I like it. It can take years to memorize some types and I'm sure you come across a ton of peace dollars.
I like the colors because the rare colors grab your attention. I would think the best of both worlds would be to have the price in the colored boxes.
For things like that... or even selling. If someone comes up to your case at a show and says "Hey, watchya got in the way of common Peace Dollars in '64?" and you have to stop and fuss with the gray sheet and look up each coin individually, it's a problem! As I've said several times before, I'm a very visual learner; If I print this out and leave it sit on my desk and glance at it a few times a day, before long I'll have absorbed 95% of it. So that was the reason I made it...purely selfish.
Oh, I'm still kinda on the fence. For one thing, I'm sure a lot of people would have the same reaction of the first guy who responded -- "edited would I need this for?"
Now, now, gotta be careful Yeah, maybe. But 10,000 of them would kiss your feet and sing your praises !
Maybe it's what you were trying to avoid in the first place, but why not replacing all the 'commons', 'betters' etc. with an average value of the coin? It's somehow redundant data as the color says it all. Just an idea.
That's cool. I had a hand written chart for Morgans years ago. Of course it was much easier since I was looking at circulated or unslabed BU only.
Well my only point was to quickly sort "better" from "common" stuff. Values change all the time, and this isn't really something that I'm likely to keep up like the gray sheets -- and why bother? You could just look at the gray sheets for values.
I think the chart is good for pointing out relative rarity, and show which coins are key. It isn't intended to be a "value" chart--there are more than enough price guides out there for that purpose. Bravo, Amanda!
Amanda - I just realized I should have added one other comment to my post above. If you go to all this work and post it for free - everybody will kiss your feet and sing your praises
If you are not going to go with the thermometer, I would suggest that you flip that triangle key upside down so that common is on the bottom and rare is at the pinnacle. Nice job! TC
I prefer numbers to go along with terms like "scarce". You may want to play around with the idea of percentages (?). Take all of the mintings of all of the peace dollars ever coined, then for each year, mint mark and grade do the math with the resulting percentage. So for example (and i am making the numbers up for simplicity) if there were a billion peace dollars struck, and there were 800,000 of the 1935-S, it would be 0.08% of the mintage. Within that year and mint mark then you could assign numbers to each of the grades and take a percentage of the percentage. Maybe I am over simplifying but would be cool to have some numbers to go with your flash card system. In any case, I do like it - very creative. Good job.
The only problem with attempting to do that for each grade is -- and the point of the chart is not only relative rarity for each year/mint mark for the series, but also the grade -- you then have to rely on population reports from PCGS & NGC, as everything else that exists for raw coins are estimates only... and who bothers to have a common date certified in VG? Take for example this pop info for a 1923 Peace Dollar ... there are 10,000+ certified in 62, 63, 64, and 65 and only a couple hundred at most for AU & under, all the way down to 11 in PCGS for XF. Those numbers alone would suggest that Peace dollars in 62-65 are more common that those in XF-AU. Sent from my iPad Junior Numismatist, Alhambra Coin Center www.lifeatthecoinshop.com www.facebook.com/lifeatthecoinshop