There are quite a few coins that are wanted by collectors but these coins will never touch their hands. There are several reasons for this. The coin is extremely rare because of a mistake in the mint or the mintage was extremely low in number. Another reason that these coins will never touch a collector’s hand is that they were melted or have disappeared from circulation.
One such coin is the 1894 -S Barber dime because there were only 24 of these 90% Silver coins minted. The strange story behind this is that this coin was minted by orders of John Daggett (The San Francisco Mint Superintendent) for seven bankers so they could have three of the dimes each and he gave the last three dimes to his daughter to keep for a long time but she promptly spent one of the dimes on ice cream. There are other variations of this story but the fact remains that the remaining dimes were melted and these 24 coins survived. About nine of the coins have been accounted for but the rest will probably stay in private collections unless some of them are still out there in circulation which is highly unlikely. It is every collectors dream of finding this 1894 -S dime at a flea market or in some obscure place but again very unlikely.
Another such coin is the 1943 Copper penny. During the war since copper was needed for armaments the copper pennies were replaced with zinc however since there were still copper blanks were still in the mold so to speak around forty three true copper pennies were minted and were circulated. The best way to prove that you have a 1943 penny is use a magnet to test to see if it is zinc (Steel) or the real thing. Steel pennies stick to the magnet and copper does not.
Another extremely rare coin is the Canadian 1911 Silver dollar which is currently worth around a million dollars. The reason behind this is there are only two in existence which makes this the most wanted of all Canadian coins. There is some mystery of why only two coins were minted but the general story was that the Canadian government changed its mind at the last minute to mint these coins. Could there be more of these coins out there?
Another extremely rare coin that collectors would dearly like to have is the Silver Dollar known as the “King of American Coins” which is the 1804 Silver dollar. There are supposedly only fifteen to twenty of these coins in existence. These were especially minted for special sets for visiting dignitaries in the late 1800s. Because of the rarity of this type of coin, collectors are made to be aware of the many counterfeits of such coins.
Another coin that collector’s would love to get their hands on is the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel. There were only five of these coins minted. One of many mysteries of these coins is that one of them is missing and could be anywhere. One of the 1913 Liberty Head Nickels sold for $1.8 Million dollars.
As seen there are quite a few coins that collectors would like to get their hands on but can’t because of the rarity of the coins. There are several reasons for the rarity of the coins. The main one being that there were only a few minted for whatever reason and because of this low mintage the coins are worth quite a bit of money. Other reasons for the rarity are coins that are out of circulation or coins with special markings such as mint marks that were considered low or the wrong kind of metal that the coin was made up with. Keep searching around one never knows if one could find one of these rare and valuable coins.
