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Existing Population of Peace Silver Dollars
Smetzy
Posts: 9 ✭
in Q & A Forum
Is anyone aware of ANY estimates of how many Peace Dollars remain in circulation today, especially by date/mint?
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Smetzy
Posts: 9 ✭
Smetzy
Posts: 9 ✭
Comments
The Dave Bowers book: Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars of the U.S. makes an attempt. There may be more modern books w/the info you request.
I am going to guess zero in circulation
Successful BST Transactions: erwindoc, VTchaser, moursund, robkool, RelicKING, Herb_T, Meltdown
Hard to say with the two big silver melts in the past 50 years.
A recall an expert speaker on Silver dollars estimate of the 1 billion Morgans struck, maybe a third were still in existence.
One third of all Peace Dollars remaining seems to be a solid guess.
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
To the OP point, almost surely the number extant is probably date/mint dependent; although valid information at that level of detail may be difficult (if not impossible) to ascertain.
Still, good to hear the more generalized guestimates as that provides valuable context.
Successful BST Transactions: erwindoc, VTchaser, moursund, robkool, RelicKING, Herb_T, Meltdown
It seems to me that the large sample available from eBay could shed lots of light on relative scarcity and possibly some estimate on absolute numbers if combined with PCGS and NGC data. Any thoughts?
The bay has quite a few made in a country that is not the US.
Interesting thought @Smetzy. I worry that 1) the ebay sample is not representative of the population because there are a wide range of factors that affect whether a coin owner lists a coin for sale, and 2) PGCS/NGC pop data has an unknown amount of crackout/resub - although this may only be relevant for higher grade specimens.
An interesting topic nonetheless
Successful BST Transactions: erwindoc, VTchaser, moursund, robkool, RelicKING, Herb_T, Meltdown
To hemispherical: I have bought close to 1,000 Peace Dollars on eBay and have never encountered, nor heard of, fake coins. I would view that as a very minor issue unless you know of some data showing otherwise. In short, all statistical sampling deals with these issues, but the law of large numbers (sample size) should negate that issue as not a significant bias. To JimW: I think you are correct on crackout/resub with graded coins, but I have a method to skirt that issue. It will take a few days to prepare a preliminary post, but I will post some numbers as examples on how to use the data to hone in on "relative rarity" and even some estimates on the extant population by date/mintmark. I shall return.
@Smetzy
Saying YOU have not seen any does not mean they are not there. You probably have good (trusted) sources and a good eye on the bay.
You should post your query in the US Coin forum for more responses.
https://m.alibaba.com/product/60769089212/usa-1922-PEACE-DOLLAR-DESIGN-the.html?f=wholesaler&redirect=1
My purpose in this effort was simply to determine the “relative rarity” by date/mintmark for all Peace dollars. Based on a sample size of 342,969 Peace dollars offered for sale, here are the percentages of the sample for the 5 rarest coins. I should note that I observed these percentages as I added dates to the sample size (approximately 20,000 sales per date) and the rankings were notably stable, never changing by more than one ranking. I feel very confidant that these percentages accurately reflect the extant population of Peace dollars. 1927s @ 1.11%, 1926d @ 1.27%, 1924S @ 1.39%, 1925s @ 1.66%, and 1927p @ 1.77%. In my next post I’ll offer an estimate on the total extant population of Peace dollars. Comments and suggestions would be appreciated.
Peace Dollars are NOT scarce. Not one dang bit. I'll bet fifty percent of them still exist. Few were melted in 1979-1980.
BillDugan: What data do you have that supports your belief that 50% (95,000,000) exist? ANY evidence would be appreciated.
Since many collectors are primarily interested in uncirculated coins, I looked at those numbers based on a sample size of 84,941 Peace dollars offered for sale. The 1934s was the rarest in uncirculated condition followed by the 1927d, 1927s, 1926d, and then the 1935s. This confirms the frequent comments I have seen on the web as to the difficulty of finding 1934s in good condition as well as, to a lesser extent, the 1935s.
Estimating the extant population of Peace silver dollars using sample data is not possible without some base number of coins currently in circulation for a specific demographic. However, if we at least know the MAXIMUM number of coins in existence for that demographic, then we can estimate the MAXIMUN extant population. That would add a great deal of useful information since I am not aware of a single estimate based on reasonable evidence that even exists at this time. To arrive at this MAXIMUM estimate, one needs to observe the number of coins in a sample that possess that demographic and the maximum number of coins with that same demographic that could possibly exist in the extant population. The sample proportion should mirror (equal to) the extant population proportion. For example, we know the total number of Peace dollars that have been graded by PCGS and NGC (from their population reports). This is the MAXIMUM number of coins graded by those two services that could exist today. We can then measure the number of PCGS and NGC graded Peace dollars in our sample and equate the two proportions. Using SG to represent number of graded coins in our sample, SS to represent sample size, TG to represent the MAXIMUM number of graded coins, and EP to represent the MAXIMUM extant population, the equation is:
SG/SS = TG/EP
When solved for the variable we seek, we get EP = (TG * SS)/SG. Using data from 3/13/19; TG = 1,389,504, SS = 20,691, and SG = 3,759. This yields a MAXIMUM extant population of Peace silver dollars of 7,649,371. Based on this one sample of 20,691 Peace dollars, I therefore conclude that the extant population of Peace silver dollars is something less than 7,649,371, - significantly less than the 190,577,279 that were originally minted.
@Smetzy Can you provide a standard error on that sample-based estimate?
LOL
Successful BST Transactions: erwindoc, VTchaser, moursund, robkool, RelicKING, Herb_T, Meltdown
Which estimate? I could do standard deviations on most of them although that would require some time-consuming calculations. Tell me which number you are talking about and I'll put it on my list of things to do.
I like what you are doing Smetzy, very interesting. I'm surprised that the 27-D is less often seen than the 27-S.
I believe the coinfacts page for each issue has an estimated survival. For example: https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1923-1/7360#sectionRarity
Collector, occasional seller
ChrisH821: Thank you for the reference. It gives me something to compare with and it is the kind of response I was seeking with my original post. I would note that the 27d is less often seen than the 27d (in my sample) for ALL grades, opposite is true, although the difference is minimal, for uncirculated coins.