Revised November 2007
This is a study I did on the number of so called dollars sold through various token and medal dealers/auctioneers from the mid 1960s through the year 2000(around the advent of ebay). I did not look through all catalogs from this period, but I did look through quite a few. I recorded all so called dollars that I could find in each catalog, looking through each one cover to cover, not just in the so called dollar sections. This study includes all HK #s as listed in Hibler and Kappen's book, plus all unlisted metal and metal platings of HK numbers as described in various sources. It does not include unlisted mule varieties or totally unlisted pieces. Make sure the piece you are looking up is exactly as described in HK, and not a similar variety. These population numbers were taken ONLY from the catalogs listed below; however many of the various unlisted metal and plated listings were taken not only from these catalogs, but from any other source that I looked through, including Presidential Coin and Antique catalogs after the year 2000, Stacks, Bowers and Merena, ebay, ANS listings, Tony Swicers 1992 sale, a number of published book references, and other sources.
So, how certain am I that these statistics are accurate? Well, my confidence is pretty high. Could I have made a mistake with typos? I could have, but if I did, I believe they are exceedingly few and far between or of little significance. I gradually put my database together beginning in 1995, using Microsoft Excel, typing in each one, one at a time. What kind of a coin crazy am I anyway?!*#! A while back I decided to go back and redo all of the Presidential Coin and Antique catalogs separately. One of the reasons I did this was to help me verify that my total entries was accurate. This second effort seemed to me to be consistent with my larger study. A couple of other things that I did was go back and verify that my Charbneau dollar(HK487-HK490) and Continental dollar restrike(HK852-HK856) entries were accurate. In each case the total number that I found was very close to what I originally found. Actually, I found two or three less the second time around, probably because I looked through everything a bit faster. I have NOT falsified any numbers to make them look more reasonable, and I have certainly NOT raised or lowered population numbers of pieces that I own or want to own to make them appear more or less rare than they actually are. There are a lot of rare pieces I still do not own.
A number of things should be kept in mind when reading this census. First of all, using HK16 and HK17 as examples, one should definitely not assume that there are approximately 10 HK16s for every 20 or so HK17s in existence(if you look at the study there were a total of 10 HK16s and 22 HK17s that were recorded). Dealers and auctioneers sometimes sold entire collections. Collections often consist of one of each example; thus not much can be learned about rarity. Another consideration is that some sellers tended to avoid low value pieces. This is especially true of Presidential Coin and Antique Co. In some auction catalogs low value pieces were sometimes grouped together into one lot with little in the way of a description, rendering these pieces impossible to enter into the study. All in all, less valuable pieces in this study are under-represented, while more valuable pieces are over-represented. For higher mintage pieces of say 5,000 to 30,000 or so where mintages are known, the numbers that were found tend to average around 1-3% of the total mintage. For lower mintage pieces where mintages are known, numbers found tended to amount to an average of around 10% or so of the total mintage.
Another thing to keep in mind is that so called dollars are a vast and varied group of medals and tokens. With any kind of study, one would like to compare items that are as similar as possible; so to some extent, any study of so called dollar rarity is like comparing "apples to oranges". The numismatic marketplace tends to treat different so called dollars differently, depending on perceived significance and desirability or whatever. The most obvious examples of this are the Lesher dollars(HK787 - HK797 and HK1016 - HK1021). I believe many of these have been sold through the likes of Stacks and other auctioneers not used in this study, so my statistics on these pieces is probably of little value. More definative information regarding these pieces can be obtained by reading Adna Wilde's extensive study.
Another consideration is the possibility that an exact same piece may show up in different sales. A small minority of catalogs used in this study were fixed price lists. These were generally checked for repetition from one issue to the next in an attempt to make sure that the exact same pieces that did not sell from list to list were not entered multiple times. However the vast majority of catalogs entered into this study were live auction or mail bid auction catalogs. With these, a piece was always entered as it appeared without regard to whether or not it may have shown up before in a previous auction. As would be expected, I never saw the same kind of repetition of pieces (the Christian and Stone catalogs were an exception) in successive catalogs of live auction and mail bid auction catalogs that I would usually see in fixed price lists. However there is still no question that in some cases the exact same pieces were entered more than once if they happened to appear in different catalogs, sometimes at widely separated periods of time. The pedigrees of most so called dollars are difficult to follow, however the more valuable or rare a piece is, the more likely some sort of pedigree can be determined. In the future I may add in known pedigrees and designate repetitions where they can be determined. Obviously the possibility of repetition might be another reason why more valuable pieces are over represented in the population figures. It is possible that it could be of some considerable significance for extremely rare pieces that show population figures of say 2 or 3, as it might be possible that all 2 or even all 3 are in fact the exact same piece. With the Christian and Stone catalogs, there were a lot of unsold pieces that were placed in subsequent sales. I eliminated all of the repeat sales from these catalogs that I could determine.
I should also say something about grading. During the period that this study covers(approx. 1975 to 2000), grading of so called dollars was less of an issue than it is today mainly due to the lower market values and lack of third party grading. Today things have changed, especially for uncirculated pieces. The use of 10 point Mint State grading to describe the condition of so called dollars was almost unheard of during the period that this study covers. Most dealers would describe their uncirculated pieces as simply "Unc", with an occasional "Gem Unc" used to descibe a really nice piece. At the present time I am not listing how all of the so called dollars that I recorded broke down into grades. I might add that later.
Anyway, although this census study is certainly not the last word on so called dollar rarity, it is a better guide in my view than the sometimes inaccurate rarity ratings in Hibler and Kappen's book. Hopefully you will find it helpful.
I also want to thank all of the dealers, auctioneers, and authors whose past catalogs and publications made this study possible. I want to especially thank Joe Levine of Presidential Coin and Antique Co., Inc. for his advice and assistance.
Population numbers were taken ONLY from the catalogs listed below:
Below are other publications/sources relating to so called dollars that were used to find unlisted metal and plated varieties. None of these were used in tallying population numbers.