Higher mintage pieces tend to be UNDER represented in my tabulation. Lower mintage pieces tend to be OVER represented. As an example, look below at the tables showing the Alaska/Hawaii pieces issued privately by Clifford Mishler in 1959 (HK528 to HK537). Let's compare how my tallies of these pieces compare to known mintages. Both tables show the mintage for each piece, and my tallies for each piece. The far right column in each table shows the percentage of the total mintage of each piece that my tallies represent. TABLE ONE shows the lower mintage pieces. TABLE TWO shows the higher mintage pieces. As you can see, my tallies of the lower mintage pieces average 9% of their total mintage, whereas my tallies for the high mintage pieces average 5.3%. In this example, the range of mintages for all pieces is 11 to 500. As mintages climb higher and higher, the percentage of the total mintage that my tallies represent tends to become lower and lower. In the case of HK20 for instance, with a supposed mintage of 10,133, my tally represents only 2.1% of the total mintage(215 divided by 10133). Lastly, please understand that this is only a TENDENCY. Looking below at the tables again, you will notice that HK534 has the highest mintage, and thus should in an ideal world show the the lowest percent tallied compared to mintage. In fact, the lowest percent piece turned out to be HK535 at only 4.1% of the total mintage. This shows that there is a lot to do with luck as to which pieces show up for sale, and which do not. It would be nice if my statistical base of approximately 27,000 total so called dollars were larger than it is.
TABLE ONE - Low Mintage Pieces
HK# Mintage Tallies % of Total Mintage
HK528 25 3 12%
HK529 100 6 6%
HK536 11 1 9.1%
HK537 11 1 9.1%
Average % 9%
TABLE TWO - Higher Mintage Pieces
HK# Mintage Tallies % of Total Mintage
HK530 250 13 5.2%
HK531 250 12 4.8%
HK532 250 14 5.6%
HK533 250 16 6.4%
HK534 500 28 5.6%
HK535 314 13 4.1%
Average % 5.3%

© Copyright 2010 John Raymond