quarters and halves. The survival rate of the 1846 dimes is somewhat skewed to the high side like the 1844 dimes.
While 1844 dimes "might" be hard to get in high grades, that's more a reflection of the very low mintage and being fairly early in the 19th century where subsequent silver melts occurred. An 1840 with drapery dime with a 377K mintage is scarcer than the 72K low mintage 1844. Same is true for the 1847 dime with 245K minted. Based on typical survival rates of that period of 0.05% to 1.0% (with 0.1 to 0.3% being typical for most dates) the 1844 dime "should" be a major league key date. Well, it's not. It's not even that scarce a date. A single hoarder over a few decades managed to acquire over 600 specimens. That's a lot. And a nearly 1% survival rate which is high for an early seated coin that wasn't put away at time of issue. The 1879 dimes were hoarded at time of issue in choice/gem unc. (mintage 15,000). It's survival rate is probably 3-4% with the majority in XF-unc. The Philly collectors hoarded the low mintage silver coins from 1879-1890. Surely, they were aware of the 1844 and 1846 dimes as well?
In the mid-1970's when I started my quest on buying underrated seated coins, the 1844 dime was quickly removed from my list in favor of much more inexpensive dates like 40 wd, 47, 51-0, 52-0, 53-0, 58-0 etc. that showed up less often than the 1844 despite much higher mintages. I've never owned an 1844 because it was never a good value imo. In the 1974 Coin World trends an XF 1844 dime was $200, the same as a Fine 1874-cc dime. Every specialist was trying to find that 74-cc which was hardly available ( 75-100 known). The 1844 dime in medium circ grades were just terrible values. Somehow, too many survived. That's what the story should be about. If collectors up to the 1930's tended to ignore the coin they must have known it was more available than the mintage suggested. And how many full set collectors (incl O and S mints) of seated dimes were there in the 1920's to 1950's? Most dealers and collectors of the 1960's to 1980's still went by mintages so the 1844 didn't really get "outed" until the pop reports and auction archives became more prevalent.
It only took me a couple months of tabulating seated coinage appearances in Coin World back in 1974 that the 1844's just showed up way too often. And whoever the hoarder was probably had little opposition while assembling those 600+ specimens. A truly scarcer seated coin ought to be in the 300-500 specimens surviving, with the key and semi-key dates coming in at 50-250 specimens extant. And comparing an 1844 business strike dime to nearly non-existant proofs? A ridiculous comparison for the pre-1854 era.
So rather than "Orphan Annie," I propose to name the 1844 dimes "Abundant Annie." So why did so many survive? Did the identifying of these in the 1930's cause every remaining one of them to be quickly found and put away before any further attrition could occur? Seems unlikely to me. Early seated coins probably didn't circulate all that much into the 1930's. Breen noted that in the early 1940's he could still find the very common 1853 A&R quarters in circulation (13 MILL minted). In fact the 1853 25c is the most common seated quarter by far. But a 72,000 mintage coin nearly 90 yrs old still circulating freely in "numbers" by the 1930's? Not likely.
Thanks roadrunner...that very detailed report should dispel a lot of the myths around the coin. Cheers, RickO
Didn't a small handful of these just sell at Heritage at one sale within the past 3 years or so?
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars
RR knows his stuff on Seated coins! Sometimes it's hard to figure why some coins with lower mintages are more abundant than other coins with higher mintages. I always enjoy roadrunner's post on these topics.
Heritage had to sell 600+ specimens. Far from a "small" hoard. That's probably the majority of survivors. I was lucky I did my early research on this date before the West Coast Hoarder really took a toll on available specimens from 1975-2003.
Thanks for the plugs guys. Just trying to do my small part in dispelling myths. I'm sure there are important facts concerning that 1844 dimes I'm not aware of. Maybe some seated dime specialists have some ideas? This next article has the same 2 errors in only 2 paragraphs, stating that the mintage is not that low, and that far fewer specimens survived than could have been expected. In fact the mintage is very low for a seated dime of that era, and far more survived than the mintage would have projected.
libertyseateddime.com/1844-liberty-seated-dime/
Here's a reference to Heritage in July 2003 (Baltimore show) attempting to sell all 612 "hoard" specimens as a lot....min bid $158,000. They went unsold. There was one possible counterfeit. But Ron Guth states in Coinfacts that the hoard was sold in July 2003. Breen notes in his Encyclopedia nearly 40 years ago that the date was much hoarded, seen mostly in lower grades. I wonder if the 2003 hoard had any relationship to the 1930's hoard, or were both assembled independently? If there were already hundreds of specimens hoarded by the time I was tracking this date in the mid-1970's, that makes it even much more available than even I thought. Grey Reynolds wrote briefly about this date in March 2012 concluding there must be more than 900 specimens since it's not likely anyone could have hoarded more than 2/3 of the existing specimens. Rich Uhrich felt there was 1200. I think anything from 750-1200 is reasonable....which makes it only a run of the mill better date seated coin.
https://coins.ha.com/itm/seated-dimes/hoard-of-612-little-orphan-annie-1844-dimes-poor-1-to-612-coins-/a/328-6543.s
Excellent work, roadrunner.
Gerry Fortin's page on the 1844 dime:
seateddimevarieties.com/date_mintmark/1844varpage.htm
Heritage pieced out the hoard over several years, putting ten or so of them in every auction. If the original group did in fact sell as a single lot, it came back on the market immediately in pieces.
The c. 1970-2000 hoard was formed by Terry Brand, a west coast collector who I believe is now deceased.
The coin was promoted by Frank Ross, Kansas City collector, through the pages of Hobbies Magazine, the Numismatist, and the Numismatic Scrapbook, from about 1931 until the mid-50s. Ross may have previously pushed the coin through the periodical Philatelic West - there is a run of this periodical at the Historical Society in Lincoln NE, but I have not had opportunity to check it. I doubt that Ross had a significant hoard although I have never seen any evidence to confirm that either way. Reading through all the Ross propaganda on the coin I got the feeling that he was more in love with stories than actual coins.
The Brand group was started independently in the 1970s and was inspired by all the fables that Ross made up. I spoke with Brand via phone c. 2000. He bought many of them on the cheap but then dealers caught wind and started offering them at excessive prices, so there were a few he turned down. I think it would be very hard to duplicate the feat today - it's a lot easier when the coins are spread out and you can quietly pick them off.
Coinosaurus, thanks for that information. Good stuff.
Terry Brand could have done a lot better if in 1970 he started hoarding 1874-cc dimes and 1860-s, 70-cc, 71-s, 71-cc, 72-s quarters and 70-cc halves. I think there was someone out there who supposedly hoarded 50 or so 1870-cc halves. They were darn cheap in the mid-1970s going for around $175-$250 in Fine condition.
At the time, it was a lot easier to find 1844 dimes than early CC quarters, although Larry Briggs owned about ten 70-CC 25c at once. Five of these were stolen in a group, generally low grade and/or problem pieces. Somewhere I have images.
the availability of the 1844 can be attributed to the demographics of where they were made. Philadelphia in 1844 was a thriving city, most of them probably remained circulating locally for years. the climate was somewhat gentle (unlike the branch mints) so it is entirely reasonable that the survival rate is most likely due to forces other than people setting them side because they were scarce
Thanks!
YN Member of the ANA, ANS, NBS, EAC, C4, MCA, PNNA, CSNS, ILNA, TEC, and more!
Always buying numismatic literature and sample slabs.
I can't really agree with that. If true, you'll have to explain why the 1846 dime with 43% of the mintage of the 1844 really was many, many times harder to find in the 1970's. Also the 1847 dime with 3.4X the mintage of the 1844 dime, has always been scarcer....despite the big mintage. How about the 1842 quarter? That had a mintage comparable to the 1844 dime. Yet has a survival rate about 1/3 or less of the 1844 dime. The 1840 with drapery dime has 5x the mintage of the 1844 dime and is considerably scarcer.
There's more going here than just the "gentle" Philly coin forces to allow 1844 dimes to survive in isolation to the other Philly coins around it. What happened to all the 1842 quarters and 1840 wd/1846/1847 dimes? Either the mintage for the 1844 dime is wrong, or it got hoarded to a much higher degree than other low mintage coins of that era. And all of those coins had to come through the coin meltdown of 1850-1853. Why would the 1844 dime survive that better by far than any other coin of that era? I could also toss in 1841, 1845, and 1848 halves into this argument. And also 1848 dimes and quarters. And 1840 with drapery half dimes. For the most part of all these coins have followed general, survival rate thumb rules for pre-1853 seated coins....except the 1844 dime.
everyone has their opinion, I cant really agree with 1840 wd 1847 1848 dimes being considered at all "scarce" when one could buy a roll a year off ebay easily. and comparing dimes to quarters ? 1850-1852 quarters weren't minted in miniscule quantities but were obviously impacted by early melting yet 1850-1852 dimes are rather plentiful. if you want to dispute my theory that's fine but do it with facts not unfair comparisons to coins that simply are not scarce.