Can anyone tell me why all carson city dates all make the key date list and only some of the other mints?
Isn't it simply a matter of mintage numbers? Supply and demand? https://morgandollars.net/morgan-dollar-mintage
I guess that Carson City dollars just have more natural demand. Brings back memories of the Old West, etc.
Possibly because they all got "on the list" back before the 1960's and before it became known what was in the Treasury holdings. For example 1884 CC with a mintage of 1.1 million used to be considered a significant rarity, especially in uncirculated. Then after the Treasury ended redemption of silver certificates with dollar coins and took inventory of what they still had it was discovered that something like 75% of the entire mintage of the 84 CC was in what because the GSA hoard and a coin that used to be a MS rarity became the most common MS CC dollar. Today it is much rarer circulated than MS.
But if you go high enough in condition, it does become rare. I think I paid a decent price for my 1884-CC in MS66 or MS67.
Thanks for your insights, interesting. I assumed because of their relatively low mintages it could be a reason but not being American i wondered if their was a geographical/historical reason.
WERE they low mintages ? I don't recall and don't have the numbers in front of me, but remember it's SURVIVING coins that matters, not mintage.
From what i can see, specifically for the late 1800's, the mintages at CC were considerably lower than the others, so yes there must be a lot less still around than other mintmarks. Thanks for all of your thoughts, it'e only been around three months since i got this collection. There is a fantastic amount to learn about this fascinating hobby.
Mintage and survivorship are NOT directly related ! You can have low-mintage and if was stored somewhere that escape melting, you can have thousands or tens of thousands of Gem Quality Morgans available. I'm not as familiar with Morgans but if you look at the rarity numbers for Saint-Gaudens coins, it has nothing to do with original minting. Granted, gold coins had different variables (melting under the gold recall) but you get the idea.
This is correct. The 1935-B British Trade Dollar had a mintage of 6.8 million, on par with some of the more common dates. It is the key date because all but about 15 were melted (and 2 are for sale by Stack's/Bowers soon in the same auction). There are countless other issues like this, like the 27-D, 27-S, 29-32 Saints, and others with less extreme differences between mintage and survival, but it's why mintages don't matter much. As for CC Morgans, some were low mintages. The lowest mintage CC is 85-CC, with the 3rd lowest mintage of all Morgans. Now, that's far from being the key date of the Morgans, or even the CC Morgans because of how they were released. Dates like 79-CC and 89-CC were released into circulation, so there's a lot more attrition in play for those date. 85-CC was released with the treasury hoard and GSA sales, so there are still plenty available, and they're mostly all uncirculated. As for what a "key date list" is, I've never really heard that there is such a thing. The term "key date" generally refers to one of the hardest coins to place in one's collection, typically because it's the most expensive or among the most expensive. Excluding the 1895 proofs, the 93-S is the key date. Others you can discern from price and population guides, but the only CCs I'd put on that list are the 79-CC and 89-CC. The term "semi-key date" is often used to mean the coin isn't one of the more common ones, but again there's no concrete list or criteria for being referred to as a semi-key.
That would be true for the three dates that were only represented by a single piece in the GSA hoard, but for the rest of the dates a sizable percentage of the original mintage were in the hoard in MS. The three dates with a single specimen were NOT in MS condition.
Yeah...I meant in the MS65-67 range, which is obviously probably the floor for moderns but can be a conditiona rarity for alot of classics. Reading Roger Burdette's Saint-Gaudens book....has a price guide for MS60, 63, and 65 coins from 1976-2015. Great stuff....fascinating to see what happened to the grades for a particular year during the 1978-80, 1988-90, and 2005-11 bubbles.
