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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 453235, member: 68&quot;]The typical roll had only seven or eight die pair represented in it.&nbsp; If there were four coins of a die pair then they&#039;d probably be over only about 5 or 10% of the dies&#039; lives.&nbsp; A bag wasn&#039;t much better and most of the coins would be from about fifteen die pair with several oddballs.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This meant that many rolls and bags were simply typical.&nbsp; There&#039;d be no early die states among which most of the highest grades are found.&nbsp; Some years you&#039;d have to look at a lot of bags just to find a nice well made coin and it probably would be marked up.&nbsp; But you never knew when you&#039;d luck out and find a nice die run from new dies.&nbsp; There could even be a couple or three such runs in the same bag.&nbsp; If the bag was lightly handled and the coins weren&#039;t torn up at the mint you could find dozens, even hundreds, of gems in a bag.&nbsp; Much depended on the specific date since there was huge variation in production quality and handling damage.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The &#039;81-P was a little better made than most with a good average quality but a lot of trouble with bad surfaces (like all &#039;81 coinage) and they were marked up a little more than most.&nbsp; Basically it was typical.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Mint set quality for the date is abysmal and this might account for a higher price.&nbsp; A lot of the modern gems come from mint sets.&nbsp; The quality in the sets isn&#039;t always a lot higher but finding gems is like shooting fish in a barrel compared to driving all over trying to find nice rolls.&nbsp; When you finally found a clean roll coin it was usually poorly made and this wasn&#039;t a problem with mint sets.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Very few people were looking at the coins until very recent years.&nbsp; I was told by one bank vault manager that he and several others he called had never heard of anyone looking through quarters for nice specimens or setting any aside at all.&nbsp; This was back in the early &#039;80&#039;s.&nbsp; In those days there were a FEW people setting aside cents but they were setting aside vast quantities and usually with no regard to quality.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There were millions of gems made every year but so few people set aside coins that the odds of them being saved were quite tiny.&nbsp; Cents are a little easier and more were saved so it&#039;s not as big a problem with them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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