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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 8355375, member: 68&quot;]It&#039;s funny that people don&#039;t collect these because they assume they are too common to bother.&nbsp; Few collectors want anything common so there is no demand and no supply.&nbsp; The &#039;69 quarter for instance appeared as a nice choice coin in only one mint set out of twelve!!!&nbsp; Rather than driving people to look for nice examples they ignored them.&nbsp; Gems are far scarcer with only about one Gem in 125 mint sets.&nbsp; Most of the rest of these look awful and if there were any BU rolls (there aren&#039;t) they would be atrocious.&nbsp; I remember looking for nice specimens in 1969 and they were almost all dogs.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Now the &#039;69 mint set are almost all gone (fewer than 35% survive) and almost every coin quarter still in the sets are tarnished with many of them unsalvageable.&nbsp; Every day that goes by the tarnish gets worse and worse until it simply won&#039;t come off.&nbsp; 40 years ago I talked to Julian Jarvis who was the biggest supplier of BU rolls to the markets if he could get me rolls BU roll sets and he told me that it was virtually impossible even back then with all his contacts.&nbsp; He had 10 or 12 dates in stock that he was selling cheap but even he had trouble locating the other dates.&nbsp; He bought one or two bags a year to wholesale and often had to return coins to the bank that didn&#039;t sell.&nbsp; That&#039;s only 4000 coins per bag and he couldn&#039;t sell them for 37c and postage.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>People imagine vast quantities have been set back but this simply isn&#039;t true.&nbsp; Mint sets are disassembled and most of the coins are spent.&nbsp; There is no wholesale market and no one you can call to get even typical examples.&nbsp; the coins are even getting scarce in circulation and half are culls and the other half are badly worn and poorly made specimens.&nbsp; You don&#039;t see collections of these and while they are out there most were very very cheap and stuck into cardboard folders.&nbsp; The attrition on these is high as evidenced by the fact that they aren&#039;t seen coming into coin shops.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Despite how difficult it is to actually lay hands on a nice chBU &#039;69 quarter they are presumed to be common and most dealers will just put them in the cash register if they are forced to buy any.&nbsp; Because of all of these factors the attrition on all clad coins is staggering.&nbsp; Far more common coins sit insured in safety deposit boxes while every day there are fewer and fewer &#039;69 quarters in every condition except &quot;cull&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Gems were very widely dispersed and very hard to find.&nbsp; You could acquire them for next to nothing if you did the work to find them and a lot of work generated few coins.&nbsp; I looked through a few thousand sets but it was difficult to find the sets to search.&nbsp; Now it is far harder and the sets are tarnished and hard to grade.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I usually figured there was one nice keeper in the average mint set.&nbsp; Every 10th mint set had a nice Gem.&nbsp;&nbsp; Of course some specific Gems were far more highly elusive.&nbsp; The toughest is the &#039;76 type I Philly Ike.&nbsp;&nbsp; The &#039;69&nbsp; is toughest in quarters.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Things are finally changing because the mint sets are almost gone and the wholesalers can&#039;t get in sufficient supplies of the only moderns with deep demand; halfs and dollars.&nbsp;&nbsp; The wholesale on these just goes up and up with most of the Ikes at $4 or more now.&nbsp; The &#039;71 and &#039;76 are breaking away.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>What people don&#039;t realize is that when the sets are gone there will be no source for things like 1969 quarters!&nbsp; The tiny demand will simply swamp the tinier supply.&nbsp; This will be easier to see after it happens.&nbsp; People simply don&#039;t understand the implications of the lack of wholesale markets.&nbsp; There aren&#039;t even enough coins to prime the pump!![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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