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 Replies: 40 / Views: 4,373 |
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Valued Member
United States
146 Posts |
Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to conduct an experiment. I've decided to obtain $1000 each in U.S. nickels, dimes, quarters and halves. The goal will be a statistical analysis of the silver find rate in each category based on $1000 in that demonination. Will post the results here.
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Valued Member
United States
57 Posts |
Sounds awesome, would be nice to know how many are in circ. At least at your location.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
I've been keeping a spreadsheet since I started. My results so far are:
halves: $7,552.50 searched, 6.18 ozt Ag found, 0.818 ozt Ag / $1k
quarters: $291.00 searched, 0.00 ozt Ag found
dimes: $9,225.70 searched, 3.33 ozt Ag found, 0.361 ozt Ag / $1k
nickels: $3,618.75 searched, 1.58 ozt Ag found, 0.435 ozt Ag / $1k
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Pillar of the Community
United States
836 Posts |
Good luck, I say halves will be the best.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3276 Posts |
I think you need to search larger quantities for an accurate analysis.
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Valued Member
United States
119 Posts |
Just an aside, but I think that the results of your task are going to be contingent on the source of the coins that you are going to tabulate. I never spend pocket change until I have accumulated a sizable amount which I then look through. I also routinely get boxes of coins from my bank including halves of course. I have NEVER found a wartime silver content nickel going through that pocket change. whereas the average find in a box of nickels from the bank is 1 or 2. Same with silver dimes. My point is that you probably stand a better chance of finding silver in bank boxes than you ever will in general circulation. Probably because even those people who are not necessarily "collectors" are wise to the intrinsic value recently of any coin with silver content and check their change regularly. I'm just sayin'. Good luck in your endeavor, and looking forward to the results.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
968 Posts |
Interesting experiment. I'd like to point out one problem you need to keep in mind. To make a truly equal comparison you should be examining the same number of COINS not equivalent dollar value.
You will be searching :
20,000 nickels
10,000 dimes
4000 quarters
2000 halves
In other words you will search 10x as many nickels as halves. 2000 coins is still enough to give useful data on the more common "rare" coins (like 40% silver Kennedys), but you are more likely to stumble across real rarities (i.e. the outliers) when you search more coins. So that comparison might be thrown off.
Edited by Saruma
10/15/2011 3:04 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1903 Posts |
The analysis depends on what unit or measure the researcher is looking for. By standarizing the monetary investment he/she is looking more at return on equal investment. Looking at equal number of coin would be researching return on EFFORT and not investment. If one was to try and make it truely statistically sound you would have to first define the parameters better such as saying "I am looking to determine the best average on investment at suchandsuch bank in the suchandsuch area for calendar year 2011" and then you would have to repeat the samples randomly by date and bank within the prescribed area during 2011 thirty times before it would be statistically significant. Anything less than this is nothing more than describing random chance and not valuable to truely make a statement about anything. Sorry....took a few too many statistic classes in college...lol
Edited by unholyroller
10/15/2011 3:22 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1151 Posts |
Great Idea, let us know the results.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
968 Posts |
unhollyroller,
I agree with most of what you said, but you still run into the same numbers problem if you are trying to look at return on equal investment. You need to look at the same number of coins, or at least enough coins of each type to that you are dealing with a statistically significant sample. You can then standardize for return on equal investment. Remember, the coins are the individual data points here, not the amount of money you used to obtain them. In real world studies (e.g. ecological research, population demographics) you have to take the data you can get. In this case we have the luxury of standardizing our sample sizes (because he can keep turning the rolls in and getting more without spending more money), which is usually the most desirable way to structure the experiment.
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Many years ago, in one of the coin papers, they published a statistical study of silver coins received at a refiner. Even at the time (pre-80?), there was some question that a refiner would allow/pay someone to not only sort, but count coins, just for the sake of research.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1903 Posts |
Yes, I do agree it is a "statistic by unit" study, but it still needs to have a definition and parameter to it. As for effort vs. Investment there is a difference. If you are limited by funds you can initially invest but have all the time you need to investigate the coin you must explore the data in one way. On the other and if you have no limitation on funds but are limited on time you must look at it a different way. That and the "unit" also needs to be standardized...are we talking individual coin or boxes of coin. We could go on and on refining the process but in escence the lack of " sufficient randomness " makes any investigation valueless. Interesting still, but valueless
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Main problem as I see it with any results is location. What you find in coins in a small town in Arizona may well be 100% different than in New York City. From a small town in Tennessee to Chicago. From a small town in Montana, to Houston Texas.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3345 Posts |
just carl I think you may be wrong there. On an average, coin finds should be the same since coins do travel and are sent to different banks when they are turned in. they are constantly getting mixed up. But if you were to stumble on a collection, I agree a small town would be a better place to do so.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7629 Posts |
I tried this with Lincoln cents a few years back - trying to see what was out there in circulation. I found that even though I had results on tens of thousands of coins, I wasn't covering a statistically significant percentage of circulation overall to make the statement that I knew what was in circulation. For Lincoln cents the number of coins I would have to cover would be over 300,000,000 to ascertain that I had (or my volunteers had) seen enough of all the coins in circulation to make even a good guess as to how many of one issue were out there versus another. This would have required that 60,000 people volunteer to look through a full 5,000 count bag of coins and sort them by date and mintmark and report the results. Then it would have required that I somehow store all this data so it would be retrievable - on no budget. It was way too much of a project to handle and get any useful numbers.
I know this project is different, but one comparison I can make is that a thousand bucks from one location is not going to provide even a hundredth of the coins necessary to make any useful statistical analysis. You'll have to be into the millions of dollars worth searched before your numbers will even be close enough with which a wild guess could be based.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1903 Posts |
Thank you Coppercoins. You made a perfect example of what I was trying to say. When I first started coin roll hunting I thought doing the same thing as the OP would be something worthwhile until after great effort and time on my part I realized the folly of trying to get some meaningful number from my research. My responses to this post were not mean spirited, but simply trying to save someone a lot of time and effort to only produce a "curiosity" and not something of statistical value
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Replies: 40 / Views: 4,373 |
Posted 10/15/2011 2:43 pm
