Frequency Of Wide AM Cents

Patrick, being from the west coast puts you at a big disadvantage. I found 1 1998 in 5000 coins. Found another 1998 & 2000 in a jar I was throwing my loose change in. 1999s are rare. Being from the east coast and only a couple hundred miles from Philly mint give us a big advantage. They are out there though, keep looking.

I cant give you numbers but 1998 and 2000 dated coins show up more frequently. 1999 dated Wide AM cents are very difficult to find and are seemingly extremely rare in comparison to the others.

Ditto the remark about geographic location. I roll search and keep high quality examples and I have very, very few P-mintmarks.

Also keep in mind that if you find one that is well-circulated, it'll be cool because it's an error, but its value will be minimal compared to an MS example.

My understanding that the 2000 is the most plentiful and that's by far the most probable one to find.

or is it a variety?

Keep looking, they're out there. Just found this yesterday.



Got the 98 now the 99 all that's left is the 2000.

Odd that Tomb found the two scarce ones and can't find the common one.

There aren't any real numbers to describe how many out of how many are Wide AM, because there aren't any official numbers kept by the mint on them. Given the following possible scanarios, this might help...

There are at least two, possibly three different dies known to have made the 1998 Wide AM cents. There is but one die known for all the 1999 Wide AM cents discovered to date. In 2000, there are at least a half dozen, with more possible.

If a die makes it all the way through it's expected life, it mints around 500,000 coins.

Assume the dies all made it through their expected life, and assume the numbers of dies reported above as the total existing...big assumption, but this has to be done to even come close.

There were a million and a half of the 1998 coins made, 500,000 of the 1999 coins, and at least 3 million of the 2000 coins.

Compare this to overall mintage and your chances are the following:

1998 - 1,500,000 in 5,032,155,000, or about 1 in 5,000.
1999 - 500,000 in 5,237,600,000, or about 1 in 10,000.
2000 - 3,000,000 in 5,503,200,000, or about 1 in 1,800.

Of course these numbers are only a very erroneously basic idea of what's probably actually out there. Take away half of the number made for any given die because of shorter die life, and your odds double that you won't find one...very possible.

Reason? Die life can be rounded down closely by examining a broad group of the coins minted by a die. If a decent sampling are observed for die wear, the latest die state found can be assumed to be the latest die state made, thus helping draw closer to the actual number of coins minted by that die.

One example - 1960D-1MM-004 (RPM#4). It is scarce, and is only known in very early die state and early die state. No examples of later die states are known and probably do not exist. Given this, we can assume that this die minted only around 2,000-5,000 coins. Take that to the same math above, and we end up with a number like 5,000 in 700,000,000 (about half the 1960D mintage, accounting for large and small date). This deduces to 1 in 140,000. Pretty scarce.

Coppercoin, I am constantly impressed with the depth of your knowledge. Let me ask you a question. I am thinking of buying a 1972 DDO Lincoln Cent. I know that there are several DDO's. What is the designation of THE DDO? I mean the really cool one with the obvious doubling and of course the priciest. I am assuming that I should get a slabbed example. Also, any general advice as to who I should get one from, if it is proper to ask this question?