Noodling Stats

Brendan, there were some fantastic stats in one of the Australian Coin & Banknote magazine last year. I think Fred Lever wrote the article, it started with pre-decimals & then had decimals. Some of the details were regarding errors (e.g brockage, mis-strike etc) & some were regarding varieties (e.g Mule, incused etc). I'll see if I can find it.

Trouble is that the stats on one area will vary from another.
For example I read that the dollar Mule was released in Perth. Searchers in Perth would find them but searchers elsewhere would find none.
Then, over time the stats change, desirable coins get found and removed from circulation while the remaining coins also get "watered down" by newly released coins.
Another thing to consider. Is that if you get coins from the banks, the newly released coins are much more common immediately as they are released, you might get a whole bag just of 2012 coins at the moment, or at least a fairly high proportion of them mixed in with other coins.
It pretty much all ads up to "luck"
I think I have been quite lucky with 2010 rotated 50c an with finding a wavy 20c, but unlucky finding incused 50c

Don't get me wrong.
I like to see and share stats. They do give an idea of what is possible.
However, things are not totally random, so even with fairly large sample sizes one person's results may be very different to another person's.

Okay, I've just looked at the article by Fred Lever in CAB Magazine; September 2011; Pages 58-61.
Here are some of the stats that he has put together, although it doesn't state anything about how many coins were looked at. It may just be guessing, but I'll list the following coins which are coins that we're looking for when we noodle through decimal coins:
2c 1968 - 1:1,000
20c 1966 Wavy 2 - 1:50,000
20c 2004 Large Head/Point A - 1:1,000
50c 2000 Incuse - 1:500
$1 2000 Mule - 1:100,000
As for how accurate these figues are? Some seem a little off (e.g 50c Incuse)
I find it odd that the 1c 1968 & 5c 1972 aren't listed considering so many people are looking for them. There are some other decimals listed as well as a table about Pre-decimals & a table of errors.

I think I must have been very lucky, I found my 2004 Large Head the same day I heard of their existence! Went through about $3!

Even if those statistics are correct at some place and time, YOU are not at that place at that time so things are likely to be different for you. Also you can still be lucky or unlucky regardless of the statistics.

I reckon the Incuse stats are out by a figure of 10...you could expect one in 100 just of the year 2000 coins alone, never mind how many 2000 year coins are in just a random sample of 50c pieces...one in 5000 50c coins maybe overall?

Mule figures look to be pretty accurate, though!!


I go on the belief that even though the odds in winning Lotto may be 8 million to one, SOMEONE usually wins - I have this in mind when looking for those elusive coins

I think about 1:6000 would be close for the incuse. The pointy A 2004 is in my experience 1:1500. They seem to be hard to come by in Adelaide.