Seriously... Do People Really Know How Many There Are?

TPGs keep track of the coins they grade, and coins with exceptionally high grades (ex: MS67 Buffalo nickel) are almost always sent to be graded. I think if there is a dealer with a coin that high quality they will always send it to be graded. I doubt many coins exist in high grades that are uncertified.

You are correct. Not one person can say exactly how many coins exist in a particular grade for most series, however, educated guesses can be made.

And sometimes, they get it wrong, and a hoard of hundreds or thousands of coins that were thought to be quite rare pop up and the price plummets. I think the 1904O dollar did that.

Don't listen to people that claim no one knows how many coins of any time exist. The government hss hired millions of counter people to count all the coins in the USA every year. So now there is a real, honest, truthfull, complete listing of every coin in the USA that still exists today. The only real problem is people like me melt one down each day to throw them off.
Hopefully you know the above is utterly rediculous. In reality it is more like Thad said


The actual amount of coins of almost any type gets less accurate every day due to so many reasons it boggles the imagination.
Not to long ago there was a post about all the things people have done to coins. Sure wish I knew how to link to that so you could see just how much stuff is done to coins making the quantity not so easy to estimate.