1973 Jefferson Nickel Circulated With Decent Steps

jbuck, I pulled some really nice coins from a bag of about 70 dollars worth of nickels. I got about ten proofs, a couple 43 P silvers, along with some other decent coins from the 40's, 50's and 60's.

I probably got about 40 nickels, but, if I would have had a loupe and better light, I'm sure I would have gotten more! I was just going on eye appeal and dates and the little bit of knowledge that I've gotten from online and the good people at this forum!

I hear you. Thanks!

You don't see many nice coins from the '70's any longer.

This coin is pretty wellmade but this isn't extremely unusual for the date. AU is quite unusual.

The early '60's pennies and nickels are pretty easy. Rolls and bags of these are stil getting dumped into circulation once in a while. 15 years ago I'd see these strill in nice AU but it seems they're XF by the time I see them now.

You'll see some decent '65 quarters opnce in a while because some people stash away first year of issue. There are also some nice cents from the late-'60's because these coins circulate so poorly that many sit out for years on end.

I have noticed that the spread in condition of mid-'70's dimes is much narrower than the '60's issues but can't explain why. It's tough to find a nice high end '68-D dime but if you can find several of the issue one will be nice. But it doesn't matter how easy the '76 dime is to find they'll all be drab and worn. I don't know why. I follow quarters pretty closely but dimes I haven't watched quite so closely.

The '84 issues are interesting. They reduced the rims a lot but the dimes held up well anyway while the quarters mostly look like junk.

Some of the things in circulation are hard to figure but '70's issues can be surprisingly bad and a few are surprisingly hard to find nice. It appears a lot of collectors are starting to notice the coins so I expect the nicer ones and the varieties to start disappearing.

Ck - I think that's about right. I've gotten uncirculated rolls of 1961 - 1964 nickels as they are readily available. 1965 and above a bit more infrequent to find AU/AU+ specimens, but they are out there. 70s are peculiar; not a bunch of nice ones out there, but I did get a roll or two of 1976 uncirculated rolls once. It takes a number of nickels to really put together an AU or better set of 70s nickels from circulation for one's Jefferson set. Early 80s too for that matter. 1984 and later, readily available high grade coins in circulation.

So, our OP has a good eye for plucking out the high grade specimens from the bag. I'd imagine a couple handfuls of nice specimens to be had in that lot.

Very Nice Jefferson!