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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1377799, member: 68&quot;]Great post.</p><p><br /></p><p>I suspect that some dies missed the sandblasting back in the old days of proof set making and &quot;know&quot; that not all SMS dies recieved sandblasting.&nbsp; There are examples of SMS coins struck off brand new dies that have no cameo effect at all.&nbsp; This is the main reason SMS cameo cents are so rare.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There was quite a bit of experimenting going on with SMS dies, planchets, and striking so there are a lot of oddballs in these years.&nbsp; This is probably the cause of the existence of the &#039;64 SMS&#039;s since these were still being struck into &#039;65. (I&#039;m not sure this applies to the half dollar though)</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s true that proof sets and SMS&#039;s are heavily cherrypicked now days for cameos but this is just part of the reason they are rare.&nbsp; Remember that only the cameos actually removed from sets affect the incidence of cameos in sets.&nbsp; Sellers simply know to submit cameos or sell them for higher pices.&nbsp; In the old days there were dozens of collecors who knew about cameos each able to look at thousands of sets but now it&#039;s thousands of collectors chasing dozens of sets because choice sets aren&#039;t usually available.&nbsp; Sometimes heirs will sell valuable cameos as typical sets though so they are still out there.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>&#039;73 is the year that cameos become common but it&#039;s &#039;83 before they become almost universal.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There will be&nbsp; hoards of cameos hitting the market in the future but collectors should remember that these are all quite scarce and generally people simply didn&#039;t have access to the numbers of sets required to find significant numbers.&nbsp; There was deep interest in cameos but it wasn&#039;t widespread so not even all accumulations were getting searched.&nbsp; Even as late as 1980 there was almost no searching of SMS&#039;s going on anywhere.&nbsp; I could find large accumulations that hadn&#039;t been searched.&nbsp; Now days you almost have to find original sets to have even the slightest chance or to be very lucky and find a collector&#039;s hoard that got to market.&nbsp; Of course it&#039;s far easier to buy them as cameos but no one sells them cheap.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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