Nice article on modern world coins

Besides the original article posted, I also read some of the articles linked at the bottom of the story about modern world coins. It seems like what they are really referring to in most cases is bullion issues and mint sets. That's not what I think of when I think modern world coins. Australian lunar coins aren't really coins to me, nor are American eagles or Canadian maple leafs. Just saying.

 

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Keep in mind that all calculations were made based only on mintages for the copper cents. Thus all proportions were relative to the total mintage of coins minted between 59 and 82. Zinc cents minted after 82 did not factor into the expected values. Also the effect of copper hoarding should be proportional to the relative mintages. You're right, though, that the story is complicated by many factors. But there are some things that I think can be taken away from the analysis. Among these is that there really doesn't seem to be any one year that has been withdrawn at a higher rate that might be expected. I had thought the the first year coins might have a higher attrition rate (in the sense of being withdrawn from circulation), but that did not to be the case. To some extent, this observation exonerates collectors, since there does not seem to be any numismatic basis for the attrition. So we get to keep our mintmarks. A possible second take-home message is that 5 or 6 years after mintage is a magic number of some sort. But I'm not quite sure how to interpret the cross-over for more than expected to less than expected. Maybe it takes that long for the coins need to be around before all make it into circulation, and thus withdrawn coins are no longer being replaced by new ones. Anyway, it gave my inner nerd something to do while my outer nerd searched through the rolls.

Have fun

 

Yes.

But the zinc production makes the estimate of attrition of the coppers nearly meaningless without a lot more data. You found 48% of 1961 P&D cents are missing from the universe of copper coins but, I suspect, it's a much larger percentage of the original mintage that's missing.

To get an estimate of the %age of original mintage missing you'll need to understand the universe of zinc pennies. Once you know the attrition rate on them (and it won't be even) you can get an estimate of the size of the universe of all cents in circulation and then can estimate the percentage of all 1961 cents surviving. I suspect it's only about 25% and it would be even lower than this except that penny velocity has become so incredibly low. In 1961 a penny would be spent about five times a month but now it's barely five times a year. It's less likely to be lost sitting in a coffee can.

 

Yes. The other articles are primarily in reference to bullion coins and low mintage modern coins of the US and world.

But this article is referring to the high mintage coins that were never saved and many never appeared in mint sets. These coins are simply exploding almost across the board. They even include some coins contained in mint sets because mint set mintages were sometimes very low and the attrition extremely high. Everyone just assumes that a coin minted by the tens or hundreds of millions must be very common but this simply isn't always the case. Collectors overlooked these coins so many are quite scarce or even rare.

http://www.coinweek.com/featured-news/case-modern-world-coins/