What do you consider "low mintage" for a US coin?

Within a series of course there is relative rarity. That was my point. Very populous coins will make their relatively rare coins much more expensive than truly rare coins. If a series is truly rare, almost no one collects it. Therefor, there is almost no extra demand for relatively more rare coins in a truly rare series.

I completely agree there is no such thing as a truly rare Lincoln cent or mercury dime. Every date and mm has a huge mintage versus most other coins in the world. Its only relatively rarer than the others.

 

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If I consider business strikes, proofs, commemoratives, and modern NCLT, I think I would always consider less than 500 to be low mintage, and I would always consider 50,000,000 and higher to be not low mintage (I consider 2009 nickels to be low mintage). Everything in between depends on context.

If I were to consider patterns, then the low mintage threshold drops to 30.

 

In my focus area, all mintages are low, so coins with survival rates less than 25 is not uncommon.

 

I collect older, mostly large silver and gold coins. Mintage of 40K is not unusual, and most are between 40,000 and 100,000 original mintage. Of course with the gold, lots were subsequently melted. Low/high - pretty subjective.

 

If you limit that to 20th century or later coins I would agree. That would be low mintage. Not necessarily rare, just low mintage. Get back into the 19th century and coins with mintages under a million are fairly commonplace, and often do not command any premium.

19th century I tend to think below 100K is low mintage. And still not necessarily rare.

 

That's true, but low mintage is still low mintage. The question seemed pretty general, survival rates really doesn't change whether or not the mintage was high or low. You could have a coin with a 100 million mintage but only 5 survivors that would be rare now but it was still a high mintage date.

I could see someone having two different definitions of low mintage though such as one for NLCT and one for circulating coins, but it would be impossible to come up with a number if we start using series comparisons to define it.

 

There have to be a lot more than 250,000 active collectors based in the US unless you have a completely different definition of active than I do. I'd say there are in the vicinity of two million.

The reason I believe this is because the combination of the price level and (potential) supply for so many US coins is so high that if only 250,000 active collectors are competing for them, the prices should be much lower. I reach this conclusion despite acknowledging that many coins (of all types from everywhere) are also owned by speculators (aka, "investors"), non-collectors, by dealers as inventory and that the supply available for sale at any given time is a (small) fraction of the total.

 

Indeed there are very widely held definitions of "collectors". Mine is those who are vaguely aware of things like red books, price guides, and coin shows. I do not count people who filled in a state quarter book or put aside curiousities like Ikes or bicentennial quarters from change.

There was a long thread here a few years ago on the subject. Lots of different definitions. I stand by my estimate, (not even mine, a firm put it together), that if you count as a "coin collector" someone who is knowledgable about coins and spends a portion of the year reading about coins or going to shops and coin shows to buy new ones, (or online), then its a very much lower figure than 2 million.

 

The reason I made this distinction is because though the First Spouse series has a low mintage literally, it isn't particularly meaningful. I'd say it isn't meaningful at all.

I cannot even begin to remember all of the topics on coin forums where some contributor seems to think there is some significance to low mintage coins like this series or any number of others.

To make an apples-apples comparison, the most valid comparison is usually (if not always) the number of survivors in comparable quality, not the total mintage. I have used the series I collect as examples many times. They aren't widely collected but I'd say for the most part, anywhere from 95% to 99% of the surviving examples no one will ever want or even under the most optimistic of outcomes are never going be worth a price that makes any difference. Disproportionately, the quality is so low or they are damaged that almost no one considers them worth collecting.

I can also name any number of (primarily) US coins with "low" or low mintages that aren't remotely scarce, there is little or even nothing significant in their (supposed) scarcity whatsoever and the existing probable or actual supply (vastly) outnumbers the collector base who will really want it in any timeframe which will matter to anyone reading my comments, especially at higher prices than today.

 

Most who collect SQ I'd classify as a casual collector.

I understand your point but it still doesn't reconcile to the apparent supply or price level, especially for series like the Lincoln wheat cent or Morgan dollar which I believe are the most widely collected "classics". For the Morgan dollar, there are certainly many "investors" because real collectors can't own the 200,000 to 300,000+ coins in the population reports, but both series have to have much larger numbers than implied by a collector base of only 250,000.

 

A couple have some potential but that series was dead in the water as soon as it started when they used gold for it. Not many people can tie up a 100k plus in one collection much less one series of a collection.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but the question was what do you consider a low mintage coin. Something doesn't have to be hard to find or even valuable to be low mintage. Survival rates and popularity and value are entirely separate issues. The mintage is the mintage.

Those other factors are certainly important in making decisions and knowing when to pay up for something but if 1 survives or 100 percent survive the initial mintage was the same. Now there is one area where I will concede that post mintage actions would influence the mintage. If the government never releases a portion of them and melts them down before they ever hit the streets I would adjust the mintage number to exclude those coins since they might as well have never existed where others may say the mintage was still what it was but some were destroyed.

 

Fair enough. However, I suspect the OP posed the question to incorporate what I wrote, though I might be wrong about that. The original mintage in and of itself doesn't really have much if any significance.

 

Strongly agree. Total mintage of 1933 double eagles or 1964-D dollars is interesting only as a historical footnote.

 

IDK man. Though they are not slabbed, I still own a few rolls of morgans and I don't even collect US anymore, along with a 14d, 09s, and many other "key" Lincoln cents. I have a friend who has a few thousand morgans all slabbed. Collectors collect, and many like me buy a lot of stuff.

If you wish to include what you term casual collectors I wouldn't have a problem with the 2 million figure. To me, though, a collector is someone who is knowledgable about coins in general, and more knowledgable about the coins they collect. I simply do not consider someone who casually puts aside some coins from circulation as they find them to be a real collector. Its more putting aside curiousities than serious collecting. My mother always put aside half dollars, dollar coins, bicentennial coins she got in change. I would not consider her a coin collector.

 

I assume there is also a third group of collectors between those you are describing (which might number as many as 250,000) and the casual collector. They aren't "die hards" like those on coin forums such as this one, PCGS and NGC but they have more than a passing interest. Though I have no direct knowledge of it, I don't believe most collectors are particularly knowledgeable in what they collect either.

This is my description of the majority of collectors in the most widely collected US series. The TPG populations probably reasonably reflect the collector population you describe but there should be a noticeable to substantial multiple collecting all (maybe excluding Morgans) of these series ungraded. Most I assume aren't spending much money but they aren't finding what they have in pocket change either because it isn't there to be found.

 

It's possible he did only he can answer that.

I agree though, the lowest mintages often have the highest survival rates since everyone knows they're the lowest mintage.

I do. You don't have to study something to collect it. The definition of collecting is basically a group of objects that someone acquires. If you don't study what you do you will probably make a lot of mistakes and certainly wouldn't be a numismatist, but you don't have to be an expert to be considered a collector.

Type set collectors wouldn't be considered serious collectors by the definition of having to be very knowledgeable about what they collect. There's plenty of collectors that can grade and appreciate coins that couldn't write a history report on them

 

Lincoln Memorial Cents - Under 1 billion.

 

Partly why I like to collect classics.

The early Lincolns though...

 

If you're talking straight mintage's MS coins I say 300,000 or less. Proof strikes fall in the under 100,000.
Now if you're talking mule coins ie 1971 s no s Jefferson Proof (1648) or the 2008 rev of 07 ASE ( 46000) you're talking about a different ball game.
When looking at world coins a mintage of less than 20,000 are not low mintage's for quite a few counties .
I have owned world gold coins with less than 300 minted.
Where the same size US gold coin would be in the 100 plus category .

 

Same here except that I would exclude "investors" or hoarders. Medoraman mentioned someone he knows who owns thousands of graded Morgans. This type of buyer is either a speculator or a combination "investor"/collector. I would classify a real collector as anyone who even "occasionally" adds to their collection. It's subjective of course and there is no absolute definition.