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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 169397, member: 68&quot;]You&#039;re right, of course, but one shouldn&#039;t lose sight of the fact that they are common in MS-60 only in comparison to the demand.&nbsp; Most of the Morgans are more common in unc than something like a 1969 quarter or a 1971 dime.&nbsp; There are fewer than 80,000 1983-P quarters in true unc and if this were a Lincoln or a Morgan it would sell for far more.&nbsp; While the coins were made in the billions, they&#039;ve also been used up, worn out, and destroyed in the billions.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There are several reasons the clads are tough in nice unc.&nbsp; Perhaps the primary reason is that there composition is extremely hard so they don&#039;t readily accept a strike. This hardness also wears the dies very quickly assuring later strikes will be made with worn dies.&nbsp; This means that really nice attractive clads are not only tough in uncirculated condition but are far tougher, far rarer, in circulation.&nbsp; There is virtually no chance anymore of finding a nice attractive XF 1969 quarter.&nbsp; Even in a nice solid VF this coin is very tough.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>With other scarcities like a 1916-D dime one might always have purchased one from a dealer if he couldn&#039;t find it in circulation.&nbsp; If you wanted an XF and all you could find was a beat up VG then you could just buy an XF and use the sale of the beat up coin to offset the cost.&nbsp; But you can&#039;t do this with a 1969 quarter because dealers don&#039;t stock them and collectors don&#039;t have them.&nbsp; Oh, don&#039;t get me wrong, it&#039;s not like these are legitimate rarities in XF and AU but even if the price went up a hundred fold it would bring more than perhaps a dozen or two nicely struck coins onto the market.&nbsp; People simply overestimate the depth of supply and the interest in these coins over the years.&nbsp; The coins aren&#039;t out there because no one cared about them.&nbsp; Whitman didn&#039;t even make a folder to hold clad quarters until 1984 or so.&nbsp; An album for them didn&#039;t exist until 2003!&nbsp; Almost every picture of a quarter seen in mass media was of a silver coin dated in the early &#039;60&#039;s until well into the 1990&#039;s.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Many of the uncs are very unattractive.&nbsp; With these it&#039;s not only the rotten strikes and worn dies but also a tendency for the coins to get banged up at the mint.&nbsp; Collectors didn&#039;t care about quality so the mint didn&#039;t either.&nbsp; Nobody even much glanced at the coins so quality in all its aspects was poor.&nbsp; With some dates like the &#039;72-D quarter it&#039;s not tough to find a nice unc that isn&#039;t banged up but try finding a 1971.&nbsp; These are simply tough and like the &#039;69 won&#039;t be found above nice F in circulation.</p><p><br /></p><p>So yes.&nbsp; Save the high grades and nice coins.&nbsp; Don&#039;t bother with the ordinary because they&#039;ll be available for a long long time.&nbsp; When you look at a coin ask yourself will this be tough in forty years.&nbsp; If the answer is no than keep looking.&nbsp; You&#039;ll save too many at first but that&#039;s OK since you can go back later and cull out the dogs.&nbsp; Do assemble a set since it is the easiest way to see which dates are really tough.&nbsp; For the main part the clads difficulty to find is determined mostly by age and mintage but there are some anomalies caused by striking characteristics, annealing, and rim depth.&nbsp; There are also some dates that usually had ugly surfaces or were struck by excessively worn dies.&nbsp; A set will show you these things at a glance and provide a handy reference for the little design variations over the years.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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