It's Getting Hard To Find Nice Coins From The '70's And '80's.

My local coin shop got in US mint sets from the 60's to the 90's. He paid face value for the modern sets and will most likely break them up as he has no interest from the public for them. I had a few mint sets I purchased in the 80's I ended breaking them out to put in albums and since I would rather have silver in the albums I put the uncirculated clad back into circulation.

I really believe the big difference between us is I have no interest in most modern coinage so I ignore it, you actually like these so they aren't as available as they used to be. The difference is that not many people collect modern so there just isn't much interest in saving them.

I suspect that it's much the same in the UK. Coin collecting reached unprecedented levels in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and vast numbers of the last few dates of £sd coins and the first issues of decimal coins were saved in Uncirculated condition. Collecting then went into a gradual decline, bouncing back in 2011 with the release of the Olympic 50p set, and has gone from strength to strength ever since, although many new collectors just stick to the modern commemoratives. There are some fairly scarce coins of the late 70s and early 80s, like the 1981 10 pence, which are probably quite rare in Uncirculated as very few people would have bothered to save them at the time, and The Royal Mint issued no annual BU sets until 1982. Another example is the 1999 standard design £2 coin. For some reason, The Royal Mint BU set that year only contained the commemorative version, and hardly anyone saved Uncirculated examples of the definitive coin, which is extremely common in circulated condition but virtually unobtainable in MS.

Yes! Exactly.

Even though most sets like the '69 mint set is almost entirely gone now (75%+ have ben destroyed) and most of the survivors are tarnished now (95%+) people don't realize how difficult is is to find something like a nice pristine 1969 dime. They believe there's a market for these containing millions of coins supplied by millions of mint sets and that the coins can be bought at RedBook prices all day long. The reality is there is almost no market at all. In the last few years a few sellers have entered the arena but the coins cost multiples of RedBook and they are so inexpensive only because there is so tiny a demand. You probably won't find a '69 dime in circulation and if you do it will be awful. So these sell to the general public and newer collectors for a few dollars not by the millions but by the dozens every week.

This is sustainable only so long as the demand remains so low because even much higher prices can't restore mint sets that were destroyed 50 years ago and dimes that went into melting furnaces along with the automobiles in which they were lost. The mint sets, BU rolls, and circulating coins are mostly all gone and every day more and more mint sets are put into the cash registers because there is still almost no demand even now.

One thing I do notice as well, Cladking, is that even the high mintage 1965, 1966 and 1967 dimes and quarters have really disappeared now.

The few left are getting thinner and more damaged every day. As they get thinner the chances of being lost increases as do the chances the FED will remove them.

While attrition on quarters is up over 3% annually the attrition on '65 to '67 issues is higher yet.

In roll searches I usually find only two or three nice specimens per year and it's been many years since one of these nice ones was over a nice solid VF. Coins have been getting mutilated by handling equipment in this country since about the mid-'90's. They suffer death by a million scratches.

I always say "time don't fly, it bounds and leaps" but then I stole it from John Prine who probably stole it from a wise old grandfather or something. Little changes are going on all the time but you don't notice until they add up to a huge change.

I watched it so closely with the clad that it seemed nearly continuous but the nickels surprised me a great deal. I searched nickels all through the '70's and into the '80's but then just watched my pocket change until 2021. It was then I did a quick nickel survey and was amazed to see the destruction not only in populations of the '70's era coins but more especially in their condition. Huge subsequent mintages and sky high attrition decimated the quantity and quality of what was out there.

Funny thing is everyone always told me that even if I were right that nice clad is scarce it doesn't matter because there's an infinite supply in circulation. Now those coins are practically gone too. You not only have almost no chance of finding an old unc in circulation but in many cases you aren't even going to find a nice attractive VG. Just forget about a nice well made VF or XF without heavy scratching.

The scratching did sneak up on me. At first I thought it was just the way coins were counted as much as they were spent but now I realize someone's coin handling equipment is doing it. It should be easy to find with big piles of cu/ ni dust underneath it.

Much like the boiling frog.



That is very interesting.

I know it happens as part of normal circle of life, but the thought of coins being melted does make me cringe.

Do you think that the increasing use of electronic payments has meaningfully helped to extend the life of the older coins in circulation?