I think someone had taped it into their old whitman album. It had been cleaned, probably a couple of times. But, it is what it is.
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that the mintage was 1,200. How many do use suppose still exist? Has anyone ever come up with a way to estimate survival rates on older coinage with any degree of accuracy?
Let's not go with 1,200 since this number is clearly incorrect (too low) and should be removed from the conversation. Many folks have come up with survival estimates for early Federal coinage and I go through this at length in the book that Dick Graham and I published on this series. Needless to say, our estimate of mintage is significantly higher than the 1,200 hypothesized by Breen and at least some portion of the greater numismatic community is starting to take notice of the work we have done. PCGS has now upped their estimate to 5,000 and I believe the Red Book is similarly, or has, discussed about raising theirs, too.
You missed the point of my post. I'll try again: Has anyone ever come up with a way to estimate survival rates on older coinage with any degree of accuracy?
No, I didn't miss your point; I answered it in the first sentence beneath what you quoted. There have been various estimates for survivorship given by a number of authors or organizations and their methodology and/or depth of data would likely influence the accuracy of the estimates.
That is an OUTSTANDING response. YOU like it...that is what matters. There is almost 7,000,000,000 people on this earth and there are only 1200 of those coins that were minted. Take into account the ones that might have been accidently melted down, lost, destroyed, etc...which makes it MUCH more rarer. And YES you are the proud owner of one. Be PROUD!!! Great post.
