What Percent of Coins are Gone Forever?

[Recyclersteve]

I've been meaning to ask about this, but forgot until another posting triggered my memory- so here goes.

I remember hearing that at my grandmother's house they had a flood in the basement and an estimated 5,000 Indian Head pennies were washed away (down the drain). This was well over 50 years ago.

It got me to thinking about ways that coins are lost forever. Here are a few that I thought of:

1) Tornados
2) Tsunamis
3) Earthquakes (to a lesser extent)
4) Hurricanes (could be a biggie for areas with large populations near the coast- a la Puerto Rico a couple years ago)
5) Floods
6) Mountain slides
7) Dates being worn off completely (affected lots of Buffalo nickels and Standing Liberty quarters)
8) Coins being melted down (lots of junk silver was melted from the late 60's until the early 80's)
9) Ships sinking
10) Coins put into hiding places that will never be found (i.e., a single man who doesn't have any friends or family buries something 3 feet underground a half mile from his house and dies the next month)

There are probably a few others that I haven't thought of.

This is a topic I've never really seen addressed anywhere except for someone to say something like "5 million of this date were originally minted. It is estimated that 500k are still in existence."

Has anyone here seen anything published anywhere about this phenomenon along with any estimates of the number of coins remaining? I anxiously await your responses.

[hirbonzig]

PCGS has a section(coinfacts)on their website where they estimate the remaining number of coins for each date/mintmark.

[Numis Pam]

Great topic! I often wonder about this myself, esp when I see on the news of natural disasters. I'm sure many coins have probably been lost forever due to fires.

[Rodebaugh]

18.34%

[68Camaro]

That's rounded up from 5 significant digits - a bit imprecise there Doc.

[Thogey]

That's rounded up from 5 significant digits - a bit imprecise there Doc.

Totally agree. The rounding error amounts to millions.

[Rodebaugh]

That's rounded up from 5 significant digits - a bit imprecise there Doc.

Totally agree. The rounding error amounts to millions.

I blame the turkey for my careless math.

[Recyclersteve]

Great topic! I often wonder about this myself, esp when I see on the news of natural disasters. I'm sure many coins have probably been lost forever due to fires.

Pam, you mention the fires. I had a friend years ago who owned a lot of real estate and did a lot of fixer uppers. One was a house that burned down. He was doing the demolition work and inside a wall was a bunch of silver coins. He showed them to me. If memory serves me correct (I looked at the coins over 10 years ago) he had approximately $200-300 face value of silver and the coins did have a lot of smoke damage but you could still read the dates. They weren't bent or anything because the heat from a typical fire isn't hot enough to melt silver.

Some temperature information for you and other readers:

Average house fire temperature: 1100-1200 degrees Fahrenheit (per Livesafe Foundation)
Silver melting point: 1763 degrees F.
Copper melting point: 1984 degrees F.
Nickel melting point: 2651 degrees F. (yet another thing to like about those .999 Canadian nickels)

So silver and copper will likely be ok in a fire, but they won't look pretty due to the smoke damage.

[hobo finds]

People also throw them in the trash

[knibloe]

newer zinc pennies just disintegrate if on/in the ground

[knibloe]

Great topic! I often wonder about this myself, esp when I see on the news of natural disasters. I'm sure many coins have probably been lost forever due to fires.

Pam, you mention the fires. I had a friend years ago who owned a lot of real estate and did a lot of fixer uppers. One was a house that burned down. He was doing the demolition work and inside a wall was a bunch of silver coins. He showed them to me. If memory serves me correct (I looked at the coins over 10 years ago) he had approximately $200-300 face value of silver and the coins did have a lot of smoke damage but you could still read the dates. They weren't bent or anything because the heat from a typical fire isn't hot enough to melt silver.

Some temperature information for you and other readers:

Average house fire temperature: 1100-1200 degrees Fahrenheit (per Livesafe Foundation)
Silver melting point: 1763 degrees F.
Copper melting point: 1984 degrees F.
Nickel melting point: 2651 degrees F. (yet another thing to like about those .999 Canadian nickels)

I got a roll of 40% halves a whiule back. they had obviously been through a fire. It appeared that they had fused together and a chisel was used to pry them apart

So silver and copper will likely be ok in a fire, but they won't look pretty due to the smoke damage.