One example is the ABC Peso. Based on Peace dollar blanks and minted in the USA in mintages over 10 million, they were minted as currency reserve.
They never really circulated, and shortly after Machado was overthrown, they were all melted down. However the Cuban numismatic society requested a bag, and around 1000 of each date were set aside for collectors. There's probably 1000-1500 each extant. The exception is the 1937 where none were held back and just a single bag slipped and split as it was being loaded onto a boat, the Patria. Around 20-40 extant examples. (Ps. looking to buy a better peso if anybody has one!)
The Scottish James VI £20 piece had a tiny mintage of 193 pieces. It has a surprisingly high survival rate of about 10% as there are thought to be around 20 known examples.
Quote: "cmaclean"The Scottish James VI £20 piece had a tiny mintage of 193 pieces. It has a surprisingly high survival rate of about 10% as there are thought to be around 20 known examples.
It's a lovely coin, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a 'modern coin with high mintage!'
Still, I'd take it off the museums hands if they no longer wanted it
Quote: "oggy"It's a lovely coin, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a 'modern coin with high mintage!'
Still, I'd take it off the museums hands if they no longer wanted it
Another case would be late Scottish silver coinage. I'm not aware of the original mintages. I'd assume they were in the hundreds of thousands at the least. These coins are now extremely rare due to the 1707-9 Scottish recoinage. The old Scottish silver was collected in and reminted into coins of the recently unified Great Britain. The scarcity of pre-1706 Scottish silver is testament to the thoroughness of the recoinage, which was carried out under the supervision of Sir Isaac Newton.
I don't know how accurate it is, exactly, but apparently US minted fewer coins in 2009 than in other years. There are still millions of them out there, but they're sufficiently scarce to command a small premium.
After doing a lot of coin roll hunting for quarters and nickels, I can confirm - not a whole lot of '09 coins out there!
There were 206,398 Canadian 50¢ coined in 1921, but only about 75 survived because almost all were melted and recoined in 1929. See the catalogue page (I've just sent some corrections yet to be approved) and this post.
EDIT ─ Thanks to bbybugs for validating the changes so quickly.
