$1 Mule rarity/scarcity questions

[emu666]

why did you behave as though you knew everything?

You were making such big statements I assumed you knew the origins of the coins.
I am also interested in what your true motive was in starting this thread.
My attention has been drawn to similar statements you have made on another forum.
Please answer this; was your primary motivation to "talk down" one decimal rarity (that you did not have one of) at the same time as "talking up" another that you had available for sale?
I hope i am wrong, but that is what it looks like.

[trout]

why did you behave as though you knew everything?

You were making such big statements I assumed you knew the origins of the coins.

I am also interested in what your true motive was in starting this thread.
My attention has been drawn to similar statements you have made on another forum.
Please answer this; was your primary motivation to "talk down" one decimal rarity (that you did not have one of) at the same time as "talking up" another that you had available for sale?
I hope i am wrong, but that is what it looks like.

If I knew everything about this coin I wouldn't have asked the question.
The observations I made on CCF were simply that, As these 2 coins have pretty much been kept in the dark and are pretty similar being the 2 main stuff ups by the Mint with decimal coins.
Nothing to do with the coin I have for sale, That will sell on it's own merits and doesn't need any "Help" thank you.
I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set, It is however an interesting coin and now that I have the history about it I may just get one.

[purplepennyhunter]

....I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set....

It's not an error (but was made in error) but a variety, you may need to rethink this trout! Subject for another thread......

[markn]

OK I think this has gone far enough off topic.  Perhaps we could start thread on the Millennium too?  And get this one back on to the topic of the mule.

[emu666]

If I knew everything about this coin I wouldn't have asked the question.
The observations I made on CCF were simply that, As these 2 coins have pretty much been kept in the dark and are pretty similar being the 2 main stuff ups by the Mint with decimal coins.
Nothing to do with the coin I have for sale, That will sell on it's own merits and doesn't need any "Help" thank you.
I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set, It is however an interesting coin and now that I have the history about it I may just get one.

That's good. I am relieved that your motivation was innocent.
I've seen dealers try to talk down coins or banknotes they don't have in stock and talk up ones they do have. It rarely works; generally they end up making fools of themselves. I'd better not name names or Mark will put me in the sinbin.

Nothing to do with the coin I have for sale, That will sell on it's own merits and doesn't need any "Help" thank you.

No it doesn't. I did mention it to someone yesterday. He looked online and had trouble seeing the bagmarks on the coin. You may consider taking a scan of it and adding it to the listing.

[nealeffendi]

how i see this problem is that you seem to be wanting facts on something that the mint doesn't say exists in their records

so others have offered grassroots find numbers
which is exactly what all of the variety books rely on

actual counts

Emu has given a well documented educated guesstimate of his large sample
I think it is a fairly reliable sample % = possible numbers
ps - if I have my figures right then apx one quarter of the mintage were checked for Emu's sample - that is one hell of a sample!

I honestly can't see what else is the answer to the question that you pose

a mintage report will not change the interest in this coin
it is a numismatic curiosity and the variety collectors will seek them out
the values will be determined on the day by the buyer/s

I think that Peter checked a few million dollar coins, not a few million dollar coins dated for that particular year. Either way it is a huge sample size and he deserves every mule he found.
A mintage report would change interest in the coin. If you found out that the mintage was 20,000 (or 200,000)  then there is a bank vault (or perhaps a casino employee?) somewhere with sacks upon sacks of UNC mules waiting to hit the market and the interest in the variety (noodling) or as an investment will decline. Why pay a few grand for MS62 examples when there might be thousands at MS64-67?

[trout]

....I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set....

It's not an error (but was made in error) but a variety, you may need to rethink this trout! Subject for another thread......

Cheers PP.
I didn't look at it in that light, looks like it IS after all a requirement for the collection :good:

I think that Peter checked a few million dollar coins, not a few million dollar coins dated for that particular year. Either way it is a huge sample size and he deserves every mule he found.
 A mintage report would change interest in the coin. If you found out that the mintage was 20,000 (or 200,000) then there is a bank vault (or perhaps a casino employee?) somewhere with sacks upon sacks of UNC mules waiting to hit the market and the interest in the variety (noodling) or as an investment will decline. Why pay a few grand for MS62 examples when there might be thousands at MS64-67?

Given the exposure that this coin has had I Highly doubt that there is a "Hidden Hoard" in pristine condition of these anywhere.
They would have hit the market years ago :ok:

If I knew everything about this coin I wouldn't have asked the question.
The observations I made on CCF were simply that, As these 2 coins have pretty much been kept in the dark and are pretty similar being the 2 main stuff ups by the Mint with decimal coins.
Nothing to do with the coin I have for sale, That will sell on it's own merits and doesn't need any "Help" thank you.
I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set, It is however an interesting coin and now that I have the history about it I may just get one.

That's good. I am relieved that your motivation was innocent.
I've seen dealers try to talk down coins or banknotes they don't have in stock and talk up ones they do have. It rarely works; generally they end up making fools of themselves. I'd better not name names or Mark will put me in the sinbin.

Nothing to do with the coin I have for sale, That will sell on it's own merits and doesn't need any "Help" thank you.

No it doesn't. I did mention it to someone yesterday. He looked online and had trouble seeing the bagmarks on the coin. You may consider taking a scan of it and adding it to the listing.

Answering this in the missbehavers

[emu666]

how i see this problem is that you seem to be wanting facts on something that the mint doesn't say exists in their records

so others have offered grassroots find numbers
which is exactly what all of the variety books rely on

actual counts

Emu has given a well documented educated guesstimate of his large sample
I think it is a fairly reliable sample % = possible numbers
ps - if I have my figures right then apx one quarter of the mintage were checked for Emu's sample - that is one hell of a sample!

I honestly can't see what else is the answer to the question that you pose

a mintage report will not change the interest in this coin
it is a numismatic curiosity and the variety collectors will seek them out
the values will be determined on the day by the buyer/s

I think that Peter checked a few million dollar coins, not a few million dollar coins dated for that particular year. Either way it is a huge sample size and he deserves every mule he found.
A mintage report would change interest in the coin. If you found out that the mintage was 20,000 (or 200,000)  then there is a bank vault (or perhaps a casino employee?) somewhere with sacks upon sacks of UNC mules waiting to hit the market and the interest in the variety (noodling) or as an investment will decline. Why pay a few grand for MS62 examples when there might be thousands at MS64-67?

You cannot get a mintage report. It was a surprise when the mint controller (Vivienne Thom) actually admitted that the mistake had occurred.
What we know of the coin's origin came from a former mint employee who probably told us more than he or she should have (and insisted his or her name never be mentioned). From what I recall, we were told that just one incorrect die was used (which is consistent with the identical reeding position for all mules) and that when the mistake was identified they melted all the ones they could find. A bag of mules would extremely unlikely as the mules were mixed in with normal coins (just one of the presses had the 10c obverse). The person who originally found the choice mule I used to own obtained it from a roll in Perth in 2000. There were four mules in the roll; two of which he gave to us children (who subsequently spent them); one of which i eventually obtained and one he kept.
Also the technical term for a casino worker who removes money from the casino is a "job seeker".

[nealeffendi]

Its all about getting the truth out of the Mint mate :good:

Except there's no truth to be got. They really don't know, as they thought they got them all 14 years ago.

We hashed all this out last decade, remember? And we also came up with 6,000, not from statistics, but from production processes. Of course, sadly all that discussion disappeared when the forum vanished, but we should recall enough of it to make sense, no?

The estimate was based on the totes the presses feed into, and the QC sampling intervals. If the die was swapped immediately after an empty tote was put in place, the error would have been caught before any got away and the entire lot destroyed. Therefore the bin was already partially filled with normal coins. When the die change took place, the rest of the tote was filled and swapped out before a sample was taken and the error discovered. There definitely wasn't more than one, going by their processes. This also fit with what I later saw and was told by press operators.

And we know the entire batch was bagged and sent to Perth, where the majority stayed until found years later, mainly at the casino.

From the current Mint website:

The finished coins collect in a small catch box that is regularly checked for quality by the press operator. A representative sample of the coin batch is also checked by Quality Control. If the sample fails, the press is shut down for inspection of the die and the entire batch of coins is quarantined.  If the quality of the coin is below the accepted standard, the batch is then destroyed.

As for rarity, sure there's more than a handful of them... but very very few in high grade. And that counts as rare in my book. Yes, they're readily available, but that's because a) they're stuffed and b) most people see them as errors and they don't hang onto them, so there's a high turnover.

You raise a few interesting points that gives support to the 6,000 estimate.
BUT
You quote the mint for their CURRENT quality control methods, perhaps the method has been tightened up in the past 14 years? Perhaps in response to the stuff up back then? Perhaps because QC back then didn't even consider looking for a mule?
When people are on the look-out for specific faults they can find them easily. But nobody looked out for English/Indians or 33/32s or other varieties that seem obvious and it was decades before they were noticed.
Same with the mules, the QC guys and press operators were probably looking for chipped dies, poorly aligned dies and other common mint problems, with the mule they saw a problem free reverse die and a problem free obverse die and ticked off the QC passed paperwork.

[markn]

You raise a few interesting points that gives support to the 6,000 estimate.
BUT
You quote the mint for their CURRENT quality control methods, perhaps the method has been tightened up in the past 14 years? Perhaps in response to the stuff up back then? Perhaps because QC back then didn't even consider looking for a mule?
When people are on the look-out for specific faults they can find them easily. But nobody looked out for English/Indians or 33/32s or other varieties that seem obvious and it was decades before they were noticed.
Same with the mules, the QC guys and press operators were probably looking for chipped dies, poorly aligned dies and other common mint problems, with the mule they saw a problem free reverse die and a problem free obverse die and ticked off the QC passed paperwork.

The upset 2010 50c is being found in enough numbers to suggest it was an entire die run (200,000 coins or so) which puts paid to the idea that QC standards have improved.

[nealeffendi]

Given the exposure that this coin has had I Highly doubt that there is a "Hidden Hoard" in pristine condition of these anywhere.
They would have hit the market years ago :ok:

[/quote]

Um, maybe.
There are a number of examples of coins that were considered rare having hidden hoards flood the market.
Look at the 1915 half sovereign, it was considered scarce/rare until a large cache turned up from Albania in the 1980s. I paid just above spot for one from Bob Roberts (who was the distributor).
Or that horde of gold coins that PCGS slabbed, there are so many and in such high grade that 14 of them are top of the pops and the hundreds of high grades has made many conditional rarity coins drop in value.
Some banks (and companies) keep bags of coins in reserve for years/decades, being the year of Y2K and the expected influx of visitors for the 2000 olympics it stands to reason that extra cash was stockpiled. Look at all the extra notes printed for Y2K that distorted banknote distribution for a decade.
Even a small horde would distort the market, look how many collectors have mint rolls or mint sealed bags of coins. Can you even tell if a roll contains mules when you cannot see the rim?

....I am not an error collector so the Mule is not a requirement for my Dollar set....

It's not an error (but was made in error) but a variety, you may need to rethink this trout! Subject for another thread......

I don't know that I would agree with that as, to me, it is an error coin.  PCGS defines an error coin as:

error
A numismatic item that unintentionally varies from the norm. Ordinarily, overdates are not errors since they were done intentionally while other die-cutting "mistakes" are considered errors. Double dies, planchet clips, off-metal strikings, etc. also are errors.

An error may occur because of either a mechanical or human failing.  In this instance it was a human failing because they inserted the wrong die.  By the PCGS definition it is an "unintentional variety" hence an error.  If it was intentional then I would agree with Markn.

I know I'm putting a great deal of weight on PCGS definitions (but we have to start somewhere) and they describe the mule (and I think we all agree it is a mule) as:

Mule Error
This is a rare Mint error where the obverse die is of one coin and the reverse die is of another coin. The most famous of the Mule errors is a Sacagawea dollar/Washington quarter Mule, where a Washington quarter obverse is paired with a Sacagawea reverse. (my emphasis)

Thanks Steve for PCGSs definition of this mule as an error rather than a variety.

What do they classify the mules that may have been intentionally made?
I'm thinking of the Bahamas/NZ mule that was reportedly made as a protest against staff cuts at the Royal Mint, or those mules made for the collector market by corrupt staff (has happened at Canberra on multiple occasions).
Also the technical term for a casino worker who removes money from the casino is a "job seeker".
[/quote]
Only if they tickle the till. Does management really care as long as the sums balance?
Many bank tellers will swap out the desirable stuff for their own money (silver 50 cents, gold 200 dollars,solid number notes etc) as a perk of the job, posters here and on the other forum regularly give examples of  friendly tellers putting aside goodies for them. A very famous collector was Owen Fleming who was a bank teller who noodled his till for many years.
Wouldn't be hard for the casino cashiers to put aside the mint fresh bags of coins once they found out that collectors were hitting the casino to noodle the dollar coins. Cash those bags out when your wife picked you up at the end of the shift and noodle out the mules. Just a single cashier doing that would distort the statistics as Peter would have been going through many pre noodled coins.

[Fulvio]

You quote the mint for their CURRENT quality control methods, perhaps the method has been tightened up in the past 14 years?

Correct. Which is why I pointed out that it was current. The procedures have most definitely been tightened up as a result of a couple of well-publicised stuffups, and its less likely this will recur.

Sadly, we don't have details of how things were, other than memories, and we pretty much have to accept what people recall, match them all up, and see if the results are consistent.

All indications are that there are no hidden stashes of mules. They were not found and publicised on release day. They were just another standard MoR, and totally unremarkable. Even active UNC collectors, which I count myself as, who might have stashed sacks, clearly didn't. For one thing, the total quantity was tiny, for another it was mixed as the result of being a partial tote at the press. Then the isolated geographic release point, and lack of volume collectors in that location, all conspired against a hoard existing.

No, if someone like me had snagged them, he would have got pretty much all of them, and there wouldn't be any circulated examples. Exactly as there are no circulated coronation $2's. I've only ever seen three, and I didn't find those myself. Yet I have thousands in UNC.

See my point?

Oh, and PP is correct. It is a variety. Also been argued to death, but I'm sure we could research it and argue that for a many pages anyway...

Oh, and speaking of many pages, can you all PLEASE learn how to trim attributions? It is extremely annoying to continually wade through reams of guff you've already read (and often written), for the one-word comment at the end. Seriously, this is a forum, not a business email exchange. Learn the difference and stop the bloat. All you need is the minimum attribution for context.

[stevo1962]

All you need is the minimum attribution for context.

OK

[markn]

Please move all comments about whether the mule is an error or variety to here: http://www.australian-coins.net/showthread.php?tid=2405

[emu666]

Only if they tickle the till. Does management really care as long as the sums balance?
Many bank tellers will swap out the desirable stuff for their own money (silver 50 cents, gold 200 dollars,solid number notes etc) as a perk of the job, posters here and on the other forum regularly give examples of  friendly tellers putting aside goodies for them. A very famous collector was Owen Fleming who was a bank teller who noodled his till for many years.
Wouldn't be hard for the casino cashiers to put aside the mint fresh bags of coins once they found out that collectors were hitting the casino to noodle the dollar coins. Cash those bags out when your wife picked you up at the end of the shift and noodle out the mules. Just a single cashier doing that would distort the statistics as Peter would have been going through many pre noodled coins.

Wouldn't be hard for the casino cashiers to put aside the mint fresh bags

As I said before, it would be impossible for anyone who wanted to keep his job. Some of the machine attendants at Burswood did know what I was doing and I did talk to them as I would have loved to have been able to get newly released dollar coins. They could not afford to be seen looking through coins on company time. They are also not permitted to play the poker machines.
In any case; the casino never get mint bags. They get bags of coins straight from the security companies. Burswood used to be handled by CHUBB.

As far as bank tellers are concerned:
Mules released into circulation 2000 AD
Variety first noted in CAB 2003
People start actively looking for them in Perth late 2004.

If any rolls or mint bags containing mules existed they would have surfaced by now.