What Are The Chances....

I too am a long time collector-growing up in the upper midwest I went through countless bank rolls in the entire decade of the 1960's, and the best I ever found was an 11-s. in VG.

finding a 09-s VDB in circulation would be 1 in trillions-gazillions and so on .

If you count up all the cents minted from 09-11 then divide it by the number of 09-s vdb's produced
you will see its pretty much impossible.

Yet it could still happen and did.

As to finding any rare of almost rare coins in circulation, the chances are excellant today. Not sure where your at but by me nome invasions, home robberies, coin store robberies, etc are excessively common. And with todays economy, more so than ever. Also, the poor economy and people out of work tends to have people spending coins that have been in jars, cans, boxes for a long time. Some people have had coin collections from when they were kids and are now spending those coins thinking they are not worth anything, just a kids hobby.
In the Chicago area there is an estimated 30,000 cars stolen per year. Murders have dropped to the 500 area though. And those are the ones reported since it is well known many crimes are sort of pushed aside.
The summation of this is most criminals just dump coins stolen in banks or coin counting machines.