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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1257703, member: 68&quot;]Here&#039;s how I usually put this.&nbsp; A &#039;69-D is exceedingly difficult to find in AU.&nbsp; Nice AU&#039;s are far tougher yet since most of these were lightly struck.&nbsp; Lower grades aren&#039;t especially difficult to find.&nbsp; If you get 15 rolls of quarters there will probably be a VG or F- &#039;69-D in them.&nbsp; In a box of quarters you can probably find a nice low end VF.&nbsp; Higher grades are elusive but for this date a nice XF is possible with effort.&nbsp; Forget AU&#039;s.&nbsp; They aren&#039;t out there and almost no one has a single example.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Yes.&nbsp; You can find a &#039;69-D in almost every single &#039;69 mint set.&nbsp; The mintage on this set was not small (~1.8 million).&nbsp; The attrition on the set is extremely high and only about a third of them survive.&nbsp; The &#039;69-D comes very nice in the mint set with chUnc being typical and gems being common (1: 35).&nbsp; This leaves about 17,000 gems in the original production.&nbsp; But this isn&#039;t 1969 any longer and large percentages of the &#039;69 quarters in the mint sets are degraded because the packaging is unstable and because of poor storage.&nbsp; Most of these 80% that are degraded could still be recovered if they got attention today but this is a cheap set and the owner has it stashed in the garage and is forgotten.&nbsp; Most of them probably won&#039;t get attention in time and are not available to the market at all at this time.&nbsp; These are the sets that will one day &quot;come out of the woodwork&quot; when the price soars but by that time the damage will be permanent in many cases.&nbsp; The number available today is a paltry few thousand plus whatever has been set aside previously.&nbsp; There is very little indication of people setting aside any clad at all.&nbsp; People have a picture of warehouses full of clad or mountains of clad but it does not exist.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been out there looking for decades and I know there just aren&#039;t any such mountains.&nbsp; Yes, there are little stashes here and there but I never claimed these coins are rare, mwerely insufficient to meet the demands of a mass market.&nbsp; There can never be a mass market in truly high grade clads because most of the coins aren&#039;t there.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The only reason the coins are cheap is that the demand is smaller than the supply.&nbsp; Most of the collectors of clad are young or new collectors and the old timers are more likely to bash them than collect them.&nbsp; Less sophisticated collectors are less likely to be concerned with condition.&nbsp; Many are collecting coins straight from circulation and some don&#039;t even look for the finest specimens.&nbsp; If they can&#039;t find a gem they&#039;ll buy a lower grade.&nbsp; The low supply has little effect n price soince the demand is low.&nbsp; There are few collectors and the few collectors don&#039;t specifically seek gems in most cases.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>So the price remains low and the attrition remains high.&nbsp; This equation hasn&#039;t changed much since 1969.</p><p>Sure, there are far scarcer gems than the &#039;69-D but the demand is still lower than the supply.&nbsp; There are some that are far scarcer but have far higher survival rates as well, but the bottom line is that there is very low demand.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Eventually the demand will increase.&nbsp; Who knows whether it will just be a few of the circulation collectors today or a mass move by millions of states quarter collectors but the demand for these coins simply keeps increasing year in and year out.&nbsp; Eventually some of us will live to see the&nbsp; demand outstrip the supply.&nbsp; With attrition rates exceeding 3% annually in many cases it might not be too far off.&nbsp; This attrition rate actually affects the lower grade coins to a greater extent than the gems.&nbsp; A coin in circulation can always be lost or accidently dropped in the garbage but gems tend to be protected at least by the unstable packaging.&nbsp; MS-60&#039;s aren&#039;t going to be in safety deposit boxes.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The perception is all these coins are common but there probably aren&#039;t 100 fully struck gem 1982-P quarters in the world.&nbsp; This is a simple fact.&nbsp; Then you throw in some monkey wrenches like &#039;69-D or &#039;72-D quarters with type &quot;b&quot; reverses or later issues with type &quot;d&quot; reverses not to mention the numerous DDO&#039;s and such and suddenly there are a great number of very scarce or very rare clad quarters.&nbsp; It simply isn&#039;t going to take much more than a handful oif collectors seeking nice gem &#039;69-P or &#039;82-P quarters to drive the prices shaply higher.&nbsp; It will then become painfully obvious that none of these coins are as common as the perception.&nbsp; Go into the coin shops and buy every single clad quarter roll you find.&nbsp; If you find 10,000 of them 9,800 will be states coins, 180 will be bicentennial and the others will be mixed dates which are mostly 1965 and one of the &#039;77-&#039;81 issues.&nbsp; This is the way of the world. If you find a roll of &#039;69 quarters it will be put together from mint sets and the nicest ones will be gone.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Each year that goes by simply brings more demand and less supply.&nbsp; The supply will continue to fall quickly until people actually attach some value to the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The &#039;69-D is tough but far easier than a &#039;69-P or even a &#039;70-P.&nbsp; It&#039;s easier than the &#039;68 and &#039;71.&nbsp; It might be easier than even the &#039;73-D.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Not really.&nbsp; People saved a lot of rolls of these so none of the varieties will be scarce.&nbsp; But the number of coins saved is small compared to mint set production and the quality of these is poor.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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