How Long Did Old Coins Circulate?

Great question, but I don't have an answer.

I often times wondered the same thing. I used to find many of the "old" coins in my pocket. I remember getting a Barber quarter in change at an amusement park. I still have it, probably about VG.

So good question, and I hope we see some replies.

There are a lot of complicating factors.

I do like your question which asks the number of transactions but it should be remembered that this is an average and not an absolute. A coin could go straight into the till and then be the lone coin in change to the very next customer where it would go into a coin purse and be well protected. It might sit in this purse for minutes or for many years. Conversely a ditch digger might buy a cup of coffee in the morning and the coin go into a pocketfull of other coins. After a hard day's work the coin could actually wear down fron unc to VF. It might be transferred to his pockets each day for a while before it's finally spent through random movement but is now only G.

There are very few people who do a lot of physical work of this type now days. Even those who do are far less likely to have many coins in their pockets since this has fallen out of favor and coins are much less usefull in the economy than they used to be.

Coins had a far higher velocity in the old days. There were fewer sitting in vending machines but more importantly there were not many people who would have a five gallon bucket full of quarters at home. This was simply far more wealth than most people could acquire and allow to accumulate dust. The average quarter in 1900 might make two or three transactions per day while today a quarter averages fewer than ten per month. Cents were even faster in those days while today about 20% of these don't circulate at all and attrition is simply staggering.

Until 1972 many coins could sit in the back of FED vaults for decades because there was no reason and no attempt to prevent this. In '72 they adopted FIFO (first in- first out) accounting and began rotating the coin stocks so there can no longer be pallets of lightly worn or brand new coins lost in storage. This has very little bearing on the rate at which the average coin wears but collectors tend to prefer lightly or unworn coins and it has a great deal of bearing on the numbers of these available. This really supercededs the importance of the rate at which the coins wear where it concerns collectors.

It takes about ten average transactions to knock a clad quarter out of unc condition. It will likely pick up a mark or two going through counters during this time but the luster will probably remain unbroken. Silver coins are much softer and much heavier. Since wear is largely dependent on weight since this is the force pushing them into whatever is causing their metal to slough off, the silver will wear much faster. Coupled with the greater amount of physical work and greater probability of being exposed to wear in a pocket it likely required only a few transactions (on average) to wear the coins to AU.

Don't lose sight of the fact that grades are quite arbitrary. It might take a hundred average transactions to wear a coin from XF- to F+, but one thousand to go from VG- to AG+. In other words G is a much wider grade than is VF.

You can get a pretty good feel for this by just observing the coins in question. Look at what the average grade of a specific date is and compare it to the time it spent in circulation. Throw out the outliers. Just looking at price guides will provide some insight into what the relative populations are. Remember that everything tends to be lost to fires and floods at about 1% annually and that circulating coinage will be higher. Look at the mintage of the '16-D dime for instance. These had mostly been removed from circulation by 1946 and are normally encountered in AG/ G.

These question are a real hoot to contemplate and you can get some reasonable answers though you always need to consider the complicating factors since they can be more important than the question itself.

As already stated that is not an easy one to answer and anyone that tries is just guessing. I too remember finding all sorts of old coins in change back in the 50's and even more so in the 40's. However, so much as to a coins condition, availibility, etc also greatly depends on where it is located and where it stays. For example a coin used in LasVegas in machines wear at a different rate than a coin in standard change in a big city. True that small towns may see some coinage recirculated numerous times, however, in some areas of farm communities, coinage and currency is hardly circulated at all. For example in an area where I lived once in Wisconsin, so much was done in the barter system, I hardly new money existed. Until this lately large coin collecting boom hit, Indian cents, for example, were still being found in change there until several years ago. Then it is difficult to asertain the destructive abilities of some people in melting coins, throwing them in rivers, lakes, oceans, etc. All chem classes have students that experiment with coins I think. I know we did. Then there are still the many, many people that still have jars, cans, boxes of coins laying around which may explain sudden appearances in change of older coins. For example I met someone that just took $1200 dollars worth of dimes to a bank that was in his family for many years. Just to many different things happen to our monetary system.

To me that coin looks like it spent a lot of time on a beach or in a river.