250 X Face For This

Very nice 20c piece Trout and Jeff.
Tough coins to come by this good. The mint set ones would be prone to pvc damage.
Would gladly pay upwards of $50 for a choice / gem piece.

The 1971 20 cent is the hardest to find in circulation; other than 1983-4-5.
To have found one that good is a nice bonus, Jeff I only find well worn examples, and only 2 or 3 show up in a $100 bag.

To pay $50 for yours, trout is probably what you'll need to pay to get one that nice - someone'll need to bust up a mint roll to get good coins nowadays, the PVC mint set ones can be a bit kakky

Hard to get in that condition. I think $50 is reasonable.

I've noodled 5, but I have no idea as to their grade. I am fairly sure they are not as nice as Jeff's.

At the risk of sounding argumentative PJ I'll have to say you're wrong on both counts. Remember that a "specimen" is a way of striking and handling a coin and can also include special treatment of the coin blank. Specimen is not a grade. The RAM stopped putting specimen coins in mint sets sometime in the 1980's. You only need to crack open a few early 1990's mint sets to realise the coins are pretty badly bag-marked. We've looked through a lot of late 80's and 1990's mint sets looking for good coins and it's not unusual to find NO good ones in a set.

And PVC DOES affect cupro nickel. Sure it doesn't make the coins go black like copper but it can destroy the lustre. The acidic effects of PVC residue can etch the surfaces of copper nickel coins to an extreme enough extent to not only remove the lustre but effectively destroy the surfaces. Someone you and I know quite well had a complete decimal collection ruined by a PVC album including the cupro-nickel coins.

And in the interests of getting this thread back on topic here's a neat 1971 20c I paid 50x face value for. Plus it was struck through wire :)

Whilst I am not a collector of decimal coins I am still intrigued by the various variations and rarities available and in particular the great information provided by the members.! Congratulations to you all.!

Most with average wer would be lucky to be worth 50c-$1. These high grade examples are hard to come by due to the low mintage, the lowest of all the platypus issues, excluding 85 & 88

Relative to other issues they are indeed a low mintage sean. They are not uncommon though. I find my hit rate to be 1 in $50 noodled. The 72 5c's are quite a bit harder to find but still relatively easy if looking. I would guess an average of 1 in $75 searched is my hit rate when noodling 5c.