1967 Kennedy half realizes $12,600

Also, based on percentages, when does a coin cease to be rare:

1% of 100 = 1
1% of 1,000 = 10
1% of 1,000,000 = 10,000
1% of 10,000,000 = 100,000
1% of 1,000,000,000 = 10,000,000

Yes there are moderns with a mintage in excess of 1 billion. This isn't targeted at SMS pieces specifically, but it does address your 1% argument.

 

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No I'm not. Things are all relative which is what you are missing. Coins are compared against their peers for what they are, not against completely irrelevant things.

So a very common coin by actual coin rarity scales

A mintage of several hundred or a thousand where almost all or all did survive would be considered common to very common.

But again I am apparently just a troll so what do I know.

 

A lot of sets have been cherry picked but, I believe, If you can find a couple hundred sets there will be enough original ones that there will be a cherry in them.

Of course, you'd be better off buying them from many sources so you don't buy a lot of 200 already searched sets.

I could be wrong about this since I haven't looked at too many sets recently.

 

1. There is a place for relative rarity, but at some point those terms are devoid of any real meaning and the label becomes a farce.

2. We are looking at population reports which are inaccurate and paint misleading pictures.

3. It is easy to manipulate statistics to make something sound more important than it is. Did you know that only 1.1% of the 1.8 million 1967 SMS coins have been graded as gem (MS65 or higher regardless of cameo/dcam/ucam designations) by either PCGS or NGC?

4. I was surprised to see someone like Jason, who collects esoteric PL coins that are indeed exceptionally rare like his unique PL braided hair half cent, would call a SMS Kennedy of this date exceptionally rare.

5. It all comes down to personal definitions of rarity I suppose. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

6. I criticized your one post in this thread as trolling because it struck me as priggish. I didn't label your subsequent posts as trolling.

 

You mean the population reports where the best coins are over represented?

Go out and send a bunch of DCAM 68s or better in then and get rich if you think it's so easy

Because he actually knows what he is talking about with it.

No, rarity is specifically defined on coin rarity scales. Mintages of several hundred to a thousand are not rare. Many scales won't even call something rare until it is 75 or less, some other scales it is MUCH lower.

I'm just a troll though so what do I know.

 

Baseball, keep it up, and you're gonna have to buy us all popcorn.

 

Do you prefer buttered or unsalted?

Sorry that peoples fee fees were hurt by facts

 

It's almost enough to make me look at all those SMS and proof sets I bought from non-collectors in the early 1970's to see if any of the pieces are nice?

I don't know how the US market's been doing lately but I can say that the better ancients, well all the ancients, in the Heritage NYICS auctions went for moon money. Truly stupifying prices. The Cleopartra tetradrachm out of Goldberg's brought 258K! Granted a Cleo tet in any grade is rarer than a 1967 half dollar but I was thinking that with the down stock market, prices would be subdued.

 

Is it just me or does the reverse not look fully UCAM/DCAM?

 

I'm handy with Corel Photo Paint and if you want I could alter the date of your avatar: the 1794 half cent to make it read 1793?

 

I prefer kettle-corn, myself. Made in a big old kettle like they do at the Civil War re-enactments. Best damn popcorn you'll ever eat.

As for the rarity.... If you want to use the Sheldon Scale for an absolute rarity ranking, several hundred graded realistically puts the DCAM firmly into the "common" or "semi-uncommon" range. But modern coins don't fit this scale well. They have mintages in the billions, and even the limited production SMS coins (with an extremely high survival rate) have millions of coins in existence. If you compare "certified DCAM" examples to "surviving SMS" examples, you see that the DCAM really is quite rare.

 

A little bit of context: I was calling certified DCAM specimens rare compared to the rest of the SMS coins. (looking only at NGC numbers) There are 45,794 total SMS coins graded, of which 661 are graded UCAM. This means 1.44% of the SMS coins have earned the UCAM designation (NGC's equivalent to DCAM).

Sure, many of my prooflikes are orders of magnitude more rare than that. But, this is equivalent to the Seated Liberty Half, of which 1.6% of the certified population is PL. Maybe it is hyperbole to say that DCAM/UCAM SMS coins are "exceptionally" rare - but they are definitely far from the norm. Compared to the vast majority of non-cameo SMS coins, these coins are indeed rare.

 

Interesting, I haven't looked at SMS coinage in years but my perception was that the 1965 was in a league of its own much like 1950 proof coinage is to the rest of the modern proof era. I also thought 1966 was still much scarcer with a designation, so I excluded both years from analysis. Had this been a 1965, I would not have been nearly as surprised by the result.

I agree. I wasn't trying to be nitpicky. It just came off as odd to me. Part of it is probably due to my narrow collecting niches where single digit populations are not unheard of. I guess you become jaded after awhile.

 

That actually is a very good call. There probably is no better popcorn than the kettle-corn or cast iron made kind

Fully agree, I was just using the scale to push back against some of what he said. Rarity in coins is all relative to what it is especially with moderns. For instance even if you say 1 percent of a billion mintage will make the top grade, 99 percent of that 1 percent will very likely be lost from people not caring/thinking it's too common/spending it and so on and have long stated that elite modern coins are much rarer than most people realize.

 

Ah, I see where you are coming from. The 1965 UCAM is 0.5% of the population; the 1966 UCAM is 0.95%; the 1967 UCAM is 2.9%. So yes, the date does matter. I wouldn't say 1965 is in "a league of it's own", but it is marginally scarcer than the 1967.

I was looking at it from an overall perspective (similar to the way I look at prooflikes from a type-set perspective - sure there are quite a few 1949S Franklin PL's.... but compared to the overall population of Franklins, they are quite rare).

 

It's not about "seeing" the difference between 66 CAM and 69 UCAM. It's about this particular coin being a modern coin sold only in sealed SPECIAL MINT SETs. There are probably 10,000+ 69 UCAMs sitting in their mint packaging right now that haven't been submitted (yet). They will however be submitted now that someone overpaid for one. I can also see anyone possessing a 69 CAM or 68 UCAM resubmitting for a bump up. So yea, it's not about seeing the difference from 66 CAM to 69 UCAM. It's about everything else lol.

 

I truly doubt it. The price still seems like 10x too much for my taste even considering the low population.

 

And you just confirmed you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to moderns.

Too many people express their feelings when it comes to moderns instead of dealing with facts. You feel that you know that the best of the best moderns are super common, they are not. You feel that this should just be another common coin comparable to your actually common coin, it is not it is one of the elite examples of the date.

Since you feel the 69 UCAM coin is so common go out and find a bunch and submit them and get rich. Otherwise thanks for your feelings, but facts matter

 

Believe me, I will be looking for and submitting 1967 SMS Half Dollars. Of course any one that might grade 69 UCAM won't fetch $12k but I will be looking to key off that ludicrous sale to hopefully get $2-3k. Unless maybe I can get ahold of that buyer lol. Do you know them personally? Wait... are you the buyer? Your comments would make a lot more sense if it was you (or someone you know) that dished out $12k for that coin.

EDIT: Also, let me ask you something... Do you believe grading is in any way subjective?

 

$500 dollars says you can't find a 1967 Kennedy SMS 69 DCAM by March, I will even allow submission dates if you can prove it. It's so easy right so you should clearly take this bet

After all like you say there should be over 10k right?