Why Is The Rarer Of The 2 Coins Selling For $450 Less?

Interesting comparison.

My guess could be, that the root cause in the fact that people remember more recent NCLT, and less care about the older one.

Maybe I missed something, but I'm seeing quite a few of the $1 silver coins in PF70 going for $500+ dollars?! Very interesting indeed!

It appears that you are suggesting the 2001 is the "rarer" coin of the two compared. How are you measuring rarity?

In terms of total mintage, the 2001 SD had 24,996 units sold while the 2011 SD had a total of 20,521. From this, the 2011 is the more "scarce" (term used very loosely). This is not enough of a difference, however, for a modern NCLT coin for it to mean much in terms of market price. Also, the majority of each issue (if they weren't mishandled) is likely to be found in PF69 or PF70 condition. If they were all to be graded, neither would likely prove to be very scarce or difficult to obtain.

But, as most of the SDs will not be sent in for grading, the NGC population reports need to be reviewed to check for differences in current grade assignments.

At this time, the 2011 SD has only six coins graded PF70 UC by NGC while the 2001 SD has 22 examples graded PF70 UC (roughly four times as many). Many dealers will try to hype the low number of 2011 PF70 UCs as a modern "rarity" and many collectors will buy into the hype and drive prices up.

If you really look into the numbers, however, you will discover a different story.

So far, 112 of the 2001 SDs have been submitted to NGC vs. only 17 for the 2011 - a 6.6:1 ratio.

The percentage of submitted coins receiving a PF70 UC grade from NGC is thus 35% for the 2011 (6 of 17) and 20% for the 2001 (22 of 112). This suggests that the 2001 may be a bit more difficult coin for which to achieve a PF70 US grade. The sample size is very small, however, so definitive conclusions can't be drawn.

Bottom line, at least for me, I would not be among the bidders pursuing the 2011 SD you presented at levels over $500 CAD - IMO, it is overpriced and will likely fall in the future as more coins are graded.

To answer your question, "Why is the rarer of the 2 coins selling for $450 less?" - I would say it is a matter of folks not really understanding the population reports and doing a simple "6" is smaller than "22" analysis when deciding on rarity and deciding that the 2011 (with 6) is the more scarce coin in PF70 UC even though from a percentage of coins submitted it is clearly not. Once again, not taking the time to educate yourself can prove very costly!