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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 27498, member: 68&quot;]In 1982 I didn&#039;t believe the US mint would ever again make mint sets.&nbsp; There was remarkably little interes in the mint sets that had already been made and it seemed the large mintages were caused strictly by momentum rather than any real demand for current coin.&nbsp; One never met anyone who collected the current coin and never saw discussion about them anywhere.&nbsp; Even stock photos for publishers of all types in those days were of the old silver coins.&nbsp; If K-Mart ran a picture of coins in a circular or there was such a picture in the paper it would invariably be of the older coins.&nbsp; It was as though as far as coinage went, time had simply stopped in 1964.&nbsp; In fact, this didn&#039;t really ease until well into the 1990&#039;s and didn&#039;t stop until the states issues appeared.&nbsp; Much to my surprise it wasn&#039;t unusual to see people walk into coin shops and ask about new mint sets in 1982.&nbsp; They probably just figured they missed the order period and went to the shops to get one.&nbsp; Few would have been told that the mint was producing souvenir mint sets still or that the coins could be assembled from bank rolls or purchased as a set made by private concerns.&nbsp; One of the most popular of these sets at least in this area was a white envelope with blue and red in the corner and including the ten coins made for circulation and packaged by Paul and Judy&#039;s coins of Arcola, Illinois.&nbsp; These sets sometimes contain some of the finest gems for the dates.&nbsp; They also are one of the best sources for some of the varieties for these two years.&nbsp; The sets normally sold for around $4 but didn&#039;t appear to be very big sellers.&nbsp; The souvenir sets had mintages of only ten to twenty thousand and are only now becoming well known.&nbsp; Good quality coins of these two years are very difficult since most high quality moderns come from the regular mint sets which weren&#039;t made.&nbsp; Souvenir set quality is not as high and by chance some of the gems of these twenty coins appear to have not shown up at all in these sets.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Uncs are still readily available but there is enough demand that the few available specimens will generally cost $30 or more.&nbsp; Finding nice choice quality will prove far more problematical because so many quarters of this year are poorly struck and banged up.&nbsp; One also has to be careful of buying coins with rubs or whizzing.&nbsp; It was known early on that the coin was greatly undersaved so many were pulled from circulation in the mid-&#039;80&#039;s.&nbsp; These coins are sometimes doctored up and sold as uncs.&nbsp; This is one of the few moderns that you might want to buy slabbed even in only MS-63 since the odds of stumbling on one is not good.&nbsp; But, yes, this is a tough coin to find raw or slabbed on e-bay and it seems likely to get a great deal more difficult as time goes on.&nbsp; Th number of modern collections being busted up or sold is minute and the growth in the number of collectors is great.&nbsp; This makes finding the tougher coins extremely difficult.&nbsp; Since there are unlikely to be any big hordes of any regular issue moderns coming on the market in the future the implication is that these will remain difficult until the market growth stops or subsides.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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