How are these coins different? Like when you are CRH I find proof coins and they are easy to distinguish from the rest. So, if proof sets have been removed from their encapsulation, I’m sure mint sets have been opened and put into circulation as well. Could someone please enlighten me on the difference? mint set vs business strike
For most years, the coins in mint sets are regular production pieces. There was a period when the U.S. Mint made special coins for mint sets, but I believe that is no longer the case.
I agree with @johnmilton. I was part of a discussion on CoinTalk a few years ago where I proposed the Circulating Sets the mint was selling at the time were technically the same as the Mint Sets they were selling at a higher price. Both were business strikes pulled from production before they were released into circulation, i.e., uncirculated. Kurt Bellman agreed with me (more or less) so I was obviously right
LMAO. He was always right. Just ask him. Full disclosure...I agreed with almost everything he said on any subject. Almost.
Up until, I think it was '92, all the coins in Mint Sets were simply pulled from the business strikes. But starting then and every year since, that stopped and coins for Mint Sets came from an entirely different and their own production run. The dies used were the same dies as made for the business strikes, but they were all new dies that were only used on Mint Set coins. And those dies struck far, far fewer coins than any that were used to strike business strikes. That resulted in the coins not showing as much die wear as business strike coins have. Other than that the only other difference is that there was more care taken with the handling and packaging of the Mint Set coins. Which often resulted in the Mint Set coins having fewer contact marks than business strike coins. As mentioned above there was a period when the Mint Set coins had a different satin finish on them as a result of using specially prepared dies. But like what happens with Proof coins and the cameo effect, the satin finish on the dies quickly wore off so it was pretty common for many of the Mint Set coins to end up not having a satin finish or only a partial satin finish during that brief time period. Which is why the mint quit doing it because it became too expensive to produce them.
This is mostly true. A lot of the problem with mint sets is that the mint always described their manufacture in terms that made sense to the mint rather than the buyers of the coins. Many of their statements were highly misleading and some were not literally true. Processes and techniques varies widely over the years and sometimes within years. The words they used were adequate to describe the pre-65 sets but not the '65 and later sets. The '65 to '67 SMS's were completely redone from earlier sets. These were struck on slower presses with new dies under much greater force. They were attempting to make a proof/ unc hybrid and they succeeded. But set production didn't revert to the old procedures in 1968. Most of the niceties continued to be used. There had been dozens of changes that affected all or part of the SMS production and many of these would be used again over the years in mint sets. Of course you can't tell a coin that was fully struck by new dies for circulation from a mint set coin. But circulation dies struck a million coins and mint set dies only 40,000 so new dies tend to indicate mint set. You can't tell a coin struck with 30 tons of pressure from one struck by 35 tons but the one with stronger force is more likely to be a solid strike. You can't tell a coin struck at low speed from one struck at high speed but a low speed press allows time for die fill improving the chance for a full strike. Sometimes dies were even polished and basined for mint set coins but these effects can wear off before even a dozens strikes. Mint sets coins were almost always washed and dried but, again, this is invisible in the finished product. Very very few rolls of clad coins were ever even saved. This was chiefly due to the horrendous quality of the circulation issues. While there were some very nice coins made for circulation including fully struck Gems most rolls had nothing but MS-60 junk in most years. These coins (like '66 quarters) often didn't even look uncirculated and were poorly made and dinged up badly. Others like '74 Ikes looked like they had been through the Battle of the Marne because they were run through machines like cement mixers to knock down high rims. While many mint set coins are ugly due to various problems the vast majority of Gems made at the mints each year were put in mint sets. Finding Gems in mint sets is like shooting fish in a barrel. In most cases now days this is neither here nor there because there are no rolls except mint set rolls. People have been disassembling these sets for nearly 60 years now to sell the winners or just to spend the coins. while most of the coins go into circulation some are saved as singles and rolls and these rolls constitute most of the supply of chBU rolls.
Response to your question has given us a lot of knowledge about the mint process. However, I don't think your got an answer to your question. What it boils down to is, if the population of circulating coins has been contaminated with coins from mint sets, it is impossible to differentiate between the two. Therefore, when you find an especially nice coin in circulation you keep it until you find a better one.
He's still around on the NGC board - the only place that will have him. Still as curmudgeonly as ever and twice as fun to bait.
I would estimate that about 10% of the F and better pre-1980 quarters are mint set coins. This is based on things like the quality of the coins and their strikes but also some markers. About 1% of the '72 to '79 quarters in mint sets have mint set crimping damage. This might cause bad estimates because a far higher percentage of coins with this damage go into circulation than pristine coins or typical coins. Then in circulation they are more likely to be removed because they have such unusual marking. There are also varieties that show up almost exclusively in mint sets. SMS coins can retain their appearance down to VF sometimes. Many of the old worn out coins are mint set also but they get harder and harder to spot as the coins get thinner and detail is lost. More than half the pre-84 mint set quarters were placed into circulation over the years but these suffer the same natural attrition that the other quarters do which is a little more than 3% annually. Because they are typically higher grade because they've spent less time in circulation they also suffer a little more attrition by collectors putting them into collections. You ask a very complex question that varies by date because the rate at which specific mint sets are destroyed varies wildly. The odds of specific coins from these sets being circulated varies wildly as well. The data needed to answer such questions are generally unavailable or are largely a matter of speculation. 25 to 30 million of the older quarters from mint sets have entered circulation and probably about 15,000,000 are still there. These are mixed in with some 70 billion quarters intended for circulation. The odds of any given quarter chosen at random to be a mint set coin is pretty low but the odds of a well struck, high grade for the date, and attractive coin to be a mint set coin is much greater. Today, if you find a very high grade (XF+ or better) quarter from before 1978 there is a very high probability it originated on a mint set press. This probably approaches 30% for most dates. There were some pretty bad coins with very mediocre strikes made for mint sets from new dies under higher tonnage and these coins are more likely to go into circulation than is a superb Gem. Very large numbers of mint sets have been destroyed by many different causes. When any of the coins survive such misadventure they are likely to be spent. Many of the mint set coins that get into circulation are distributed from the tills of coin shops. Dealers spice up the change they pass out with things like wheaties, dateless buffalos, and mint set coins. Dealers have been cutting up mint sets and distributing the coins for decades.
What are your most useful sources for information like this? (If you remember -- I know you've been studying this for a long time, and if you're anything like me, you probably don't keep a bibliography of everything you study.)
I have very few sources other than deduction, inference, and mintages. A lot of it is just doing simple proportions. It all should be considered speculative but, I believe, there is some accuracy. You can actually see a lot of these processes at work. For instance within weeks after one of the proof set prices would crash you were likely to find that date in circulation. With mint sets you can rarely be sure if the nice AU you see is a straggler or from a recently cut set but with proof sets there is no doubt. Most of the big wholesalers keep (kept) only a few hundred of each set in stock so their actions should have little effect on the coins in circulation but in aggregate dealers and collectors have a lot more of these sets. Of course, dealers rarely have enough stock to make roll sets (200 of a date). You can actually find bag sets of proof coins but I imagine these are not all cut at once. Relative availability of the coins is easy enough but trying to pin down absolute numbers is trickier and largely experience and intuition. In the old days the mint sets were everywhere. Every dealer had shelves full of them they'd ship off to a wholesaler when then price was right. But then there was 25 years of most dealers just cutting up the sets and putting the coins in the till. Now days the sets are much more difficult to find with very very few dealers having more than $1000 worth in stock. These often look a little ratty and most of the older coins (pre1981) are hazed or tarnished. I doubt the wholesalers keep any more sets than they used to but they might since there is some retail demand now days. Most of the sets just flow to coin dealers from heirs and are shipped off. Older sets are drying up because there are not so many older collectors who purchased them from the mint as there were decades ago. There are a few other little clues as well like varieties in the mint sets. Unfortunately in most cases it's hard to quantify their incidence in circulation. Pop reports are interesting since they tend to reflect mostly mint set coins. Deviations imply rolls and bags exist for the date. Then there are varieties that don't appear in mint sets so their incidence provides clues. Knowing the mintage of something like '82-P souvenir sets and comparing this to varieties that don't appear in the set provides a range for the absolute number available. For quartiers the implication is ~80,000 though many of these have been lost since the original calculations. I've seen surprisingly few coins in circulation with mint set crimping damage. Some of the data you see published is hard numbers I picked up over the years. For instance I saw a newspaper article in 1984 that listed the mintages of the '82 and '83 souvenir sets. Mint sets didn't get much attention in the hobby press and when they did they usually just printed the highly misleading line from the mint that these coins are just circulation coins. The reality is they were specially made even though it might not have been all THAT special. As I often say if you want a Gem look in a mint set but then in most cases there are no other sources anyway. I often think I might be overestimating the number of surviving sets and then I see a nice unopened package of 20. Who knows?
About the only other thing I'd say is that most of the info about Mint Sets contained in this thread, and more beyond that, has been posted numerous times over the years here on the forum. My point is you can find most of it if you spend a little time looking for it. You likely won't find everything or all the info in any one thread because each contains various bit and pieces of info depending on the way the discussion and questions asked and answered in that particular thread went. But in the end, just about everything there is to know about Mint Sets has been posted here at one time or another.
