Question About '82 & '83 Souvenir Sets

There were no mint sets during those years, that is correct. The mint itself did offer "souvenir" sets for sale in their gift shop. These were equivalent in quality to mint sets of the period.

You can find these on ebay and on online coin websites, but they are fairly expensive, at least compared to mint or proof sets from that era.

Ohhhh, I believe they were originally packaged in a hard plastic of some sort, not sure though, but they were "protected" from the elements per se.

OK hesgut is wrong about them being in hard plastic holders, they are in the same pliofilm packaging that was used for the mint sets of that era. They came as a single mints coin in an envelope. One mint used a blue envelope and one used a green(?) envelope. I don't remember which mint used which color.

cc99999 is wrong about the sets containing a plastic token labeled either P or D. Instead they had a 1 3/8 inch bronze medal of the mint of issue.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. That's why I said I wasn't sure. I know the rest of my post was right

@Conder101 - thanks for the correction. It's been so long since I've looked at these.

You're splitting hairs with my post. I never said these coins were struck the same as mint set coins, as then they would basically be a mint set, I said they were made of equivalent quality. This IS true. Mint set coins from the early 80's were not spectacular, and some coins from the "best runs" were quite nice. I could probably find you an 82 souvenir set that looks better than an 81 mint set. The point is, for all intensive purposes, they were equivalent, and all collectors treat them as such.

GEM usually refers to MS-65. I have no idea where your numbers are coming from, but both souvenir sets and similar mint sets produced MS-65s at a rate much higher than 2%. If your definition of GEM is different than this who knows. I kinda think you just made that percentage up though, just saying.

I didn't mean to be insulting and apologize if it sounded that way. Sometimes I tend to be a little blunt.

You're right that most collectors treat them as equivalent but most collectors are incorrect in doing so. The mint used to say that mint set coins were the same as regular production coins and in a sense this is true. But in practice there is an enormous difference between mint set coins and roll coins.

If you are grading without regard to strike then the difference between souvenir sets and regular mint sets is not great. But when strike and die quality are factored in there is a very large difference between them. This difference is much more extreme at the high end. Many of the best souvenir set coins will be poorly struck or struck from poor dies but not with the mint set coins. I am calling gems to be coins that are well made and have a minimum of marking. These are almost invariably found in regular mint sets and are scarce in souvenir sets.

1982-P quarters get a huge bump in grade from the services because they are very scarce in gem because there were no mint sets. This "bump" is as much as two full grades. In other words a 1982 that grades MS-65 might grade only MS-63 if it were another date. I've searched hundreds of souvenir sets and many many coins and rolls for circulation as well as dozens of the other mint sets for 1982-P quarters and have never seen a coin that I'd call a no question gem. I do own what might be the finest known coin that came from a bag of quarters acquired in 1982. This was a really nice bag and this coin just kind of leaped out as the best. It is about the 6000th strike of a good die and is solidly struck. Only the top of the LIBERTY isn't full height. The coin is very clean. If it were any other date I'd call it a near gem but I'd bet there isn't a nicer specimen anywhere.

The best '82-P quarters come from the Numismatic News mint sets and the big yellow envelope mint sets. The Paul and Judy sets have the best average quality but no gems. The east coast sets aren't nice for this date. The souvenir sets are hit and miss but choice specimens of the '82-P are not very common.

Certainly there are lots of dogs in regular mint sets. If you don't care about strike quality then some dates are downright awful. But the fact remains that the best coins each year mostly go into regular mint sets and very few clads were saved at all from rolls and bags and these tend to be poor.

Souvenir set coins can in theory be as nice as mint set coins but in practice it's most unusual. I actually had the opportunity to go through many hundreds of 1980 Denver souvenir sets at the mint and found only a small handful of gems. These gems look a litt;le different than regular mint set coins and tend to be slightly lower quality but they are true gems.

I've been working on my clad sets since 1972. Only a few coins in my quarter collection are probably improvable. This is becauswe I had the field all to myself for a quarter century.

I have to believe that you aren't weighting strike and die quality to the same degree I am. Our perspectives may be quite different because I grew up with silver coinage and many obsolete types in circulation. The coins in those days were mostly all well made because peoplwe and coin collectors wanted nice coins and silver was easy to strike. It didn't wear out the dies so fast and when it did they replaced the die. Collectors paid little attention to strike because most coins were well struck. We mostly worried about the amount of wear and just stuck any newly made coin into our coin folders.

But then came the date freezes and clad coinage. These were made horribly because there was a coin shortage and production had soared to unimaginable levels. People quit collecting new coins so there was no pressure on the mint to be concerned about quality. The typical coin became quite poorly made and gems became very few and far between. Many improvements had been made by 1972 when I started collecting them but quality was still very poor. The tops of the letters were rarely rounded in profile as they are supposed to be. The letters would be flat stumps instead of fully raised and rounded.

I just never quit looking for the well struck examples because even as strikes improved by lowering the relief full strikes never became much more common.

I believe if you look at the peripheral lettering (and numbers) on your '82 and '83 issues they are less well defined at the tops than your mint set issues. You can probably find other strike and die differences if you look very closely. I don't doubt you have nice specimens or that they are very clean merely that they were well struck by new dies.

The '82 and '83 issues do get a "bump" from the graders because they don't come as nice as other dates. The '81's are also problematical (especially the Philly) because the mint set coins have their own problems but gem 1980-P or D's simply are going to be far nicer than even the very nicest of the '82's and '83's.

I never did find a really nice '83-P. I believe this is mostly luck of the draw and this coin is more common than the '82-P. I have a few well made ones but they aren't clean.