Barber Quarters Why do $ vary so much...Its not the Mintage then why...??

[DPBOB]

Barber Quarters Why do $ vary so much...It's not the Mintage then why...??

Example Red book prices...2006 book so prices may vary now...

A 1892S starts at $20 with 964,079 minted
A 1896S starts at $625 with a mintage of 1,888,039
A 1897S starts at $25 with a mintage of 542,229
A 1915S starts at $9 and has less mintage then the first 2 it has 704,000 minted

A 1901O which I found and sold for $276 has a mintage of 1,612,00 starting at $30.00
when there are older quarters with less mintage but are not even close to $30.00 starting price...and there are quit a few in the 1902 - 1915 years that have less mintage but only start at $5-$7

Can someone explain why this is.......?

Thank You

 

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[p2c]

Re: Barber Quarters Why do $ vary so much...It's not the Mintage then why...??

Bob,
This is a very educated guess, but based upon fact. Alot of times when the mint would issue silver coins, they'd oftentimes recall and melt coins for silver. It could be that the high mintage/high value years had for whatever reason a high percentage either melted for minting new silver coins -or- when the treasury began to recall silver to increase reserves these were dates either melted or thrown away in a vault somewhere.
One other interesting fact was that in the really early days, people would bring gold or silver (in the form of jewelry or silverware, etc) to the mint to be made into currency for their use, ie 1798 Bob wants a dollar coin, so he brings his silver tablespoon to the mint and they assay it and say you get a dollar and that spoon is melted and alloyed for coin production.

 

[l.cutler]

Re: Barber Quarters Why do $ vary so much...It's not the Mintage then why...??

Yes, it is more about how many have survived than how many were minted. There can be many reasons for this. Sometimes a low mintage was recognized and heavily saved, sometimes a first year issue or last year issue was heavily saved. There could have been melting as stated, some just circulated until they were unusable, or any number of other things may have happened to them.