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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1563415, member: 68&quot;]Believe me, your dealer was the rare exception to the rule.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>To get my first bag of 1982-P quarters was an herculean task.&nbsp; My bank simply refused to help.&nbsp; I had tracked down the origin of some nice gemmy coins I found in circulation near the end of 1982 to my own bank but to get them to sell me a bag I had to track down every error they had made in my accounts for the past six years.&nbsp; They were all less than a dollar and worked out to about 25c in their favor but to correct them on their books would require enormous effort.&nbsp; When presented with this they introduced me to the vault manager.&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />&nbsp; He told me he had called numerous cohorts in the Chicago area and not one of them had ever heard of setting aside clad coins.&nbsp; He said they got a rare call for pennies and nickels and even had tales of half dollars but never dimes or quarters.&nbsp; He thought I might be a little tetched on this basis.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But this brings us back to the coins your dealer set aside. Only about 10 to 14 die pairs are represented in a bag and these coins will spread about a tenth of the dies&#039; life.&nbsp; The odds&nbsp; of even a single nice coin in a bag (Philly 25c) in 1982 was only about one in ten.&nbsp; Of course if there was one nice coin there were likely to be at least dozens and possibly hundreds.&nbsp; In other words there&#039;s only a one in ten chance that your exception to the rule dealer got any nice coins in his bag.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s entirely possible that there are small hoards of nice coins of this date out there but I&#039;ve seen little evidence to date.&nbsp; There are only about 80,000 of these coins in existence and if random then only about one in two hundred is well made and not badly marked.&nbsp; I&#039;m assuming at least a few people sought nice specimens (like your dealer) so the incidence is actually higher.&nbsp; But the &#039;82-P doesn&#039;t appear in souvenir as gem and the &#039;83-P is scarce from this source.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I advertised to pay $40 each for all these coins as Gem all through the mid-&#039;90&#039;s and most of the stuff I recieved was just junk and I recieved very few coins.&nbsp; I only actually bought a mere handfull of coins.&nbsp; In those days the entire roll listed for only $25 so this should have been lots of incentive for people to look at their rolls.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve been trying to count these since 1983 and, quite frankly, I believe that 1000 might be an exaggeration of their availability.&nbsp; I would call it a fairly liberal estimate.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>My bag?&nbsp; I really lucked out.&nbsp; These coins were from the exact same source as the Gems I had found in circulation (the same die pair occured in it) .&nbsp; Most of the coins in the bag were junk and three die pairs didn&#039;t produce a single decent coin because they were worn out and off center But there were about nine or ten other die pairs that were all pretty decent and there were at least a few nice coins from them.&nbsp; But the nicest pair was early die state (between about 2,000 and 40,000 coins) and it was well-centered and properly installed.&nbsp; Most of these were very lightly marked or virtually clean and all the detail was at least half way struck up.&nbsp; I would only grade most of them as MS-64 but I&#039;m sure they&#039;d do better if sent in since this is a very tough date.&nbsp; One of the coins stands head and shoulders above the others and is probably from the first couple hundred strikes.&nbsp; I&#039;d grade it solid Gem and it might be the only solid Gem &#039;82-P in existence.&nbsp; So long as these coins are ignored we won&#039;t know because some people who actually have the coins won&#039;t send them in just to make a few bucks. This coin is my collection piece anyway and ain&#039;t goin&#039; nowhere.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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