How Many Plain Edge Washington Dollars Are There?
Saturday April 28, 2007
Error coin expert Mike Byers has recently published his latest edition of Mint Error News, which has an entire section on all types of Presidential Dollar errors. Most of the Presidential Dollar errors covered were familiar to my regular readers via the long list of Washington Dollar errors I posted in mid-March. The most interesting news of this edition, (which, as always, is crammed full of fascinating news and information about error and variety coins,) appears on page 30 of Mike's magazine. He did a survey of the four leading grading services, (NGC, PCGS, ANACS, and ICG,) noting how many plain edge Washington Dollars they had slabbed, and compiled the data into a chart. There is a breakdown organized by company and assigned grade. The total number of slabbed plain edge dollars exceeds 50,000 specimens by now! (Mike's total was 49,976 as of several days or more ago!)Obviously, earlier estimates of 40k to 80k coins are way off the mark! Now I'm wondering if 150k is low, because I know for a fact that a lot of known specimens, (particularly those in the hands of certain TV shopping show dealers and other speculators) are either not slabbed at all yet, or slabbed in holders from compaines other than the four noted above. I also know that the number of Denver specimens is still climbing, although not as quickly now as it was 2 weeks ago, and it appears that perhaps an entire internal transport bin full of Denver specimens might also have escaped the Denver Mint (as is suspected for Philadelphia.)
The reason we didn't hear about the Denver Mint finds in the same manner as the Philly finds was because "containment" had occured by then. "Containment" happens when an error type is well-known enough to insiders (such as bank personnel and coin wrapping company employees,) that the specimens are largely interecpted before reaching the general public. After all the publicity the Philadelphia plain edge coins got after being found en masse in Florida, you can bet that practically every bank teller in America was checking the edges of these coins, and when a large number of them began surfacing north of Los Angeles, I got numerous reports from bank tellers who told me about coin dealers coming in asking outright for 40-roll ($1,000 boxes) bearing certain wrapped-on dates, or simply just offering to buy the coins outright if the teller had found any.
The bottom line is that the total number of Washington Dollar plain edge specimens out there probably exceeds 200k, and could theoretically be as high as 320k or more (although I doubt the figure is that high,) despite the fact that we have heard almost nothing about the finds!Whatever the true number of plain edge specimens actually is, it certainly exceeds most previous estimates!
Do you have any plain edge Washington Dollars? Please share with us, (in the Comments below) whether or not you've had them slabbed yet, and why. I'd also like to hear your guesses about how many total plain edge specimens are out there, and how much you think they'll be worth 5 years from now. I might publish selected comments here on my site or in my Newsletter soon.
Photo of partially opened rolls containing plain edge Washington Dollars courtesy of Sandy in Central Florida.
Comments
I’ve followed these Washington Dollar Errors with close scrutinity since about March 1. I’ve bought about 60 raw ones on ebay so far and I’m weighing and measuring every single one and so far I havn’t been sold one fake. These aren’t showing up in CA or for that matter anywhere else in the country in groves and there is no way on earth that an entire bin of 150,000 to 170,000 escaped the denver mint like it is being speculated that possibly happened at the Philly Mint. I’ve closely followed ebay by applying different strategies and although a few are showing up from sellers outside of northern FL and southern GA for the most part the ones that show up on ebay outside of Fl have explicitly stated in their auction descriptions that they came from rolls in FL, so at most maybe a few thousand have surfaced outside of northern florida. The article claims that a large number have surfaced outside of northern Los Angeles. Well ebay has in no way reflected that when you do a proximity search which sorts listings by states, so this is nothing more than a bunch of bs. Next the article claims that she got numerous reports from bank tellers in los angeles about dealers coming in and asking for $1000 boxes. How funny I’m sure a bank teller is going to take the time to hunt down an about.com author if they could even find her let alone know about her to cry that a few dealers walked into their bank to buy 40 rolls. ha ha ha, I really believe that one. I seriously question ICG’s claims that they have graded over 6000 of these because when I called them they claimed that under no circumstances do they release their population figures and based on only 4 showing up on ebay from ICG and 125 from pcgs when you do an ebay search of washington dollar edge pcgs or icg the numbers don’t even come close to adding up because pcgs has graded about 8000 and 125 are currently on ebay whereas ICG which claims to have graded about 6000, but yet only 4 show up on ebay LOL . Ebay doesn’t lie and if you crunch the number of pcgs and ngc graded washington smoothies relative to the raw ones you can back end the numbers since you know how many pcgs and ngc have been graded and derive at a good approximation of how many are out there. PCGS and NGC are the only two reliable grading companies that publicize their stats where the others seem to think they are hiding top secret govt classified documents. The authors claim that these washington dollars probably exceed 200k and theoritically could exceed 320k is laughable at the least. The use of exclamation points and bs statements like bins escaping the denver mint or bank tellers reporting to her the outlandish claims totally discredit this article and here we have nothing more than a jealous author/collector who was forunate enough to strike gold in FL and therfore is knocking these coins with her bs article.
You wrote:
The reason we didn’t hear about the Denver Mint finds in the same manner as the Philly finds was because “containment” had occured by then. “Containment” happens when an error type is well-known enough to insiders (such as bank personnel and coin wrapping company employees,) that the specimens are largely interecpted before reaching the general public.
Comment: In Florida, containment was allowed at some banks. Their employees opened boxes with the correct date and inspectors number so they could pull out these errors. However, not all of the employees were allowed to participate since business had to be conducted as usual. Most of these banks split the finds amongst their employees. Some lucky tellers that found these errors in rolls walked into the coin dealers shops with them in their pocket. The dealers then taught these tellers how to properly handle the coins.
You wrote:
After all the publicity the Philadelphia plain edge coins got after being found en masse in Florida, you can bet that practically every bank teller in America was checking the edges of these coins, and when a large number of them began surfacing north of Los Angeles, I got numerous reports from bank tellers who told me about coin dealers coming in asking outright for 40-roll ($1,000 boxes) bearing certain wrapped-on dates, or simply just offering to buy the coins outright if the teller had found any.
Comment:
How did the dealers know the specific dates on the boxes to be opened to find these Denver errors? Dealers will not give up this info. Tellers will be advised to keep this it confidential. It should also be noted that these coins were gone from the banks prior to the wired services broadcasting that error coins are being found on these newly issued dollars.
The banks I deal with in southern California were out of these rolled coins early on. I was advised that they were not receiving any more. Therefore, I do not believe your source.
Your assumption is all employees of counting rooms and banks can actually stop work to look for errors. Pure nonsense. Try asking some of these people if they have any error coins/currency. The normal response is that they do not have time to look for anything unusual. If they did find something, they are obligated to recycle it according bank policy.
There is a cost factor in the work environment that will not allow people to slow down the normal daily business operation. Please note that Banks and their counting rooms have a contract that requires all mutilated coins be returned to the Mint. I do not think they will jeopradized their livelihood for a few hundred or thousand dollars extra.
You wrote:
The bottom line is that the total number of Washington Dollar plain edge specimens out there probably exceeds 200k, and could theoretically be as high as 320k or more (although I doubt the figure is that high,) despite the fact that we have heard almost nothing about the finds!Whatever the true number of plain edge specimens actually is, it certainly exceeds most previous estimates!
Comment:
You estimate that the plain edge dollars could exceed 200K and be as high as 320k, despite the fact we haven’t heard about them. This is so contradictory that the statement should have been iliminated. Most estimates I hear are unsubstantiated.
If these coins were caught at the counting rooms, they are obligated to be returned to the mint for destruction.
Many of the raw coins sold on eBay were slabbed then resold a second or third time. Many were reholdered. NGC slabbed 15,000 as BU. Were are they? There were two PCGS 67’s that sold on eBay. Why aren’t they in the official report from PCGS. (These were edited from my report to http://www.minterrornews.com.) PCGS also slabbed two 2007-D (DENVER?)smooth edges that sold on eBay. These also failed to be noted on their report. Why?
While attending the show in Santa Clara, CA on April 20-21 I witnessed one dealer selling these errors besides myself. He only had a few. Of the less than twenty errors I had, all sold very quickly. There were rumors that smooth edge dollars are being found from Denver. But these cannot be verified unless they came out of a ballistic bag. It is very easy to fool the public as the wrapping material is purchased directly by the counting rooms. They have the machinery to wrap or box these dollars. Therfore, it is very easy to fool even the grading services.