Amanda's Peace Dollar Chart

Hello, my fellow CoinTalkers!

I'm sorry I've been absent for a bit, but January was an absolutely crazy month -- 6 flights and 4 coin shows later, I've barely had a chance to breathe! Well, that aside, I have a confession to make ...

I'm not perfect. It's shocking, I know. Probably my single biggest weakness as a junior numismatist right now is my inability to rattle off lists of "better date" coins by series, and it's something that I've been working on as I go.

Of course, one of the main reasons I joined CT was for the amazing human-encyclopedias chock full of knowledge that frequent the forums, and with that in mind I have a littler personal project I would like to share with you all. I too have fallen victim to searching the internet for "list of better date ____" only to come up empty-handed, and often with a quip from someone to just get a Red Book and "figure it out". Ironically, that is essentially what I did -- only with the gray sheets.

I am someone who does the best learning visually, and so I decided to try to create a chart for Peace Dollars (because there aren't too many of them) to start with ... I've shown it to the senior numismatists here at the shop, and they only made one or two corrections; but often the line between "slightly better" and "better", or "better" and "scare" can be a bit of a subjective one, so I'd like your opinions! Let's see what the majority of CoinTalk has to say!

Take a look, and let me know what you think!

I look forward to your critiques!

Amanda's Peace Dollar Chart

 

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looks good. one question though, on the 1928 it is "scarce+" under MS63, but it drops to "scarce at MS64"....was this a typo, or are there actually more MS64's than there are MS63's in that year? or does the "+" serve as an asterik for something?

very useful chart though. i am going to print it and drop it in my redbook that i bring along with my sacred composition book to coin shows.

 

Very nice, I like the visual, you can get a lot of info very quickly in an easy to understand format.

Mike

 

I really like the layout. Couple of questions/comments:

Why is a 1935 Peace not just COMMON at very low grades?

How can 1928 MS 63 be SCARCE+ but MS 64 be just SCARCE?

TC

 

Thank you! I'm glad you found it useful enough that you think you'll print it out and take it with you for reference -- that actually made my day!!

The 1928 is one of those weird things ... I wasn't applying any sort of "formula" to the individual years in terms of pop/mintage, though I did consider it ... I was just purely going off of prices listed in the gray sheets, and then showing it to senior numismatists for confirmation.

For 1928, in MS 63 the common coins are going for $40, with our 28 going for $760, with only one higher price (the 1934-S at $3,450), and the others close to it being in the $300-400 range mostly. Then, when you go to MS 64 the 1928 is suddenly one of 4 coins that are all in an almost identical price range. So, going by the sheets, a 1928 in 63 is "slightly harder to find" relative to others coins in the grade than a 1928 in MS 64.

 

That's a nice, handy chart you made there Amanda! I think you should send a copy of it to Roger Burdette, the author of the Red Book for Peace Dollars (Whitman Publishing). Maybe he would include it in his next edition.

Now, how about making up a similar chart for me? Rich Widows by Age

Chris

 

That's a great handy reference!!! Easy too see and use now if I only collected peace dollars... Them and seated liberty the only cartwheels I don't collect are you going to do this for other coins too? Would be an incredibly handy reference

 

Very good work , but I wish you'd have put a little side chart as to what the different descriptions mean . Like how many coins exist to make common , rare , etc . Sort of like a rarity chart .

 

If there is enough "demand" for them (basically, if they would be useful enough to other people) I had absolutely intended to make these for essentially every series for personal use, but I'd been unsure if I should "publish" them ... I had actually asked a couple people if they had seen anything like this before, and they all said they hadn't but I just couldn't believe that I was the first person to conceive of putting the information together in a chart like this!

More to come, if you guys really like it!

There isn't really a strict definition for any of the terms ... as I mentioned before, I had thought briefly about trying to weigh things like pop reports and mintage figures, but of course not all coins are certified, and not all coins survived their initial minting. The terms are strictly subjective, but they do seem to be a universal industry standard. Perhaps if I get more involved with them I can start crunching the numbers and running more detailed analysis, but this chart was purely a relative reflection of gray sheet prices by grade.

 

And geez, I don't think it's good enough to go in the Red Book!! I've always wished for something like it in the red book, but I have to imagine that by this time someone would have included it if there were really enough demand for it!

 

can i request the next series you do this with? it is a hard one, but, i think morgan dollars would be the most useful. you would climb another peg in my book if you undertook that one.

 

I have actually already begun working on a Morgan set ... I came up with the idea and then made these charts my personal "busy work" project for down time at shows (on the plane, while at lunch, etc), but for my first attempt I wanted to do a series that wasn't a large as the Morgans ... just to iron out the wrinkles and what not!

I also wanted to see what people outside of our office had to say before I took on a bigger list!

 

And for that matter, the 1928 that has already raised several questions ...

While technically if one is going strictly by the values of the gray sheets the way I have it listed is correct, would it make more sense to bend the line a little and make it linear and just call it "rare" throughout?

 

If you did a pocket guide for most us coin series (wouldn't waste time on more modern) I think it'd sell like hotcakes just a simple pocket type reference that you could travel with and refresh yourself when you run across a coin that's not in a series that you actively collect I know I'd want a few to keep one in every vehicle for example

 

I was thinking exactly the same - Morgans a tough series to know as there's so many condition rarities if you wanted another warmup may I suggest trade dollars

 

Sell! I was just going to list them all on my blog! It honestly never occurred to me that the charts I was planning on making might be sold, or even made into a real book.

 

nice work! I like it!

It's a readable format that lends itself to covering a swath of dates/MMs in a compact chart.

 

I would suggest that you not have the strange issue where MS-63 grades are rarer than MS-65 grades or more common than XF-40 grades. I understand that you're attempting to do a population availability chart, but I think that the current format would do a disservice to a newer collector. Maybe you could switch around the words a bit too. I mean, visually, the chart seems to imply (in terms of availability, so less is better):

Rare > Scarce > V Rare

Maybe it would be more streamlined to switch scarce and rare to be:

Scarce > Rare > V Rare

Overall, good contribution.

 

I think that Standing Liberty Quarters would also be a manageable chart .

 

Hmmm. When I click on the link, I get a "Oops, That Page Can't Be Found" message. There's Amanda's smiling face, but I think it's actually laughing!