BU Roll Market Perking Up.

Claiming "scarcity" due to limited roll availability is just another of your exaggerations.

No! I'm claiming that limited availability is the mechanism for higher prices. I'm claiming roll availability is limited because moderns aren't as "common as grains of sand on the beach". They were never saved and those that were have had staggering attrition.

Of course your beliefs can't accommodate the actual facts so now you're imagining mountains of single coins sitting in mountains of collections, but the facts don't support this belief either. If there were lots and lots of these collections you'd see them in the coin shops but on the rare occasion one comes into a shop it was assembled recently.

@dcarr said:

@WCC said:

@dcarr said:

@WCC said:

@cladking said:

@WCC said:
The lowest price for a roll of nickels is $10 for a 69-S. That's almost 60 years later. For dimes, $15 for a'70-D. That's almost 60 years later. For quarters, $20. for a '74. That's over 50 years later.

You just keep missing the point. The coins aren't out there in chBU. It's also true that many dates aren't common in MS-60 ('70-D isn't one of them) but the demand isn't for ugly MS-60; it's for chBU. Buyers want nice attractive and flashy MS-63 with a smattering of gemmy coins. No problems, no tarnish, no dull surfaces like MS-60 '70-D dimes.

>
So, you're telling me that anyone with the money can buy a 1796-1797 half dollar any day of the week (yes, really), but they can't buy the random US moderns you're describing because of scarcity?

I don't believe you even believe that.

No, I can't help it that you don't understand dealer economics, network effect, and time preference.

That's the root cause behind your experience, not an actual scarcity.

Claiming "scarcity" due to limited roll availability is just another of your exaggerations. The vast majority of coins have zero roll availability of any quality, but it's not because more than a low or very proportion are scarce either. It's economics.

You do know this, don't you?

.

As a test, I checked eBay to see how many current listing there are for :

1797 half dollars : 3 coins listed
1978-D half dollars, uncirculated rolls: 3 rolls available.

Yes, and this is due to the price difference.

It should be apparent than even in roll quantity, 78-D halves are far more common vs. 1796-1797 half dolalrs.

.

Yes, although the pool of potential buyers for the Kennedy roll is MUCH larger than the 1797 half dollar because the roll is MUCH cheaper (about $50 to $100 for the roll vs $50,000 to $100,000 for the 1797 half dollar).

The price difference is a factor of 1,000x.
Per coin, the price difference is 20,000x.

The '78-D will never be as good a coin as the 1797 until there are 20,000x as many collectors. Obviously @WCC is right because there can never be even one more collector of clad junk than real silver much less 20,000x as many.

I will refrain from carrying his illogic further.

@SanctionII said:
I spent some time looking through silver and clad Washington quarters (proof and MS circulation strikes) looking for varieties over the past two evenings.

I did not find any varieties, but in looking through these coins I again was reminded how attractive and eye appealing some of the MS clad quarters minted from 1965-1998 (the years that I have that were pulled from circulation in the year of issue and that were acquired, little by little, from a variety of sources) can be.

Many of these quarters that I have are flawed for various reasons and would grade MS63 or less. However there are some that are very eye appealing and attractive. I submitted some of them for grading and obtained some MS65 and MS66 grades. Whether any of these clad quarters (raw and slabbed) will ever command market prices of more than $10.00 I have no idea. However I am glad to have them in my collection.

P.S. I still wish that Wondercoin would allow forum members to see images of his clad quarter Registry Set (I have always wondered what Wondercoin's clad quarter's look like )

A lot of collectors can't see a good looking clad coin in front of their nose. Many people don't so much see any clad coin as what it represents to them. A "Gem" is just common junk and a VF '87-D isn't even good for a phone call or a toll booth any longer.

If they could bring themselves to actually look at them they would find that a few are actually good looking coins even in VG but they can not and the destruction continues. Mint sets are nearly gone and the destruction continues. Some dates like '69 dimes are nearly gone from circulation and still it continues.

_That’s not “plenty.”
That’s catastrophic attrition.

And unlike Barber dimes, these coins:

had terrible production quality
were struck on unstable metal
circulated brutally
were never saved in quantity
have no dealer inventory
have no roll inventory
have no institutional supply

There is no mechanism left to stop further degradation.

The collector reality
If collectors started saving today, maybe 1–2 million attractive coins could be preserved. That’s the entire future supply. That’s all there will ever be.

This is exactly what you’ve been saying for years: Modern rarity is where you don’t find coins.

And nobody is finding ’69 dimes.

If you want a one‑liner for the thread-
1969 dimes aren’t scarce because of mintage — they’re scarce because almost none of the survivors are worth saving, and the attrition curve is still running._

@seatedlib3991 said:
I will admit that I am clueless when it comes to grading moderns. The entire 69/70 difference baffles me. The bulk of clad designs, for circulation, seem to be in such low relief I have no clue how to grade them. This pretty much keeps me on the sidelines. I have a fiduciary obligation to my family to at least have a strong fundamental grasp of what I am collecting. james

Relief was lowered again and again because politicians demanded pennis to be made. Clad is much harder than 90% which is why they've been able to circulate for so many years despite going from machine to machine rather than from one nice soft pocket to the next. They don't wear out so much from rubbing against other coins in pockets like the silver coins did but rather they just get beaten up.

Because clad is harder it is harder to coin so relief was lowered slightly to strike 1965 quarters. Of course we were in the middle of a coin shortage so mintages were astronomical so the mint reduced die pressure by simply moving the dies a little further apart meaning most strikes were very weak and this looks like lower relief on the finished coins. There are well struck '65 quarters but not a lot and few were saved. Most of what was saved was "run of the mill" so nice ones are not common.

So what do a trillion pennies have to do with this? Plenty! Because even when the coin shortage was over by late-'67 and mint operations slowed they still had billions and billions of pennies to make. Even after the penny hit worthless in 1974 they responded by making a few aluminum and steel pennies and ramping up penny production. Pennies ate up dies and presses so relief was lowered on the other coins because shallow relief took less press time and fewer dies. As ever more worthless pennies were produced relief reduced on nickels and clad.

Nobody paid any attention to clads so the mint was operating with no "customers" or concern for quality. Vending machine operators just wanted coins to fall into their coin boxes and didn't care if they were attractive or not so long as the banks could count them. Quality suffered as time went by and didn't improve much until the states quarters program when people started paying attention.

So, we still have low relief and most of the old (high relief) clads coins gone and were poorly struck and unattractive anyway.