Low Grade Clad Coins?

I found an AU 1969-D Quarter in my change a couple of years ago, and believe me, I was very surprised.

It's in one of my Littleton State Quarter folders, in the 1932-98 Washington Obverse space.

I've got quite a few dimes in my pocket right now, & none of them is before 1990. Most are less than 10 years old. It struck me as anomalous when I noticed that all my dimes were shiny & new. (It also makes it more difficult to find a comparison piece to show how they shrunk Roosevelt's head, & moved the lettering away from the rims, in 2000.)

Cell phones also have something to do with it. Used to be that you'd always leave the house with a few dimes in case you needed to use a pay phone.

Bottom line â€" Coins aren't used as much as they were earlier and that's why it's hard to find a modern-day coin in a worn off condition.

Back in the '80's The Numismatist published a study that had been done in 1940 of the coins in circulation. It discovered that essentially all the 1909-S VDB cents were gone from circulation. They had been prefentially set aside by collectors. Not only was much of the mintage intercepted before it had a chance to circulate but by 1940 those that had gotten into pocket change had been pulled out.

Millions of "penny boards" made by Raymond and others had been sold during the depression when people had a lot of time on their hands and everyone needed this date. Today most of these are seen in Unc with a few AU's and lots of VF's and F's. Even during the '20's there were people setting aside rolls of new coins but this didn't take off until 1932.

Clad today has a completely different dynamic. People just never really set aside bags, rolls or even singles of clads. Until very recent times there weren't even serious collectors of clads. Whitman didn't even make one of their $2 folders for clad quarters until 1984 and, I'd wager, this board will be pretty scarce. It will be even scarcer filled in with a nice '69 quarter.

The point here is that even the scarcest clads circulate freely. Only in the last few years are we finally beginning to see things like the incidence of 1969 dimes in circulation beginning to fall a little relative other dates. Of course by now most of these old dimes are in poor shape so in the future there won't be much supply of things like AU's and XF's even if the price goes up and keeps them from being spent yet again.

Few collectors see what has been developing in clad for the last half a century (yes, next year). Lots of mint sets were made so everyone thinks the supply will forever be ample but they don't realize most of these sets are gone now because of low prices and many of the survivors are tarnished. TRhey also don't realize that every date doesn't come nice in the mint set. Sure, you can almost pick a '72-D quarter at random from a mint set still today and it will be nice but this doesn't apply to '69 dimes. Many of these ugly coins will simply be spent as will the Gems if the set is dismantled to melt the half dollar.

In the future there will be a few Gems surviving and significant numbers of unattractive specimens (250,000?). There will be a few XF's and VF's and there's still time to save a lot of F's. Most every date will be far scarcer than most Indian cents in grades over G. But, many of these "better" clads won't really be better because they will be ugly and/ or tarnished coins from mint sets.

It's rather ironic that in the early dates the ugly mint set coins are much nicer than what was made for circulation.

The future is never set in stone but it is always dependent on current conditions. There can't be lots of AU's unless people pulled the coins out and they didn't. The vast majority of most dates are already either destroyed permanently or worn out in circulation.

Up until 1999 the number of collectors had to be tiny. You'd rarely see these sets come into the coin shops and folders were difficult to find. In 1999 they started making a lot more of the quarter folders and they started appearing in even in book stores and grocery stores. I'd guess at least five or six million folders have been sold and more than half of them started as a collection. This assures that most of the coins that were still in circulation in 1999 won't be truly scarce but the typical set of these today is unlikely to have even the best available then. Things like VF+ 1969 and AU '66 quarters were long gone by 1999.

Today there are tens of millions collecting circulating quarters but many collect only the '99 and later coins. Dimes are much less widely collected. Halves have never been and still aren't widely collected in circulated condition but have been becoming more popular the last few years. Ikes inspire surprisingly strong interest in circulated condition but most are probably searching for varieties.

There's going to be a very surprising distribution of grades in twenty years after the clads have allbeen melted. Many dates will be very tough in attractive condition and some of these will have hundreds of thousands surviving in MS-60. Some dates,like the '82-P will be much easier to find in attractive AU than attractive Unc. Almost all dates before 1990 will be elusive in AU and better except the '82 and '83 issues. There will be strange distributions and almost all dates will be uncommon in Gem. The '72-D will be the only date that approaches being common with half a million available.

Almost all of my clad coins came from circulation. Most of the exceptions being proof and NIFC issues.