Nickel Find Rates @ 260,000 Coins

Fair Warning ... this will be a long thread filled with fascinating USA nickel roll searching facts and figures!

My nickel roll-searching passion has slowed down due to work and life demands ... my prior update was at 250,000 coins searched in July 2011. Pleased to share this quick update with all of you ... format is very similar to my 250,000 coin update.

Soooo ... I just passed through 260,000 bank rolled USA nickels searched ... $13,000 face value ... 6500 rolls ... 130 boxes. Geepers ... that is a lot of coins.

My simple goal from February 2008 has evolved into a Quest ... I intend to fill my humble Whitman 9009 folder with a complete set of Jefferson circulation strike coins 1938 - 1961 ... with all coins coming from bank rolls in my home town Maryland USA.

I'm also working on my Dansco 7113 ... filling the years 1962 - 2011 in that album.

This is my latest update ... Nickel find rates at 260,000 coins searched.

Overall Find Rate:

Recall that I consider a 'find' to be any nickel minted prior to 1960 ... so 1959 is the earliest I keep in my database.

My overall find rate is 1.310% ... that is 1 find every 76.36 coins ... an average of 26.2 finds per $100 box (2000 coins).

This is up a slight bit from my 250,000 coin searched overall find rate of 1.309%.

I have now pulled 3,405 nickels older than 1960 from circulation ... starting to wonder if you can call me a hoarder!

Fun Finds in the Previous 10,000 Coins:

These previous 5 boxes (10,000 coins) were on par with the usual fun roll finds ...

I came across 6 total 'special' coins ... 2 War Silver, 3 Buffalo and 1 low-mintage Jefferson in the previous 5 boxes.

Overall find rates for these 'special' coins are given further below.

Jefferson Find Rates by Decade:

I keep track of my Jefferson find rates by individual coin and also by decade ... current decade find rates are as follows:

1930's: 1 find every 1722 raw coins
1940's (excluding war silver): 1 find every 206 coins
War Silver: 1 find every 2955 coins
1950's: 1 find every 140 coins

Special Coin Find Rates:

I consider 'special coins' to be any of the following ... Pre-Jefferson coins, war silver and any of the nine (9) Jefferson with annual mintage below 10 million coins.

Liberty V: 1 find every 86,667 coins (found 3)
Buffalo: 1 find every 6,341 coins (found 41)
War Silver: 1 find every 2,955 coins (found 88)
Low-Mintage Jefferson: 1 find every 7,143 coins (found 35)

Fun With Statistics!

Sooo ... I have created an Excel spreadsheet which allows me to analyze my finds ... and I have as well developed and socialized here at the CCF the concepts of 'expected find rates' and 'circulation obsolescence'.

Regular readers of these updates have the concepts figured out ... welcome newcomers can brush up here:

http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/...&whichpage=1

Onward to fun with statistics.

Circulation Obsolescence:

Overall 1938-1959 Jefferson circulation obsolescence is 80.59%. This compares exactly with my reported 250,000 coin update where it was the same .... 80.59%.

Bottom line ... 4 of 5 Jefferson minted between 1938 and 1959 have been lost to us!

Current 260,000 coin obsolescence data is:

1930's @ 80.78%
Pre-War 1940's @ 81.06%
War Silver @ 97.94%
Post-War 1940's @ 77.95%
Early 1950's @ 73.36%
Late 1950's @ 66.82%

I believe I now have enough data (260,000 coins) to report on some other interesting obsolescence figures ...

Liberty nickel Obsolescence is 99.90%
Buffalo nickel Obsolescence is 99.30%
Low-Mintage Jefferson (9 coins) Obsolescence is 87.25%

Circulation Estimates Based on Obsolescence:

You know the math by now ... by using the original mintage totals for any coin and the circulation obsolescence data ... we can estimate the total number of surviving members of any coin in my database ...

Just for fun ... as a way to illustrate the method ... consider that the entire Buffalo nickel mintage 1913 - 1938 was 1,212,899,041 coins. That is a fact.

My obsolescence data says that 99.30% of them have been removed from circulation ... that is an estimate based on my 260,000 coin data ... this leaves what may appear to be a trivial 0.70% still around ... but that still represents a significant number of Buffalo nickels hanging out there waiting for us to find!

Sooo ... keep in mind these estimates of current total circulating nickels when you hit your next long roll-searching dry spell.

Estimated number of Liberty in circulation today is 627,700

Estimated number of Buffalo in circulation today is 8,483,700

Estimated number of War Silver Jefferson in circulation today is 17,889,800

Estimated number of low-mintage Jefferson in circulation today is 7,320,500

Toughest Jefferson to Find Today

I changed this section of the report to tailor it to the current Jefferson roll-searcher.

There are 56 Jefferson nickels by date/mm from 1938-1959 (the span of my database) ... and I realize many of you search for them by boxes.

Sooo ... using my predicted find rates ... there are 12 of these 56 coins that you should expect to find today, on average, in less than 1 per 20 boxes.

Recall the issue I discussed with hoarding of the 1950-D in my original thread on obsolescence ... I recognize the predicted find rates for the 1950-D are not correct ... anybody who knows the correct 1950-D hoarding rate can help me out here.

Following are the 12 total Jefferson that on average take more than 20 boxes to find in circulation today ... these are the current 'Top-12 Toughest' ... in order of current predicted find rate:

1943-D @ 168,049 coins
1944-S @ 118,768 coins
1939-D @ 78,914 coins
1944-D @ 78,266 coins
1942-S @ 78,120 coins
1950-D @ 75,439 coins (assuming no hoarding ... actually tougher)
1945-D @ 69,168 coins
1938-S @ 66,998 coins
1938-D @ 51,224 coins
1942-P (Silver) @ 44,410 coins
1945-S @ 43,607 coins
1939-S @ 41,482 coins

Dedicated nickel roll searchers will recognize all the coins on this list ... and according to the law of averages I should have completed the Quest a long time ago.

Stop Bothering Me ... Easiest Jefferson to Find:

Again ... considering the series 1939 - 1959 ... there are 7 coins which show up on average better than 1 per box ... in easiest order they are as follows with predicted find rates:

1958-D @ 947 coins
1959-D @ 991 coins
1957-D @ 1,164 coins
1941 @ 1,373 coins
1946 @ 1,488 coins
1940 @ 1,581 coins
1954-D @ 1,693 coins

Dedicated nickel searchers have plenty duplicates of these 7 coins!

Status of my Quest:

Arrrggh ... I still need the 1938-S and 1943-D to complete my humble Whitman 9009. I've been stuck there forever! Where are they?

My roll-find Dansco 7113 is complete 1962 through 2011 ... all coins 1987 and later in MSFS from circulation rolls.

No worries ... I will keep searching and someday we will have a big CCF party when I complete the set!

Final Thoughts:

If you have read this far in this long (but hopefully informative) post ... then you realize as I do that roll searching for nickels brings great numismatic pleasure ... the variety of possible finds (US and foreign) is wide ... the entire set can still be completed at face value ... and in general it's a great way to enjoy the coin hobby.

I commend to all the humble nickel ... and wish for you the best of fortune in your roll searches for them.

Best

David

Edited to update hyperlink to now archived post