Registered: 01/28/02
Posts: 5681
Loc: Western Washington
Even since man developed a bicameral brain two thousand years ago, one that was able to communicate to both sides of the brain conciously instead of thorough dreams, man had sorted things that they collect into common, not so common, hard to find and rare, That catagories change as the actual scarcity of goods availibility changes over time.
Most collectors do not own one rare date or even scarce date coins except relatively promoted coins which will be worth less when the promotion is over, like 1950 nickels. Almost no one owns an 1870-S half eagle in any grade and would not know how to grade that coin anyway.
Rare is personal and meaningless in the real sense to most collectors of really rare coins.
To me rare relates to population and/or grade. Whereas key relates to completion of a set and is related to rarity, cost and personal preference. One coin by itself is not a key date, but it can be very rare.
#5875017 - 07/25/1203:01 PMRe: Why do so many folks confuse "key date" with "rare date"?
[Re: James_EarlyUS]
coinman_23885coinman_23885
FACT if I stop posting, trillions and trillions of transistors would be out of work.
Registered: 11/13/10
Posts: 4873
"Key dates" are usually much more expensive than the rest of the set, and people tend to associate higher premiums with rarity regardless of whether it is actually true or not.
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Areas of Interest: Original classic gold coins from the Southern mints (New Orleans, Charlotte, and Dahlonega); Carson City minted Morgan Dollars, early copper; high end, quality U.S. type coinage; proof like and deep mirror prooflike coinage; toners including Peace Dollars and classic gold; and cameo and deep/ultra cameo proof coins from 1936-1942.
The answer to your last question is, no it does not.
To the first question, I agree that some people use the terms interchangeably but more often, I believe it is because most people do not collect ACTUALLY rare coins and never have.
There is also a difference between rarity and availability. Going back to the 1916-D dime, I do not consider that coin remotely rare even in MS. The last time I checked the NGC census, there were several hundred in MS-60 or better. I presume that there are some duplicates because of its price but this data does not even include PCGS which I also expect has at least as many, if not more. These coins may not be as available as the census indicates but no coin with several hundred MS is really rare.
Some coins probably also appear to be scarcer that they actually are because of their price. Though I believe that the world coin series I collect are much scarcer than most US coins, they are probably more of them around than what I see, especially since those who own the few better specimens probably cannot be bothered to sell them for the mostly pitiful amounts they are currently worth. There would be no point to it.
I recall reading once that that John J. Ford (who owned many actually rare coins) stated that any coin that could be bought with a phone call was not rare. That applies to most US coins because they are disproportionately expensive versus others and it would also apply to many (if not also most) world coins if they were worth more. From what I have seen, even many coins with relatively few survivors are available. An example of that would be the 1884 Bolivia proof 10 centavo in the next S&B which has a reported mintage of 12. I have probably seen this issue three or four times since I resumed collecting 1998 and that represents an ample opportunity to buy such a specimen.
Registered: 01/28/02
Posts: 5681
Loc: Western Washington
I beg to differ, any coin which actually has a mintage of (12) would not appear 3-4 times in 14 years at auction unless one person owned all of them or it is the same coin which is overgraded and is being churned in the market.
There are quite a few US gold coins which can not be purchased with a phone call or by any other common means of coin buying. These coins are closely held by deep pocketed advanced collectors who do not sell collections until they die or have gone through a couple of generations.
For one thing, most people realize that official population numbers only reflect the bounce of coins through the market, not the actual population at all.
#5989347 - 09/08/1209:07 AMRe: Why do so many folks confuse "key date" with "rare date"?
[Re: Oldtrader3]
Conder101Conder101
FACT if I stop posting, trillions and trillions of transistors would be out of work.
Registered: 02/02/02
Posts: 4997
Loc: East central Indiana
Quote:
I beg to differ, any coin which actually has a mintage of (12) would not appear 3-4 times in 14 years at auction unless one person owned all of them or it is the same coin which is overgraded and is being churned in the market.
How many times have an 1804 dollar or a 1913 V Nickel change hands in the last 14 years?
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#5989577 - 09/08/1211:42 AMRe: Why do so many folks confuse "key date" with "rare date"?
[Re: James_EarlyUS]
coinman1794coinman1794
I was posting here when you were in diapers.
Registered: 03/02/02
Posts: 3451
Originally Posted By: James_EarlyUS
To me, the key(s) are simply the scarcest handful of dates that complete a series. They need not be "rare", however you choose to define that term, but even a relatively easy-to-find coin can be a key to it's respective set.
Speaking of only normal, average UNC coins, for example, the 1949-S Franklin is not remotely rare, yet most would recognize it as the key to its set. The 1916-D dime IS rare (again in UNC) and is the key to its set.
We all know that 1949-S halves far outnumber 1916-D dimes, but that doesn't diminish the status of either as a key.
Does it ?
At this point in time, there are enough Franklins on the marketplace that there is no single key date (unless you are talking about FBL, in which case it is 1953-S). They are all readily available.
To address the question, many key dates are in higher demand than other dates in a series, thus they can be harder to get and more expensive, just as if they were rare dates. The 1955 DDO 1C is a prime example.
I cannot explain to you why this coin has sold as many times as I recall, only that it has. The two instances I specifically remember are this last Stacks & Bowers sale and one by Heritage.
As to whether the 1884 bolivia proof is actually the same coin, maybe I do not know. I have seen a decent number of coins which are about as rare as this one (from one to two dozen or even fewer) which have sold multiple times and then others I have never seen.
Generically, I agree that many really rare coins seem to be held by "deep pockets" but the reason I believe this happens is because the value of the coin is actually too low to make it worthwhile selling given its rarity. This is not an issue for US coins but I believe it to be so for the world coins I collect.
Though the coins I collect (such as Spanish colonial pillar minors, South African Union and 19th Bolivian Republic decimals) are generally scarcer or a lot scarcer than most US coins, there have got to be more of them out there - somewhere. This is invariably true even of many (most?) ancient coins where I have seen decent size selections in high condition on occassion.
Just this weekend, I was scanning the world coin listings in the Heritage archives back in the 1990's. I did so because I was performing a Google search for the 1732 Mexico pillar 4 reales (one of the top rarities of the entire series) and unknown to me, Heritage sold one back in May 1996 for about $9300. No picture was available but they described it as an "XF possible sea salvage".
Yes, this price was 16 years ago but given that this coin is literally almost impossible to find, I don't think those who owned the few that exist at that time would have usually been interested in selling. Now, maybe because the plate coin (defintely a high grade MS) in my reference manual must be worth at least $250,000 which is not a big deal by US coin standards but is for other coins.
What rubs me is how some series have more than one key date depending on who you ask. The term key should be like in a keystone in masonry, there can only be one keystone. Now whether just supply or both supply and demand should be used to determine this is the million dollar question.
Take the Peace dollar series for example. 1921 1928 and 1934S are all always listed as keydates. Now lets ignore the matter of whether the 1921 is its own type for the matter of simplicty. If you go solely by mintage then the 1928 is the clear key here. Yet in MS grades the 34S is clearly the hardest to obtain. Then the 21 brings up the rear with that first year issue appeal to back up its demand.
#5996925 - 09/11/1204:02 PMRe: Why do so many folks confuse "key date" with "rare date"?
[Re: mumu]
RWBRWB
FACT if I stop posting, trillions and trillions of transistors would be out of work.
Registered: 01/03/05
Posts: 4497
Lots of folks get their left and right feet confused - and they've had them all their lives!
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