Coin Population Reports

Heritage lists all of that information both on active and closed lots. You do have to check each coin date and mm individually. Regardless of the small percentage of crack outs and resubmissions the resulting numbers can be very interesting.

The problems with population reports as noted above:

1. The obvious problem -- coins that have not been certified are not counted in the population
2. The less obvious problem -- crossovers from other TPG's, as well as coins that were cracked out by an old owner and resubmitted by a new owner, inflate population numbers.

Example for #2: PCGS certifies a 1882-O Morgan as MS63. The coin sells, but the new owner busts it out and puts it in a Dansco. 5 years later, that owner sells his Morgan dollar set to a new owner; the new owner prefers slabs, so he sends the same 1882-O to NGC for slabbing, where it comes back MS63 full grade. The NGC population just increased by one, but the PCGS population did not decrease by one -- PCGS has no way of knowing that the coin was a crackout and resubmit.

Another example for #2: PCGS certifies the same coin as MS62. You're disappointed, so you crack it out and send it to NGC, who slab it as a 63. Same as above -- PCGS still shows your coin in population, but now NGC shows it too.


I agree with the posters who tell you that the best way to know population is to see how often similar coins come up for sale at the major auctions, and on Internet sites. An "approximate" population is known for some coins, but usually ones that had very low mintages to begin with. If you ask a Morgan specialist, they can probably tell you off the top of their head which dates are absolute scarcities (i.e. not many survivors in any grade) and which ones are condition scarcities (i.e. not many survivors in a particular grade range.)

One other option is CAC -- if you have a CAC stickered coin (you don't have to own the coin, just need to be able to see the TPG cert #) you can input the data on CAC's site and it will tell you how many of that coin's date/mm CAC has seen from all the TPG's. However, CAC only green-beans or gold-beans a percentage of the coins they check, so then again, the number is just a guess.

I've watched my dad crack open countless slabs (against my advice) so he could add to his Dansco albums.
I assume this is more common than most think. Pop reports are probably way off

Based on what paralyse and Bstrauss3 has said I wouldn't put any weight in population reports. It's just not accurate, plain and simple.

Thanks to everyone who commented, I have learned a lot.

You can draw some correlations: a coin with a low PCGS pop (that is not a variety or error coin) is almost certainly scarce in that date. This only works for valuable coins; you shouldn't think that your VF20 1978 LMC is worth a fortune because PCGS shows a 0 population -- this is because some coins are so common and of little value that it far exceeds their worth to slab them in the first place.

For classic coin series (anything pre-60s) in higher grades, it can be useful; the older you go, the lower the grades become to be worthy of slabbing (if you have a 1793 Chain cent in poor, you'd might slab it anyway, but not a 1908 IHC in F12 where you would a MS63.)