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Message:: [QUOTE="GDJMSP, post: 989084, member: 112"]There are several different discussions going on in this thread. One of them is about which likely be the best choice for an increase in value between business strikes and satin finish. Well the answer to that question can and will vary greatly depending the time period involved. I won't pretend that I know the answer because I don't. But what I do know is what has happened in the past and that is perhaps our best guide to what will happen in the future. But before we consider that we first have to consider something else, that being the differences between the types of coins. Yes types, I say that because they are two different and distinct types just like a Barber dime is one type and Mercury dime is another type. Or put another way, just like a Barber dime and a Proof Barber dime are two different types. You see, the mint quite intentionally produced the satin finish coins to be a distinct type. For over 50 years the mint produced the annual Mint Sets for collectors. For most of that period the coins in the Mint Sets were taken directly from the production runs of business strikes. So there was absolutely no difference between the coins in the Mint Sets and the business strikes. Then the mint began to make the coins in the Mint Sets in a different way. They were struck with new dies, using planchets that underwent special cleaning, they were struck with higher pressures than the business strikes were, and they got special handling and packaging to reduce contact marks. But still there was no way to distinguish a Mint Set coin from a business strike. Side by side you could not tell one from the other. Then in 2005 the mint changed everything. They decided that the cons in the annual Mint Sets would be produced differently so that one could be distinguished from the other. They gave the Mint Set coins a satin finish and a new coin type was born. From then on one could always tell the difference. The Mint Set coins were specially produced for collectors. And because of that they became just like Proofs which are also only produced for collectors. The mintage numbers are even similar, a bit smaller perhaps than the Proofs but similar. So to see what is likely to happen in the future regading the values of these coins one only needs to look at what happened in the past with the values of the business strikes and the Proofs. The result - grade for grade, in most cases the Proofs are worth more. So in time, the same thing is likely to happen with the satin finish coins. Only question is how much time ? Now one of the other discussions going on in this thread regards condition rarity. And as I have said before, when most people think of condition rarity they almost always think of newer, more modern coins. But condition rarity has been around as long as coin collecting has been around. The nicest examples of any given coin have always been worth more than those of lesser quality. This is true of any coin you can name from any time period you can name. The higher the grade, the more the coin is worth. Nobody ever questioned this, it was taken for granted. But in modern times, a new wrinkle was thrown into the mix. Suddenly the existence of the numbers of coins in high grades came into question. It was considered that because mintage numbers were so high that there simply must be countless examples of high grade coins sitting out there in people's closets, drawers, safes etc. They just had to be there someplace. And the explanation for this logic was simple, it was because there were so many of them made, and that out of such huge numbers a great many high grade examples just had to exist - they just had to, it was simple logic. But people tend to forget things, they also tend to not consider all the facts. Things like those huge numbers. If for example I were to ask you in what year did the mintage number of any coin go over 100 million how many of you could answer me without looking it up ? I'll wager very few. Then suppose I ask in what year did the mintage number exceed 1 billion ? Very few could answer that either. Well, this may come as a surprise, but the first coin to reach over 100  million was an Indian Head cent - over 100 years ago. The first to go over 1 billion was a Lincoln cent of course, but it was in 1945 - over 60 years ago. And by 1955 mintages over 1 billion became routine, they were the norm. Now those are pretty huge numbers, any way you want to look at it. But yet how many of these coins exist in these high grades ? By what I can see from Heritage there are a grand total of 5 1907 IHC's in MS67 and none higher. Does anyone really believe that there are rolls and rolls and bags of 1907 IHC's out sitting in drawers just waiting to be discovered ? I rather doubt it. No whow about that 1945 cent with over a billion minted - how many high grade examples of those are there ? According to Heritage less than 50 in MS67 with 1 higher. So same question - do you believe there are lots of them just sitting in drawers waiting to be discovered ? So how close to the present to be we have to be to find the year where there are huge numbers of these high grade coins sitting in somebody's house just waiting to be discovered ? The 1990's - the 2000's ? Well it has been said that the population numbers don't prove anything. You might think that at first glance. But when you examine those population numbers looking at coins with huge mintages from 50 years ago or more, you find that the number of high grade examples is pretty dang low. And when you look at coins from 2000 that number is still under 1000. And that's out of over 13 billion examples. I submit to you that it is no different with the most modern coins than it was with those of the past. There are no huge numbers of high grade examples just sitting out there waiting to be found. The coins simply don't exist in high grades in huge numbers. The belief that they do is a myth ! And that myth will be disproved in the future just like it was disproved for the coins of the past that also existed in huge numbers.[/QUOTE]

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