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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1704364, member: 68&quot;]Sure, but by the mid-60&#039;s all the dated buffalo nickels were gone except for a few culls of &#039;26 to &#039;38 dates.&nbsp; Most of the older buffs were in circulation but they were dateless.&nbsp; Even when I started in 1957 there were few dated buffs before 1926.&nbsp; 1926 was only 21 years old!!!&nbsp; Now a 1992 quarter is older than this.&nbsp; Speaking of quarters they were even worse with no &#039;24 or earlier surviving. You could get a type I without a dte and it was 40 years old.&nbsp; The equivalent is a 1973 quarter.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But the big point here isn&#039;t really about the age of the coins in circulation but their numismatic collectibility.&nbsp; Coins in those days were all heavily picked over.&nbsp; If a coin should show up one time in a thousand based on its mintage then it was desirable and missing from circulation.&nbsp; You simply couldn&#039;t find it even in 10,000 coins.&nbsp; The &#039;09-S VDB, for example, was about 95% removed from circulation as early as 1940!!!&nbsp; Finding it in 1957 wasn&#039;t really going to happen unless a collector inadvertantly spent one.&nbsp; It wasn&#039;t only the scarce dates missing but the high grades.&nbsp; Even common date coins were missing in nice condition.&nbsp; You really had to collect before the 1950&#039;s to find much that would be of value today.</p><p><br /></p><p>By comparison today&#039;s coins are not only older with 100 year old cents possible, but far more importantly today&#039;s coins aren&#039;t picked over.&nbsp; If you plot the grade of any date it will form a nice neat narrow bell curve.&nbsp; If you seek a coin it will appear relative its mintage.&nbsp; There are very scarce and valuable coins in circulation because very few people look.&nbsp; But most importantly some of the coins in circulation will probably have value in the future and are interesting due to their scarcity right now.&nbsp; You can find AU 1973 quarters even though they are scarce because most are worn.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Circulating coins are a collector&#039;s paradise for the first time since the 1930&#039;s; since coin collecting became a mass market.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah, I have some nostalgia for the good ol&#039; days as well and no one hated the new coins more than I did.&nbsp; But times change and what we really miss about those times wasn&#039;t how great the coins were but that everyone loved seeking the rare dates and the coins were attractive and were &quot;ours&quot;. We identified with them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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