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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;NorthKorea, post: 1760244, member: 29643&quot;]Well, the VDB probably has around 40mm people in the US alone rummaging through change for that coin, due to the publicity it&#039;s garnered through the years. Demand is further increased by those individuals who are trying to complete Lincoln Cent collections, since the S VDB is an actual issued coin.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Now, add to this the requirement of the coin being &quot;problem free&quot; (meaning a TPG won&#039;t body bag the coin, for this intent and purpose), and your population of coins falls drastically. Also, as of 2008, 200 BILLION pennies were in circulation around the world. Even if we assumed all of the S VDB coins were problem free, you&#039;d have a less than 1:400,000 chance of randomly pulling one from a circulation bag. That also assumes that none of them have been removed from circulation. 7570 have been graded by PCGS in AG3-AU58 states. Assuming a ratio of 1:24 (graded:raw) coins in collections, 189,000 of available non-UNC coins have been removed from circulation. That leaves us with 300,000 or so coins in circulation.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Assuming that over the past 100 years 80% of the coins are either damaged or non-identifiable, you&#039;re left with 60,000 1909-S VDB coins in circulation among a population of 200B coins. The perceived rarity stems from publicity and source of the coins. By contrast, your coin with the 32,000 mintage, circulating or not, is probably:</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>A) from a smaller economy.</p><p>B) a larger denomination coin.</p><p>C) a non-proof edition coin that is technically a business strike but never released into circuation.</p><p>D) a non-descript small denomination coin made from an industrial metal.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It could be any combination of these, but I think it&#039;s safe to say that at least one of the criteria applies.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Another thing... I think the initial premise of this thread is inaccurate and very Americentric. While there aren&#039;t as many collectors of world coins (excluding crown collectors, I suppose) as US circulation coins in the US, I&#039;m sure that coin collectors in the respective countries collect their own coins more often than they do US coins. A large part of this has to do with availability. It&#039;s a similar reason behind the low price of minerals until there is a consistent enough supply to use the stones in jewelry. If demand is perceived to be so low that marketability would also remain low, the price will be low. Demand will pick up when marketability of the item increases. US coins are far more marketable to US coin collectors than foreign coins, so the prices in the US are higher.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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