Why Are Jefferson Nickels Primarily Collected Up To 1964?

Does Dansco have albulms where you can get the complete Jefferson nickels? 1938-2007+

I collect the entire series .

why would someone let the folders dictate where to stop ?

Metalman

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Same reason they let them dictate what coins/errors/varieties they have to collect to have a "complete" set.

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What reason would that be ?

stopping the Jeffersons in 1964 is far from a complete set . This makes no sense to me !

Metalman

As already noted Whitman started that. As noted way, way back there was basically only Whitman folders. No Albums, no other brands, no Red Book, not many coin collectors and NO TV or computer games. We all used Whitman folders. Then they came out with albums but stayed with the same dates for the same coins. The main difference became the addition of a few odd ball coins. It is basically Whimans fault for many such things. Note many new manufacturers just copied Whitman since they were a success. This all stopped when Whitman came out with Albums where you could add or remove pages. Now for instance you can put enough pages in a Lincoln Album for 09 to present. Same with all denominations. You can also blame them for the popularity of the weird errors needed to complete a set of coins now. Lincoln Cents with a slot for 22 Plain, 55 Double Die, 72 Double Die, etc.
One more thing is you can make your own album. Order a blank album cover, blank pages and several sheets of the gold press on letters and numbers from Whitman.

I'm sorry, I thought we were originally talking about uncirculated coins after 1964. If we are talking about high grade (MS-65+ full steps) nickels of all dates, then you are certainly correct that the 1950-D's wouldn't climb near the top of the list. My mistake if I took the posting at its word rather than its intent.

"Such as?"

Well, off the top of my head I'd guess there are fewer '71-P, '82-P, '82-D, '83-P, '83-D, '84-P, '86-D, '92-P, '92-D, '93-D, '95-D, and '97-D probably all have lower numbers surviving in unc than the '50-D. There may be a few oters like the '75-D and some of the '90's issues. Even the '86-P can be tough to lay hands on.

If you consider varieties then most of the '82 varieties are far scarcer than the '39-D. In choice condition a lot more dates join the list and in gem there will be more yet.

Prices are low on these because demand is low. Many of the older coins are in collections that end at 1964.

"1964 was sort of a watershed year for U.S. coinage. The change from silver to copper/nickel for the quarters and dimes and the change from 90% silver to 40& silver for the halves caused shortages of those coins because EVERYBODY was hoarding them. The mint jacked up production of the nickel in 1964 to help offset the shortages of the other denominations. Personally, I think 1965 represented the change from "old" to "modern" in U.S. coinage."


There were a lot of changes. Some were incidental but most were structural and many of these were designed primarily to discourage collectors. There was even a bill in Congress which would have simply outlawed collecting new coins. It failed to pass.

The law was really unnecessary since the other measures proved highly effective. This was probably the single biggest change; collectors started ignoring new coins.

It's not just in unc that some of the newer coins will prove elusive. It's also AU and XF. Even nice attractive VF's and F's can be tough for the '65-'73 issues. None of these are really scarce and "nice, attractive" means light even wear on a well struck coin.