Mintage Numbers Of 1858, 1859 W9/8, 1859 Narrow 9

I believe that a few scraps got thrown down there to kiwiland.

I like it!

you know I'm the one that keeps pushing the zapper

JHax,

Did you also sort through the W9 over 8's at that time, and if so, how many different dies did you find in your quest..?

Welcome back to CCF Dan... Bill and I shared a coffee yesterday and your name came up in conversation...

I was more interested in other dates/varieties and, having very limited time, didn't spend much time on the overdates in the hoard. I'd already previously looked at the overdates fairly carefully and identified 11 overdate dies. Consequently, in the first edition of Coins of Canada in 1971 that I wrote with the late Bob Willey, I stated that there were "at least eleven" overdate cent dies. That was long before Rob Turner did his work. As far as I know neither Rob nor anyone else (other than me) has ever referred to my statement.

In an earlier post in this thread, Rob noted a paper I published in which I gave estimates for the mintage of the three varieties: 1858, 1859/8 and 1859 N9. The method I used was quite simple and was based on the numbers of dies believed used for each variety. The total mintage is conclusively known to be 9,690,388. We can use this and the current best guesses on the die numbers to calculate the mintages of the individual varieties.

I'm very confident (based on studying the original die records, including the timing of producing the various die batches) that the total number of 1858 reverse dies originally made was 66. That includes dies that remained dated 1858 and those that were overdated to 1859/8. For our business strike mintage calculations we must subtract one 1858 specimen die apparently not later used for business strikes. Subtracting from 65 the number of overdated dies (let's use Dan's 14) gives us a total of 51 unaltered 1858 dies used for business strikes. Further analysis of the die records yields a total of 362 dies used for all varieties, so the 1859 N9 is represented by 362-65 = 297 dies. Multiplying the die fractions by the total mintage (and rounding off to the nearest 100,000) gives us the following mintages: 1858: 51/362 x 9,690,388 = 1,365,200; 1859/8: 14/362 x 9,690,388 = 347,700 and 1859 N9: 297/362 x 9,690,388 = 7,950,400. According to my method the mintage ratio of overdates vs. 1858 is relatively lower than in Rob's analysis or the contentious ebay sample. Which method is more accurate (Rob's, mine, ebay)? Who knows. If more than 14 overdate dies were used, that would increase the overdate mintage and lower the 1858 mintage, sending the ratio in the direction of Rob's.

Anyway, it's fun (or should be) to compare. I know "fun" is relative, but down here in the U.S. we have the constant news of the Tweeter in Chief and the exploding-head liberals, sprinkled with a dash of fake news for flavor. That's a lot for a poor senior to digest and it's definitely less fun than contemplating the relative mintages of varieties!