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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;medoraman, post: 1348722, member: 26302&quot;]OP, you also have a bias going on with the 200 year old coins you are viewing as well. Almost all good chain cents long ago are in long term collections, so most of them you see are the low end coins. I would say most ancients in the ground not protected by a container are either gone, (dissolved), or in low grade. Some survive in better grades, if non-acidic soil, but most did not. Its the coins in protective pots that survived the best from what I have read, and most XF ancients come from those sources.</p><p><br /></p><p>The numbers minted, though, are well above in the millions. It was in the billions. There have even been impressively large hoards found. One was found about 500 years ago, about 450,000 gold roman coins. Unfortunately most were melted since there were simply not very many collectors of them at the time. Even today there is a industry rumor that about 500,000 ancient jewish coins were found in one hoard a few years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>Modern collectors, and society in general, tend to view antiquity as backwards, but they had a thriving economy, and all of it was based on coins as opposed to today. Therefor massive quantities were needed to be struck, luckily for us collectors of ancient coins. Couple that with lack of banks so almost everyone buried their life savings for protection, and it adds up to massive coins being found still today.</p><p><br /></p><p>Chris[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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