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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Murphy45p, post: 3470567, member: 96005&quot;]I’m afraid I may be wishing for the impossible, but in my determination to know the TRUE rarity of a coin, I wish there was a method to determine, just an approximation mind you, the SURVIVING number of any given coin for any given date.</p><p><br /></p><p>I know it can’t be done – and yet still I try…</p><p><br /></p><p>I can say with absolute certainty that I have one of 350,000 Morgan 1889-CC silver dollars (the mintage), but realistically, the coin is rarer than that.&nbsp; Not all of those are still surviving.&nbsp; The treasury itself takes coins out of circulation and recycles them, then there were the melts, the Pittman act, and the silver rush during the 1980’s when melt values were attractive.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Pittman act wasn’t discriminatory toward coins, and coin collecting wasn’t near the hobby then that it is today.&nbsp; And even in the 1980’s, how many citizens, unaware of the numismatic value of particular coins, unwittingly sacrificed rare coins to the kiln?</p><p><br /></p><p>The mint, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t keep records of individual coin dates, mintmarks, etc, removed from circulation, so we’re stuck with conjecture.&nbsp; 569 million Morgan dollars were struck prior to the Pittman act in 1918, and the Pittman act removed 350 million silver dollars, that’s 61%.&nbsp; But the Pittman act didn’t distinguish between Morgans, Trades, Seated, etc.&nbsp; So is 50% a reasonable number of survivors?</p><p><br /></p><p>That would leave 175 thousand examples of the 1889-CC.</p><p><br /></p><p>Articles tell us that the average lifespan of a coin is around 30 years before it is removed from circulation by the mint.&nbsp; The problem with that statistic, is that Morgan dollars in general didn’t circulate as heavily as say, the quarters of the time.&nbsp; AND we know that despite the removal from circulation by the mint, examples still exist.&nbsp; Conservatively, can we assume the mint removed say, 30% of the coins?</p><p><br /></p><p>The timing of these removals is also important, because if they removed them prior to the Pittman act, then the removal may already be accounted for above.&nbsp; What if we assumed an additional 10% for mint recall, that is, over and above what was removed from the Pittman Act?</p><p><br /></p><p>That would leave us with approximately 157 thousand 1889-CCs remaining.</p><p><br /></p><p>The 1980’s silver rush was a singular event, but coins may have been destroyed in the years preceding and following that one event.&nbsp; Assuming 5% loss for bullion, that would leave us with 149 thousand.&nbsp; And of those, some may have lost date or mintmark legibility, let’s say 1%, after all, it’s a 130-year-old coin we’re talking about here.</p><p><br /></p><p>That leaves us at around 148 thousand, give or take.&nbsp; That’s 42% of the original mintage.&nbsp; It seems high from a reasonableness standpoint, but the coin can certainly be found.&nbsp; PCGS has encapsulated 8,724 examples, NGC has encapsulated 5,251 examples, that’s 13,975 coins or 9% of the population as speculated here.</p><p><br /></p><p>It’s a coin of value.</p><p><br /></p><p>For comparison to determine if our number is reasonable, let’s look at a recent issue, with probably no melt, and in the hands of collectors – the 1994 proof American silver eagle.&nbsp; Original mintage – 372 thousand.&nbsp; PCGS has graded 174, NGC has graded 18,690 for a total of 18,864 or 5% of the known population.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does it make sense that the 1889-CC would be submitted more often than the 1994 PR ASE?&nbsp; I can talk myself into it, because the likelihood of forgery is probably greater and to move the coin, buyers would want more assurance.&nbsp; But if the 1994 PR ASE is representative of the utilization of grading services, that would put the estimated population of remaining 1889-CC Morgans at 279,500.</p><p><br /></p><p>That leaves us with a range of between 148,000 and 279,500, still a wide variance, but maybe a little closer to actual than the original mintage.&nbsp; At 279,500 coins, that implies a survival rate of almost 75% of the original mintage.&nbsp; Splitting the difference between the two crazy and very unscientific and completely unprovable numbers yields 214 thousand.</p><p><br /></p><p>It’s frustrating!</p><p><br /></p><p>As another example, let’s look at another coin of greater value – the 1916 Type 1 Standing Liberty Quarter.&nbsp; Ridiculously low mintage of 52 thousand, value in all grades thus, more subject to forgery and therefore requiring certification.&nbsp; Also, it’s a coin that was very subject to wear.</p><p><br /></p><p>PCGS has graded 913 examples of the 1916 SLQ, while NGC reports 914.&nbsp; That’s 1,827 graded out of a mintage of 52 thousand or about 3.5% of the original mintage.&nbsp; For that particular coin, I’d be inclined to believe that a larger percentage of the remaining population has been graded than that.</p><p><br /></p><p>No doubt they exist, but on Ebay today, there wasn’t a single 1916 that wasn’t in a holder offered for sale.&nbsp; And the coin has to be one of the worst wearing coins ever produced, I myself have a dateless type one, is it a 16 or a 17?&nbsp; No way to tell.&nbsp; To me, it would seem reasonable that 20% of the remaining population has been graded, given the rarity and value of the coin.&nbsp; That would put the remaining population (distinguishable, due to wear) at just over 9 thousand.</p><p><br /></p><p>My 1889-CC is ungraded, and would probably grade somewhere in the G-8 range.&nbsp; I also have a 1794 Liberty cap large cent, original mintage of 919 thousand.&nbsp; I find it hard to believe there can be over 100 thousand of those coins still in existence, but just HOW rare is tough to determine, impossible with any precision.</p><p><br /></p><p>NGC has graded 827, PCGS 2,129, a total of 2,956.&nbsp; If that’s 5%, then there would be 59,120 remaining examples, that sounds somewhat reasonable to me for some reason.&nbsp; Mine is again ungraded, probably an F-12 by my estimation.</p><p><br /></p><p>Is estimating population remaining as simple as allowing enough time to pass, then using graded coin populations to represent 5%?&nbsp; I don’t know, but I’m guessing it is closer than assuming original mintages are still in circulation.</p><p><br /></p><p>So my theory, based on a lot of subjective conjecture, is that there are approximately 175 thousand of the 1889-CC Morgans surviving, and maybe 10 thousand 1916 standing liberty quarters that are identifiable.&nbsp; Like any other theory, its good until it can be proven wrong.</p><p><br /></p><p>Would knowing the actual survival rate make any difference in the value of the coins?&nbsp; ONLY, if it were generally accepted in the hobby.&nbsp; And I don’t expect the hobby at large to give any credence to my own unproven ideas.</p><p><br /></p><p>It remains a frustration!</p><p><br /></p><p>So what are your own thoughts or ideas on the subject?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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