Nickel Find Rates @ 190,000 Coins

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No interest at all?

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The Franklin half set can also be completed from circulation with a little luck and persistance.

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I just passed through 190,000 coins searched ..... that's 4,750 rolls .... $9500 face value in circulated USA nickels.

What began as a whimsy in February 2008 has turned into a Quest.

Quest is to fill my humble Whitman 9009 folder with a complete set of circulation strike Jefferson nickels 1938 to 1961 ..... all coins coming from bank rolls from my hometown in Maryland, US.

Anyways ...... not done yet ..... but here is my usual 10,000 coin find rate update:

Overall Find Rate:

Recall that I consider a 'find' to be any nickel minted prior to 1960 ..... so 1959 is the earliest coin in my database.

Overall find rate is 1.281% ...... that 1 find every 78.1 raw coins on average ...... another way to think of this is I find an average of 25.6 coins per $100 box.

Total finds to date are 2,433 circulated nickels. I suppose you can accuse me of being a hoarder at this point.

Jefferson Find Rates by Decade:

I also keep track of my find rates by decade and individual coin with the 'mother of all spreadsheets'. Current decade find rate data is:

1930's: 1 find every 1,759 coins
1940's (excluding war silver): 1 find every 211 coins
War Silver: 1 find every 3,333 coins
1950's: 1 find every 142 coins

Special Coin Find Rates:

I consider 'special coins' to be any of the following; Pre-Jefferson coins, War Silver and any of the nine (9) Jefferson circulation strikes with less than 10 million annual mintage.

Overall Special Coin find rate is 1 every 1624 searched ...... this equates to 1 every 40.6 rolls ...... so I am finding better than 1 per 50 roll box on average.

Liberty V: 1 every 95,000 coins (found 2)
Buffalo: 1 every 6,129 coins (found 31)
War Silver: 1 every 3,333 coins (found 57)
Special Jefferson: 1 every 7,037 coins (found 27)

Other Fun Finds:

So far I've found 3 proof-only coins; 1964, 2001-s and 2005-s Bison

I've found exactly three (3) 2009-p Jefferson .... and nothing with a 2010 date.

Circulation Obsolescence:

For those new to this concept, you can go here for a primer behind the theory and math:

http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/...PIC_ID=58454

Overall 1938-1959 Jefferson Obsolescence is 81.27%

1930's Obsolescence is 81.40%
Pre-War 1940's Obsolescence is 81.82%
War Silver Obsolescence is 98.20%
Post-War 1940's Obsolescence is 78.59%
Early 1950's Obsolescence is 74.68%
Late 1950's Obsolescence is 67.58%

Buffalo nickel Obsolescence is 99.28%

Circulation Estimates based on Obsolescence:

Regular followers of this update know the math behind this idea ...... by using the obsolescence data from my finds and the original mintage figures ..... we can estimate the number of coins still circulating for any coin (or group of coins) in the database.

Here is a quick example ...... let's estimate the number of 1939-p Jefferson still circulating today ....

Well ..... Obsolescence for the 1930's is 81.4% ..... which means that 18.6% are still 'around' ..... and since the original mintage of 39-p was 120.6 million ...... then (120.6)(0.186) equals an estimate of 22,430,000 still circulating. Keep that in mind while you look for the DDR of this coin.

And how about these ...

Estimated number of War Silver in circulation today is 15,681,000
Estimated number of Buffalo in circulation today is 8,726,000

Top-10 Hardest to Find Jefferson Today:

Recognizing the 'hoarding problem' with the 1950-D that I shared in my original post on Obsolescence .... here are the Top-10 toughest Jefferson's to find today, along with their predicted find rates:

1943-D at 189,542 coins
1944-S at 134,259 coins
1944-D at 89,783 coins
1942-S at 88,146 coins
1939-D at 80,272 coins
1945-D at 77,957 coins
1950-D at 73,738 coins
1938-S at 68,525 coins
1938-D at 52,028 coins
1942-P (Silver) at 50,086 coins

Status of my Quest:

Still need the same two coins I needed last time! 1938-S and 1943-D. DylansDad has been sucking up all the 43-D ..... who has all the 38-S.

Final Thoughts:

Nickel searching provides around fun, variety and potential for unusual finds all at low cost. It's a great way to learn about the hobby ...... and the only currently circulating series at least 50 years old where one can reasonably expect to complete the series from bank rolls all at face value cost.

I commend to you the humble nickel ..... and best of wishes in your searching.

Enjoy

David