Canadian Coin Populations

There is no actual statistic that states how many coins were lost, destroyed, melted, etc., however, professional Numismatists will state that the survival rate of Victorian, Edwardian and The King George V / VI series are somewhere around 1-to-2 percent. This means that a Victorian Era quarter with a mintage of 1,5 million pieces has somewhere between 10-15,000 pieces currently surviving in all grades combined.
Now if you were to ask me the names of all the persons who possess one, that may take me a little longer to figure out!

Glenn

I collect all 6 decimals of the Victorian, Edwardian and King George V / VI coinage and appr. 90% of what I own is in I.C.C.S. Mintstate. If you were to check the I.C.C.S. and P.C.G.S population reports on the # of mintstate Canadian Decimal that has been graded by the TOP two services in the past 20 years, there's not much to go around!

trust me

Glenn

I did an analysis of the survival rate of the 1c and 25c Victorian coins earlier this year, and the numbers suggest that about 1% of the 1c Victorian coins have survived and about 0.5% of the Victorian 25c coins have survived. And the majority of these surviving coins are low grade - less than VF20 - especially with 25c coins.

So if only 1% of these coins have survived, what happened to the other 99%? Wait, do you mean that only 1-2% have survived in MINT STATE or survived as in are still in existence?

Back in the Victorian & Edwardian Era years coinage had a pretty rough going over. First of all they were made of silver, and you know how fast that wears out! Then add on to that average people earned 10-25 cents per day, so do you think most labourers are going to put aside a days wages for a future coin collector who will only be born 100 years later?
Now add to the fact that Northern fur traders drilled holes in their coins so they could string'em around their waist, then add to the "love token" craze of the 1920's Era where everyone and his dog carved their name into precious coins!
Let's not forget all the homes that burnt to the ground during the first half of the 20th Century as a result of poor building standards taking with them hoards of coins. And how about all the poor misinformed souls who cleaned their coins, polished them with harsh agents, improper storage resulting in rust, corrosion, and pitting!
Now add all the coin collections that have been lost in time as a result of overprotective collectors that have hidden them sooo well, they will never be found! (buried in ground, safety deposit vaults, attics, crawl spaces, etc.)
Now do you understand how easy it is where the other 99% can disappear to. When I say there is only a 1-to 2 % survival rate of coins that were minted from 1858-1940 in all grades, this is because of the above mentioned factors. This is confirmed by the population results that the Top Gun T.P.G. Services provide in their annual Reports.
This is the reason I stress to all my fellow collectors of Canadian Decimal from 1858-1967, grab the HIGHEST mintstate grades you can as quick as you can for these years. Ten years from now you'll understand exactly what I mean by that statement!

Glenn