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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;calcol, post: 26108432, member: 77639&quot;]Rarity often depends on the qualifications tossed into the description.&nbsp; Take pre-2000 Morgan dollars.&nbsp; Hundreds of millions were minted, and survival rate is high.&nbsp; Narrow that to the 1896 Morgan dollar.&nbsp; First qualification is strike: over 20 million circulation from all mints, about 800 proofs.&nbsp; Let’s continue with circulation strikes.&nbsp; Now for mints: about 10 million P, 5 million each O and S.&nbsp; Survival rate from different mints varies.&nbsp; However, thousands from each mint have been graded by PCGS alone.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let’s look at the S-mint coins.&nbsp; How about rare varieties?&nbsp; There are none that are considered major (i.e. none in the Red Book).&nbsp; There are some VAM varieties listed on vamworld.com.&nbsp; The rarest is VAM-5, which is in the Hot 50 Morgan dollar book.&nbsp; This coin has sold for as much as $21k at auction.&nbsp; It’s pretty scarce.&nbsp; PCGS has graded 40; top is MS65.&nbsp; However, most existing 1896-S Morgans have never been VAM’ed, so the number of VAM-5s must be much larger than 40.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then there’s proof-likeness.&nbsp; There are no PCGS 1896-S DMPLs and only 10 PLs (highest is MS66 and it’s a $100k coin).&nbsp; And no VAM-5 PLs.</p><p><br /></p><p>How about grade regardless of VAM or PL?&nbsp; Highest is an astounding MS69 graded by both PCGS and CAC.&nbsp; A pic is below.&nbsp; Yeah, there’s only one. Last sold for about $800k.&nbsp; There are only a handful of pre-2000 Morgans of any date that have been graded MS69.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, are 1896 Morgans rare?</p><p><br /></p><p>Cal</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1665042[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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