As we approach the 4th of July thought I would take a look back after 20 years of focused Armour coin collecting (basically since the advent of EBay). The photo to the left was taken at a 4th of July party in 2000 at my cousins in NJ after a few to many beverages. We just recently found out that Armour made 2 million coins in each of the 3 years they were produced (see blog 38) . How many survived in collectable shape ? Who knows, but we do know how many have been graded by PSA since the first ones were sent in by SFLAYank ~ 2003-2004.
Lets compare 2006 (the first data I kept on graded coin populations) vs 2018 for the 3 Armour give-away years and for 1955 & 1960 Mantle's specifically:
Now that we have populations that are in the thousands we can also look at some other statistics and oddities .
1960 Daley vs Allison
15 years ago urban legend had it that Bud Daley (for reasons unknown) was the rarest coin of any of the sets. In the 2006 data there were only (7) Daleys graded...by 2018 we have (63) Daleys graded including (11) 9s and (10) 10s. However, I offer the comparison that there were only (7) Bob Allison graded in 2006 and today there are only (45) Allisons graded including (4) 9s and (5) 10s. Thus high grade Allison has always been rarer than Daleys ! Is that possibly because the urban legend Daley was priced so high (always > $500) that all those discovered were immediately graded ? or because no one wants a graded Allison unless your completing a graded set and there are only (25) graded sets as of 2018 ...
1955 Mantle CorrectIn 2006 we already knew that the Mantle corrects were very rare coins. Mantle L-R had only one coin graded - a PSA 6. Certainly we all thought that the L-R was much, much rarer than the LorR. By 2018 the population difference is less than 2:1 . In this case I propose any and all Mantle correct in the hands of anyone who has access to an internet connection knows to sell or grade both of them so the graded populations are probably a good representation of the true population ratio.
Note Added 7/13: this does not take into account the number of coins that have been cracked out for regarding. The more valuable the coin the more this occurs so the Mantle populations actually over estimate the number of coins that actually exist. We know of one specific example where a Mantle correct L-R black coin was graded PSA 6, cracked out and regarded as a PSA 8. That's a value difference of hundreds of dollars.
Do the graders have a favorite color ?
Sine the early 2000's I have been tracking all the 1955 PSA 10's including color and cert number. Of the current (129) PSA 10's I have (116) of them logged in. Surely we can assume all of the common colors were produced in approx. the same numbers and surely the laws or randomness must conclude that no specific color would have survived in better condition (on average) than any other. So it is quite surprising that the following colors represent the population of 1955 PSA 10's.
Red(8); Orange(34); Yellow(17); Pale Green (11); Aqua (17); Navy (3)
Obviously the graders favor orange and if your sending in a navy blue...well don't hold your breath. To me that also means if you have a PSA 10 in red or navy it is certainly rarer and should hold added value.
By the way, the navy blue PSA 10's are for Berra, Doby and Spahn. I have the Doby.
In terms of the rare colors, There are (4) dk red trans; (2) pale orange; (2) black and 5 dk green known. If you have any other rare color 1955 PSA 10s I'd love to hear about them...
Colors
If it weren't for color variations, my collection would have been done a long time ago.
Lots of you readers appear to continue to be interested in exactly how many colors exist for each year. My best guess right now is that the unusual colors came from the hot dog packs and the common colors for each year, which pretty much stayed the same, were the only ones sent out in the end of year mail in offers.
As of 2018 I am tracking the following number of colors for each year
1955 - (COMMON) - dr red, red, orange, pale chalky yellow, lemon yellow, dk yellow, pale green, aqua, navy blue and black (RARE) dr red trans, pale orange, peach, dk green, lime green, azure blue, sky blue, Wisconsin blue, tan, yellowgreen (olive), gold and silver (22)
1959 - (COMMON) red, orange, navy blue, royal blue, medium green, pale yellow (RARE) pale red/orange, dk blue, dk green, pale blue, grey/green, dk red, cream, aqua speckeled, navy speckeled, pale green opaque, pale pink, med pink, dk pink, pale, pale red. (20)
1960 - (COMMON) red, red/orange, lt blue, royal blue, lime green, medium green, dk green, yellow (RARE) bright orange, salmon, navy blue, slate blue, aqua, blue/grey, mustard yellow, dk yellow, pale yellow (17)
The 1955 RARE Variations
While there are plenty of coins for sale any given week on EBay, the rare 1955 variations are the ones commanding significant prices especially the highly graded ones. I ran through some math on the variations and turned up the following (we already discussed Mantle)
Shear numbers -
- Antonelli New York - 42
- Gilliam L-R - 28
- Gilliam narrow gap - 20
- Jackson Nfielder - 24
- Kuenn B/T - 24
- Trucks 2 words - 54
- The trucks 2 words number is much too large. My guess is that when we identified this variation PSA lumped all the previous graded examples into the 2 words group instead of the 1 word group. If you think I'm wrong try finding one....
Note added 7/13: A reader responded that there are also a lot of miss labeled coins especially for the variations. I have personally seen a handful of Trucks 1 word coins labeled as the 2 word variation. Ditto Haddix tight vs wide.
If we look at the coins with the lowest % of PSA9 + PSA 10 we see:
Crandall 12%; Finigan Q 8%; Gilliam narrow gap 10%; Gilliam L-R 11%; Haddix narrow gap 6%; Mantle L-R 4%; Mueller 7%; Snider no decimal 8%.....
Lets look at the coins with the lowest number of 9s + 10s: (added July 8th)
- Antonelli New York (6) + (1)
- Finigan Q (4) + (0)
- Gilliam L-R (2) + (1)
- Gilliam narrow gap (1) +(1)
- Haddix narrow gap (1) + (1)
- JAckson Nfielder (3) + (2)
- Jensen Red Sox (6) + (0)
- Kuenn wide (7) + (0)
- Kuenn B/T (5) + (0)
- Mantle L-R (1) + (1)
- Snider no decimal (3) + (0)
- Trucks 2 wrds (9) + (1) [again I think these are lower than listed]
that's 56 coins ............
Looking at the PSA listed sets and those in my collection how many of these are accounted for ?
- Antonelli New York - 6
- Finigan Q - 3
- Gilliam L-R - 1
- Gilliam narrow gap - 2
- Haddix narrow - 1
- Jackson Nfielder - 4
- Jensen Red - 4
- Kuenn wide - 4
- Kuenn B/T - 3
- Mantle L-R - 2
- Snider no decimal - 2
- Trucks 2 wrds - 6................................or 38
this explains why there is currently a lack of key coins in PSA 9 for sale on EBay unless someone is ready to breakup their set and sell it. !
For those of you interested in the numbers, thought this might be of interest....Happy 4th !
