Is there a way to see the history of a coins population?
Mb423
Posts: 92 ✭
Is there a way to see the history of a coins population?
Could be helpful in determining how much a coin is worth...auction history is useless if the pop just increased.
Who's taking up the job?
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Resubmissions take a huge toll on the accuracy of such a history. There are enough old pop reports floating around that one could easily work up a "history" on any coin in question. I have around 8 old pop reports starting with 1988. But for the entire US series? No easy way to do it except to dig coin by coin.
Auction history is not "useless" if the pop has increased. Pops can increase just by submitting the same old high end coin many times. I would think that at any point in time, auction prices take into account the coin itself, where it stands among its peers, and the existing populations.
Only way I know is to piece together the chronological history using pop reports. I have almost 100 point-in-time reports that I've used to document population histories for coins of interest. For the most part, you really need that many to pinpoint in time spikes in pop numbers over a short period of time that are indicative of multiple resubmissions, pinpointing upgrades, crossovers, etc. It entails a ton of work.
I've submitted some of my findings ATS and they adjusted their pop reports as a result. Didn't get much interest from our hosts.
You can use the Heritage auction archives. They started listing pop info around 2004 in the lot description, later they included pop info in the lot title. A lot of the pop increases in the 80's and 90's were caused just by coins being graded for the first time.
Most population figures - not counting those in very low digits - are a 'best guess' due to multiple submissions. That being said, the guesses are likely within 25-30% of reality. And that is MY guess... Cheers, RickO