I have been looking to find out if this question has been asked, but have not seen it.....I have started to collect Franklin Halves. Why are some of the HIGHER mintages of some dates worth more than some of the LOWER mintages? For example, the Red Book gives the value for a MS-65, 1948 Franklin Half, as $85.00. The mintage on that coin is 3,006,814. The 1948-D, in MS-65, with a mintage of 4,028,600, has a value of $160.00....almost double. Can you PLEASE explain the difference? There are many more examples like this, I just started with the Franklin Halves because I just started collecting them.....after a suggestion from someone on this site, by the way!! Thank you! And thanks for your answers to my question! swick
The initial mintages don't necessarily reflect the rarity in a given condition. The 1948 was saved in higher numbers and is easier to find in higher condition, despite the fact it was minted in lower numbers than the 48D. You'll notice that the 1949D and 1949S are both worth quite a bit more than 48's in high condition, despite their higher mintage, because less were saved. You see this with the Morgan dollars all the time... there are some with high mintages that few bothered to save, so are hard to find in high condition... there are some low mibtages where almost none of them circulated, and were rediscovered in large numbers in the 1950's and 1960's... some dates that were minted i great numbers, but many were melted down... the value of Morgans rarely has much to do with its initial mintage.
Hiya swick. Troodon is right. And that's just a piece of it. If you have the 2007 book, look at COINS FROM TREASURES AND HOARDS: A KEY TO UNDERSTANDING RARITY AND VALUE, starting on p.23. These figures are a good jumping off point, but that's about it...there are any number of other factors making it such that relative values don't necessarily correlate with these figures.
Precisely. What matters is how many there are now in a given condition, not how many were initially minted.
