Is there any conventional wisdom on the quality of coins still in the mint cello? Is the strike considered to be better than coins taken from a Bu roll? Could you expect there to be less or no bag marks? My assumption is that there would be some advantage, but that is simply an assumption.
Hi. Don't know about "conventional wisdom", but I can tell you what the Mint says. The US Mint uses the term "uncirculated" to refer to the special coining process used to make coins for their anual Uncirculated Mint Sets.. Uncirculated coins are manufactured using the same process as circulating coins, but with quality enhancements such as slightly higher coining force, early strikes from dies, special cleaning after stamping, and special packaging. Uncirculated coins may vary to some degree because of blemishes, toning, or slight imperfections. My own personal experience has been that nice, eye appealing coins are more likely to come from Mint Sets, than from bags or rolls. There are always exceptions, but the odds of finding coins with less marks, seem to favor the Mint Set coins.
It depends on the exact coin in question. Many of the circulating clad issues were simply terrible. You could look at many dozens of rolls and never even see a decent coin much less a gem. In most years the problem would be poor strikes from badly worn dies but there were also problems with die alignment, poor surfaces, and excessive marking. It's easy to forget how bad they were because very few were saved and those in circulation often have the evidence of their poor manufacture worn right off. Indeed, it was this terrible quality that was a major factor in the coins not being saved to start with. People hated clad and moderns and saw no point saving coins that were also ugly and looked worn right from a BU roll. Mint set coins are virtually all struck by fairly new dies. Once in a while you'll see something that looks like it sneaked in from the coining floor but most of these are struck on the old vertical presses from dies with 30,000 or fewer strikes. Strike quality still varies but it varies toward the high end of the scale. There is still a lot of missing detail on many issues because the dies aren't centered or flat to one another. With most of the clads in most years about 20% of the coins will be very full strikes. All the detail may not be present on these but what's missing will be insignificant. With circulation stikes there are some dates were made made with full strikes in very tiny numbers. This tends to be less of a problem in later years after the relief was lowered. Nickel strikes can still be problematical even in mint sets since for many dates the problem was with the master dies. Cent strikes tend to be better with the zinc better yet. Cents also tend to be more easily found in circulation strikes with full strikes. Marking and surfaces tend to be more erratic from year to year in mint sets. BU roll coins vary from virtually mark free to severely disfigured from scratches and gouges and there isn't a lot of variation. You'll have about the same problem finding clean 1970-D nickels as 1999 half dollars from BU rolls. There are some dates with bad surfaces caused by other problems which may be worse in the sets or in rolls. Marking of mint set coins averages about the same as roll coins in the severity. The nature of the marking varies more on the set coins though; there are more scrapes and dings and marks are concentrated on the high points a little more. Finding gems in rolls is a very hit and miss proposition. You might stumble on a few rolls of really choice coins with numerous gems but for some dates this is a very far-fetched proposition. For instance gem 1971 quarters were a virtual impossibility from BU rolls and qualiy was so poor that very few of these were saved. It's entirely possible that not a single example of this coin exists as a gem in a BU roll. In the mint set though it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Fully 10% of these are a nice choice coin with a full stike. Gems are not uncommon among these. Mint sets are not the whole answer to assembling modern sets though. There are numerous coins that didn't appear in these at all. There are also a few dates where it's actually easier to find nice examples in rolls. (none are dimes or quarters). Very few of the varieties appear in mint sets and those few which do tend to be common because they are in the mint sets. Only around 100 pairs are used to make these sets so if one is a variety than about 1% of mint set coins will be this variety. With the large mintages of the sets this will assure that thousands of examples survive. With the coins that go into circulation the mintages will be in the hundreds of thousands but frequently uncs are unknown and very few are available at all.
Let's also not forget that for the past two years,all of the coins in the Mint sets are satin finish,and IMO they look a lot nicer than regular business strikes.I buy an extra set each year and use them for my albums.I figure that if Dansco starts producing albums with holes for both varieties,I can always get the business strikes from a dealer for not much money.
