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You've made that case before. I can see considering strike quality for graded registry sets. In practice, do collectors building albums really agonize over strike quality and die state?
Ya gotta forgive an old man who started collecting
Buffalo nickels from pocket change and actually completed most of the set before buying the stoppers in AG. I wasn't obsessed with the horns the way other collectors were but I did want to see the detail as well as tails and feathers (et al). Grading was strictly determined by the horn and an uncirculated '26-S often had less horn detail than a VG or F. It became something of a habit to look for the best example I could find with a nice crisp strike. It didn't need to be perfect but the fuller the better and I still often prefer a VG to a VF in SOME series.
W\hen I started collecting clad in 1972 strike was even more important because the vast majority of those early coins were weakly struck by worn dies. It's hard to imagine how bad they were because most of them are gone now or the weakness is masked by heavy wear. There aren't any BU rolls around because people didn't want to save the poor strikes so the abysmal quality of those early years is not readily apparent. That flat 1966 quarter you're seeing in circulation might be a lot higher grade than you think because like the Henning nickels most of them were made in VG.
I still like nice crisp strikes and full detail on clad even though the vast majority of what the mint produces is of much better quality and most specimens are something a collector could be proud to own.
I mentioned the '71 nickel as an example. This was the very first nickel that was quite well made and despite the fact more than 2 out of 3 was fairly well struck from newly improved hubs and dies, still nobody saved it. I never saw more than a handful of rolls and the coins from mint sets were spent. Despite nice strikes and full detail it was ignored. The coin does have a little bagmarking problem even in the mint set so in addition to its low mintage nice attractive coins in any grade are anything but common.
Other coins like the '66 nickel are going to be a real problem in BU if people want details on their coins. Forget Full Steps because you'll be lucky to even see the pillars and dome.
To each his own.
Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps.
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Posted Yesterday 11:21 pm
