I Got A Solid Box Of 2013-S: Now What?

Basically, banks order coins from the Fed when their supply is insufficient, banks deposit coins with the Feb when they supply is too large. If the supply is OK, they recycle what they have.

See http://www.frbservices.org/operatio...siting.html, quoting:


So basically, if your bank is a net importer of new coins from the Fed and you don't like it, find another bank

As I'm reading the Fed stuff the branch can ORDER whatever they want, although the Fed may not provide all of it depending on what the Fed has available. But in theory, a friendly bank could order an extra box a week for you. Or anything you request.

The problem is that when you then dump the coins back into some other bank, they have a surplus and will eventually send THAT off to the Fed. Who will probably choose to honor your pet bank's request by sending you back last month's box.

Ultimately this is close to a zero-sum game and when you've mined out all of the (whatever you desire) from the area you are just going to get your rejects back. Or my rejects or Joe's rejects.

The only source of new, desirable material is people emptying out their several year accumulation from the change jar or couch into Coinstar.

IMHO that is the sole reason you find good stuff in rolls today at all is that when Coinstar became available, lots and lots of the family change jars got converted into "real" money. So the 50 year old Wheaties on the bottom got recycled. Once those all get pulled out, there's no more source...

Someday it's ALL going to be zlincons and we'll gloat over an 1981 COPPER like we gloat over a LWC today.

I know of no reason to dispute your 200B figure, so let's play with it. All #s are from Numista through 2012. I'm including proofs, etc - anything that is known.

What was minted?

Metal/Type             Minted   Percent 
------------- ---------------   -------
Copper        182,950,023,575     39.1%
   Wheat       24,727,966,033        5.3%
    LMC        158,222,057,542       33.8%

Copper Plated 284,155,404,222     60.7%
    LMC        269,138,034,222       57.5%
   Early          634,800,000        0.1%
   Formative      739,600,000        0.2%
   Professional   652,000,000        0.1%
   Presidential   327,600,000        0.1%
   Shield      12,663,370,000        2.7%

Steel           1,093,838,670        0.2%

Grand Total   468,199,266,467    100.0%

To make up your 200B it would need to be something like this

Type        Survival        Surviving   Suvriving%
 LMC, Copper     8.2%   12,974,208,718    6.5%
Wheat           0.2%       49,455,932    0.0%
 LMC, Zinc      65.0%  174,939,722,244   87.5%
Shield         95.0%   12,030,201,500    6.0%
                      -----------------------
                      199,993,588,395  100.0%

So how does this gybe with real world experience - each roll would have about 3-4 copper, 3 shield and the rest ZLincons... The Wheat cent # is about 1 in 4000...

Just that. People dumping old jars and collections.
Some people with duplicates purposely spend them to see reactions of others.

Actually, wheatchaser140, I think you have it backwards.

I stand behind the MINTAGE numbers, but I was pulling survival numbers out of my, um, ear, to guess some way to get to the 200B in circulation number. I figured some of you would post real-world #s and I could adjust the survival %s... the wheat# may be low and the copper LMC may be high. But with 284B ZLincolns minted, the survival number for those has to be a lot lower than I would have expected..

YES! I mean ultimately it's a useless exercise in the law of large numbers (the average of random samples tend towards the mean).

Heck, the raw data is out there, we could even divide it further (e.g. 1909-1940, 1941-1959).

Ultimately I figured this might provide a canary (indication) as to when/if conditions change. I figure there are four factors.

* Minting new coins which doesn't seem to stop
* routine small losses (change dropped on the floor, in the park, etc.) [this was the traditional part of survival for minor coins]
* industrial hoarding - people with their Ryedale machines looking for copper hoping someday it's legal to melt
* artisanal hunters (you, with your box at a time habit are on the edge between home brew & industrial scale)

BStrauss3 I have an idea!

We should create a series of topics and polls to record others' search finds in a greater volume to get a more accurate and detailed estimate of the Wheat cent population!

It would be a joint effort between the two of us. What do you think?