Coins That Are Hard To Find, But Shouldnt Be.

The best thing I can think of is to attend a major coin show where many dealers with a lot of stock are present. Have a look at your collection, make a list of the coins that need upgrading and find an estimate of cost to obtain them. You should get a budget out of this. Take that much cash with you to the show, and start hunting on the big day.

Take a 10x jewelers' loupe, a pencil and a notepad with you. I say a pencil because a biro won't work on a notepad that is handled with greasy fingers during lunchtime.

At the show, look around the whole show first to identify those dealers that have what you want. Ask their prices, and take note of them. Don't commit to any purchases at this point. In quiet corner over lunch, review your searches, consider the coins you have found, and negotiate the purchase of each.

Enjoy the thrill of the hunt. Good luck!

Works for me, I have done it for decades!

For the same reason why it is so hard to find mid grade Barber coins. Even though money was more valuable back in the early twentieth century, most hoseholds still had their little hoards of coins. A coin would sit in a hoard for awhile , then be circulated, and disappear into another hoard for awhile and this system bould keep repeating. But over time the older coins would get buied in the hoard and come out less and less often while the newer coins took over the job. Usually most coins in circulation are ten or less years old, and once a series is discontinued most of them are gone from circulation within fifteen to twenty years.

But then this thing called the Great Depression came along. Over 25% of the people were out of work and most peoplehad to dip more deeply into their hoards and they didn't have the extra money to be able to add to the hoards. So instead of sitting aboud and being preserved these coins went back into circulation and they circulated, and circulated and circulated. And with all of those hoard coins in circulation and slower business activity there was little need for new coins so the mintages were down. This meant no new coins to replace the older ones. So they KEPT circulating, all through the depression and then through the war time business boom as well. So these coins circulated not for their typical ten to fifteen year lives but for thirty to forty years.

there are allot of different dates in the Morgan series that are harder to find in mid circulated grades than they are in mid MS grades. It seems the ones that circulated circulated allot and all the rest were never used at all

Hey Mr. Johnny...this is as good as I've been able to find.

I agree. This is a VERY tough series. I think a full shield 1926D SLQ is going to be a tough one.

(Why do you torture yourself like this?)